DOCUMENT RESUME CS 214 545 INSTITUTION

IntroductionJean E. BrownSaginaw Valley State UniversityAs our title, Preserving Intellectual Freedom: lighting Censorship in OurSchools, implies, this book is designed to reflect issues, approaches, andsources of support for educators who encounter attempts to control andabridge the open flow of ideas. The book is consistent with the generalobjective of the National Council of Teachers of English to promote"Intellectual freedom at all educational levels," as articulated in theStrategic Planning document.The Conference on English Education of the National Council ofTeachers of English established a Commission on Intellectual Freedom,giving it the following charge:to examine and make recommendations concerning the effects ofcensorship efforts on the English curriculum in literature and also onthe teaching of composition and language; to examine and makerecommendations about censorship in relation to the preservice andinservice preparations of teachers of the English language arts, andto explore the adequacy of preparation given such teachers to dealwith censorship issues and situatioi .This volume is the product of work by this commission, and a number ofthe contributors are among its current membership. The commission'sfirst chair, James E. Davis, suggested that one of the ways in which wemight meet the commission's charge was by publishing a collectedvolume addressing issues of intellectual freedom. As NCTE membersknow, Jim Davis moved on to other responsibilities in the Council, but hiscontinuing contributions to intellectual freedom are reflected in thishook by the afterword that he has contributed. Ironically, many of theissues and concerns that were explored in Dealing with Censorship, whichwas edited by Jim Davis in 1979, are still as relevant today as they werefifteen years ago. In that context, we have entitled this hook, PreservingIntellectual Freedom: Fighting Censorship in Our Schools, to indicate theongoing nature of the efforts of those of us who support the free exchange of ideas.11

xilean E. BrownThis collection is designed to articulate and address some of the issuesthat we face. The manuscript is divided into five major sections. In thefirst section, there are four chapters that explore general areas of concernfor intellectual freedom. In part I the chapters include Philip Anderson'sexploration of the conflict between the limits of technological modelswith the improvement of critical thinking through aesthetic experience.Jean Brown explores the impact that attempts to achieve political correctness have on intellectual freedom. David Moshman explores the role offaculty in protecting student rights. Kathie Krieger Cerra explores theconcept of selection versus censorship as it is manifested in self-censor-ship. The four chapters in part I illustrate that issues of intellectualfreedom surface in a number of different ways. From this generaloverview of problems confronting educators, we move to specific exploration of the impact of censorship problems in the varied aspects of theschool curriculum.In the first four chapters of part TI, Hugh Agee, Margaret Sacco, JimKnippling, and Mary Ellen Van Camp examine problems of censorshipin the teaching of literature. These chapters are followed by three otherchapters that address problems with intellectual freedom in other aspects of the curriculum: Allison Wilson discusses the impact on intellectual freedom by the restriction of free expression of ideas in compositioncourses; Roy O'Donnell explores issues concerning language study; andEllen Brinkley addresses the challenges to intellectual freedom confronting the whole language movement by the religious right.The book then addresses courses of action that can be taken as teachersconfront censorship. Part III begins with a general overview by JeanBrown and Elaine Stephens as they advocate establishing an intellectualfreedom group in each school to help teachers and librarians handlecensorship problems. In the next two chapters, John Kean addresses theproblems that can confront secondary teachers and recommends approaches to address them, and then Adrienne May and Paul Slaytonmake suggestions about providing support and education for in-serviceteachers. In the final chapter of part III, Bob Small and Jerry Weissprovide information about groups and organizations, along with theiraddresses, for teachers and schools when they face censorship problems.Part IV of the book includes three chapters that explore censorshipexperiences. In the first chapter, Dee Storey presents a number ofscenarios describing censorship situations. In the other two articles,public school teachers explore the impact of censorship. Lynda Kapronand Rita Paye describe their own experience when their high schoolliterary magazine was censored. C. Jane Hyd rick discusses a censorshipsimulation that she created for her third-grade students.12

IntroductionXVIn the final section of the book, the authors of the three chaptersexamine the legal implications of issues concerning intellectual freedom.The first chapter of the section is an overview of court cases concerningissues of freedom in schools written by Lief Carter and Daniel Carroll.The breadth of their examination provides the foundation for the nexttwo chapters. Mel Krutz looks specifically at the impact of the Hazelwooddecision as it serves as precedent for numerous other court cases seekingto limit student rights. In the final chapter, Ken Holmes looks at theimpact of Hazelwood on high schools.If we are to meet the challenge of censorship, we must act rather thanreact. Thi, book seeks to provide support to preserve an environmentthat values a free exchange of ideas and diversity of opinions.13

I Intellectual Freedomand English EducationThe four chapters in this section each explore different issues that are ofcurrent concern for English educators and teachers. While most discussions about intellectual freedom focus upon the issues of overt censorship, each of these chapters explores a broader perspective.Philip Anderson provides a broad framework for exploring conceptsof intellectual freedom within the contexts of enhancing aesthetic experiences in an environment rife with the impact of technology and attempts to define and control learning experiences. He advocates therecommitment of English educators and English teachers to provideaesthetic experiences to improve the critical thinking of students as ameans of responding to censorship.Jean Brown addresses the current discussion of political correctness.Central to the discussion is the question of whether or not policing language will, in fact, alleviate traditional abuses or if it is an infringementon intellectual freedom.David Moshman, in his chapter, presents the position that academicfreedom should he clearly and coherently defined if it is to be an effectiveresponse to attempts to censor. He further believes that the primaryresponsibility of teachers is to protect their students' First Amendmentrights.Kathie Krieger Cerra addresses an often-unrecognized issue of intellectual freedom, the issue of self-censorship. In her chapter she shares theresults of a study she conducted in 1988-89. Initially, she sought information about selection policies, but the findings lead her to recognizethe self-censoring aspect of behavior.14

1 In Defense of the Aesthetic:Technical Rationalityand Cultural CensorshipPhilip M. AndersonQueens College, CUNYThey think that things are all right,Since the deer and the dachshund are one.Wallace StevensIntellectual Freedom and the Nature of CensorshipCensorship in the United States is a battle over cultural definition andintellectual freedom, over who controls the culture. Censors want nothing less than to limit the content and the form of the culture as a meansof controlling thought and behavior. For English educators, the censorship issue requires more than reactively attending to individual censors.In the end, censorship challenges the need for literary texts and creativeexpression in the culture at :arge. Censorship impugns what we do as aprofession; it questions where our responsibilities lie.Censorship is anti-intellectual in nature. Religious censors do notbelieve in reading more than their religion's holy books. Moreover,censors from other perspectives wish to control and limit the way inwhich children, and adults for that matter, read the books they areallowed to read. The students' and the teachers' intellectual freedom isin danger when "approved" commentaries and interpretations are enforced in the schools.Limiting and controlling forms of language experience are as much acensorship threat as limitations on the content of teaching. Englisheducators must struggle to provide literary experience, aesthetic language experience, and promote writing as creative expression. And,most important, English educators must resist the increasing attempts toreconceptualize human thinking and behavior in technological forms,structures that are controlling and limiting by their very nature. Thistechnical frame of reference is the chief danger to literary study andaesthetic forms of expression necessary to cultural understanding.315

4Philip M. AndersonEnglish Education and Cultural FormThe functions of English education necessitate the preservation of theaesthetic in the face of technological reductionism and anti-humanisticsocial philosophy. As to the responsibilities of English educators in thepostmodern world, I would argue the following tenets:The primary function and justification of English teaching is thepromotion of aesthetic experience and aesthetic forms of linguisticdevelopment.Aesthetic language experience is necessary for cognitive growth,and aesthetic experience in general is necessary for cultural understanding.Censorship monitoring in the English classroom should be concerned with linguistic and cognitive form as much as with content.Certain forms of linguistic and cognitive behavior are antithetical toaesthetic experience. Since aesthetic forms are necessary to language development and an integral part of human culture, promotion of non-aesthetic forms for aesthetic activities in schools is aform of cultural limitation, and therefore, censorship.English educators perform their roles by preserving and promotingaesthetic forms in the culture, both aesthetic ways of knowing andaesthetic forms of representation. Mere attention to cultural content doesnot meet this responsibility. John Dewey's (1',16) "process" definition ofculture, "the capacity for constantly expanding the range and accuracyof one's perceptions of meanings," is necessary for educational purposes,it being a more useful definition than any static "content" idea of culture(145). Dewey's vision of culture is both progressive and creative, andnottied to an authority's delineation of cultural content.Given Dewey's definition of culture, I offer this definition of a censor:0 censor is one who seeks to limit the cultural experience of another through theuse of limiting forms of thought and language, or who limits access to creativeexpression. Limiting forms of experience promoted by various educational and social authorities are dangerous to intellectual freedom.Conservative school reformers, most notably E. D. Hirsch, Jr. (1988b),have revived the outdated criticism that Dewey's "content-neutral"educational philosophy is somehow responsible for the alleged sorrystate of American education (19). Below, I will discuss how conservativeeducation critics subscribe to the notion that education is "processneutral," thereby promoting a technological delivery system. This falsenotion of neutrality in the forms of education presents a greater threat toculture than any content-neutral argument.16

5In Defense of the AestheticTwo recent developments in educational thinking undermine theaesthetic domain of English teaching, both emanating from technological reconceptualizations of human activity. One trend promotes cognitive science as a basis for educational psychology, i.e., artificial intelligence models and computer models of human thinking as descriptionsof human cognition. The other trend reinforces the use of technicalmodels for school curriculum, especially now that cognitive scienceprecepts are used to legitimize those models. Hirsch's "cultural literacy"model exemplifies the second trend. Both trends are manifestations oftechnical rationality.The philosophy behind these trends is not new. Even Matthew Arnold(1867), the progenitor of modern English teaching, warned: "Faith inmachinery is 'our besetting danger (1960, 49). Our "faith in machinery"as educational practice is a form of social control and linguistic deprivation, and therefore, a form of censorship that teachers frequently, thoughunwittingly, support. English educators are responsible for monitoringand resisting the invasion of technical rationality into the English classroom.Technical rationality is a form of practice and thinking defined bytechnological reframings of human activity, informed by theories oftechnology. Technical rationality, also referred to as technique, to quoteJacques Ellul, "is the rational and unblinking search for increased efficiency and greater productivity" (in Burnham 1984, 6). Technical rationality applies technological form to human activities, both behavior(social and behavioral engineering) and cognition (artificial intelligenceand cognitive science).Maxwell Goldberg (1972) first warned English teachers about thisthreat over twenty years ago. David Dobrin's (1989) recent examinationof technique in the writing field raises serious questions about the limitations of technical forms in composition instruction. Patrick Shannon(1989) has explored the same issue with regard to reading instruction inelementary schools. I've written about the misuse of technical rationalityin the teaching of literature on several occasions (P. M. Anderson 1979;1980; 1990). And, the limiting effects of technical rationality on profes-sional development in general has peen explored by Donald Schon(1983). Technical rationality is not a future threat, but a real and pressingthreat to humanistic conceptions of education and culture.Technical rationality applied to human behavior is a limiting conception of human behavior, and, as theories of technology suggest, designedmore for control than growth. English educators' primary focus is in theaesthetic realm of culture, not the technical. In fact, English educatorsmay be the only hope for the promotion of aesthetic language experience1?

6phdip M. Andersonin American culture; the other arts are frequently considered "frills" inschool budget decisions. Curbing technical rationality does not meanabandoning the use of computers in English classes, though; for instance,we cannot confuse word processing, a text management system, withhuman composing. English teachers should be wary of prophets espousing technological views of humans, especially when they use computermodels as an "explanation" of human cognition.Technical Rationality in the CurriculumTechnical rationality has now produced the field of cognitive science, afield in which computer science models of human behavior and thinkingare used to describe and explain humans. Cognitive science presents uswith a new version of the psychology and sociology that producedteacher-proof materials under B. F. Skinner's behaviorism in the 1950s.Cognitive science promotes experts dictating the curriculum, as in theconcept of the "expert-system," one of the hallmarks of artificial intelligence research. Cognitive science researchers frequently blur the distinction between human thinking and computing, confusing ideas withinformation.Technological visions of process, information-processing visions ofthinking, and technical modes of communication and systems of thoughtare based on theories and rules of technology:All systems can be reduced to sequential, and often hierarchical,steps.Concepts are reducible to discrete information components.Technical systems of communication and thinking are designed tocontrol information and ideas, not to generate them.Technical systems produce monological systems of communication, i.e., one-way or nondialogical communication.One of the more illustrative recent examples of the application oftechnical rationality to an educational problem is the argument put forthby E. 0. Hirsch, Jr., resulting in Cultural Literacy: What Every AmericanNeeds to Know (1988b). Hirsch's curriculum model is defined by technicalrationality and governed by the theories of technology cited above.Hirsch doesn't need a Metropolis-inspired machine environment to bringhis technical system to fruition. All he needs is the technology of theprinting press combined with the technology of cognitive science andtechnically determined systematic instruction. On the other hand, I lirsch'sinformation-based model would be easy to build into a computer pro-18

7In Defense of the Aestheticgram. His emphasis on early memorization of cultural data (by thirdgrade all the "baseline" cultural data are assimilated) is a computerprograrmer's idea of how learning and thinking (or "information processing') work.As with many conservative commentators, Hirsch is a skillful writerwho couches his prescriptions in humanistic terminology. If Hirsch hadsaid we need to enter schematic data into the memory banks of ourchildren in order to program them in a socially controlled way to supportthe labor needs of the military-industrial complex, the membership ofNCTE would be after Hirsch with rakes and pitchforks. Instead, he sayswe need prior knowledge as a necessary condition for cultural literacy ina democracy, and some English educators say he has a "point."It would be fair to say that most profeF,ionals in the field of Englisheducation have reservations about the cultural literacy model, if onlyintuitively. NCTE passed a resolution decrying basal readers (anotherproduct of technical rationality) as a substitute for cnildren's literature,and another resolution questioning the implications of the notion ofcultural literacy ("NCTE," 1988). And, the point that English educatorstend to concede to Hirsch is, in Hirsch's words, "literate content isabsolutely essential to the higher skills of reading, learning, and thinking" (1988a, 19).Of course, this statement ignores method and form, and these aspectsof Hirsch's educational model define the problem. Hirsch's contentionthat the specific content of the cultural information list doesn't matter (aswhen he invites teachers to "make up your own list") further reinforceshis true emphasis on method: memorization of cultural knowledge (or inthe cognitive science jargon: programmed input of cultural data) is thekey educational concept in "cultural literacy."But, Hirsch's model belies his stated democratic intent because thetechnical form he employs limits possibilities for learning to read toculturally approved forms as well as culturally approved content. Hedoesn't discuss teaching method because it reveals the controlling, andlimiting, nature of the model he employs. He claims that form ofinstruction is unimportant (as long as the content is "learned," by whichhe means "memorized"), strongly suggesting that he believes the process is neutral, or technical, in nature.Additionally, he is only presenting one half of the curriculum, thetechnical half, then claiming that the other half of the curriculum, theaesthetic half, is dependent upon it. Learning in a technical mode doesnot prepare one to learn in an aesthetic mode, just as reading basals doesnot prepare one to read literature in an aesthetic way. Hirsch is describing a data-processing model, not a human-thinking model.18

Philip M. AndersonRead

DOCUMENT RESUME. CS 214 545. Brown, Jean E., Ed. Preserving Intellectual Freedom: Fighting Censorship in Our Schools. National Council of Teachers of English, Urbana, Ill. ISBN-0-8141-3671-0 94 261p. National Council of Teachers of English, 1111 W. Kenyon Rd., Urbana, IL 61801-1096 (Stock No. 36710-0015: 14.95 members, 19.95 nonmembers).