Reply to CPS Persepolis 4.9.13 Final

7/28/2019 Reply to CPS Persepolis 4.9.13 Final

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April 10, 2013

Lee Ann Lowder

Deputy General Counsel

Board of Education of the City of Chicago125 South Clark St., Suite 700

Chicago, IL 60603

Dear Ms. Lowder:

This is in response to your letter of March 20, 2013. Unfortunately, your letter does not

fully address our two main areas of concern: first, the extent of the Districts authority to

remove a book based on objections to its content; and second, the absence of establishedprocedures for making past and future decisions about the status of this and other books.

Public schools officials, as state actors, are required to comply with constitutional

mandates. Nearly 70 years ago, the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment

protects the citizen against the State itself and all of its creatures -- Boards ofEducation not excepted. These have, of course, important, delicate, and highlydiscretionary functions, but none that they may not perform within the limits

of the Bill of Rights. West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S.

624, 637 (1943).

The most basic of [First Amendment] principles is this: [A]s a general matter,

government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its

subject matter, or its content.Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, ___ U.S.

___(slip op. at 3) (2011) (citations omitted.)

Thus, Supreme Court precedents have long recognized certain constitutional limits uponthe power of the State to control even the curriculum and classroom.Board of Educ.,Island Trees Union Free Sch. Dist. v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 861 (1982) (plurality op.) See

alsoEpperson v. Arkansas,393 U.S. 97, 104 (1968) (Courts have not failed to apply the

First Amendment's mandate in our educational system where essential to safeguard the

fundamental values of freedom of speech and inquiry and of belief. the FirstAmendment does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.

(citations omitted).


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Indeed, public schools have a special obligation to respect First Amendment rights and values:

That they are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous

protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not tostrangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important

principles of our government as mere platitudes.Barnette, 319 U.S. at

637.

This means that the states legitimate power to protect children from harm does not include a

free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.Brown v. EMA at 67. Even where the protection of children is the object, the constitutional limits on governmental

action apply.Id. at 17.

According to the statement by Chief Executive Officer Barbara Byrd Bennett,Persepolis wasremoved because it contains graphic language and images that are not appropriate for the 7

th

grade.1However, as the Supreme Court recently noted in affirming the protected status of violent

content,Persepolis is similar to a great deal of literature commonly read by students of all ages:

the books we give children to reador read to them when they are youngercontain no shortage of gore. Grimms Fairy Tales, for example, are grimindeed.Cinderellas evil stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by doves.

And Hansel and Gretel (children!) kill their captor by baking her in an oven.

High-school reading lists are full of similar fare. Homers Odysseus blinds

Polyphemus the Cyclops by grinding out his eye with a heated stake.. In the

Inferno, Dante and Virgil watch corrupt politicians struggle to stay submerged

beneath a lake of boiling pitch, lest they be skewered by devils above thesurface. And Goldings Lord of the Flies recounts how a schoolboy called

Piggy is savagely murdered by other children while marooned on an island.

Brown v. EMA, slip op. at 79 (citations and references omitted; emphasis inoriginal).

As Ms. Byrd Bennett acknowledged, the book had been included as a selection in the LiteracyContent Framework for seventh grade. How, then, could a book that is recommended reading

one week be considered inappropriate the next? Unless it took place in secret, no committee

was convened to review the book, nor has the district released any analysis or evaluation of thebook that would explain its actions.

Moreover, there is no explanation whatsoever for restrictions on teaching it to older students.

CPS completely ignores the successful experience of many schools districts (including those in

Chicago) teaching the book in 7th12th grades, the extensive rationale created by the National

1Although your letter refers to obscene language in the book as a basis for its removal, CPS did not in fact make

that claim to support its decision, nor could it reasonably do so. The presence of an isolated expletive does not

render a literary work obscene as a whole. Nor is reliance on Bethel v.Fraserapt; lewd language in a high school

students speech to a school assembly raises entirely different First Amendment considerations than removal of

/restrictions on a modern literary classic in the classroom. Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier is likewise

inapplicable. In that case, the sole question [was] whether the First Amendment requires a school to tolerate

particular student speech.


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Council of Teachers of English (copy attached) attesting to the value of the book for students inthese grades and the inclusion of the book in the districts own Speak Truth to Power

curriculum, developed in conjunction with the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human

Rights. Indeed, in that curriculum, sample questions refer to violent content that is considerably

more graphic than anything inPersepolis:

In Saudi Arabia, a 19-year-old woman who was gang-raped was sentenced

to 90 lashes. Why was she sentenced and why did her rapists only get shortprison sentences? could that happen in America?

Sakineh Ashtsani, a 43-year-old Iranian woman was sentenced to death by

public stoning for having an affair. Why was she sentenced to such a publicpunishment and would the sentence be justified if murder were involved?

IfPersepolis is subject to restrictions in Chicago public schools because of concern about a few

pages containing graphic language and images, as alleged, the same rationale could be assertedto ban or restrict a vast body of classic literature, used for years, if not centuries, to convey

timeless messages about the human condition. The graphic novelMaus by Art Spiegelman, for

instance, which is very likePersepolis in form, visual presentation and discussion of violence, is

being used to teach students about the horrors of the Holocaust in Chicago and across the

country.

While your letter states that no decision has been made to removePersepolis from eighth to tenth

grade classrooms, that is not what the March 15 memo from Barbara Byrd Bennett says:

We have determinedPersepolismay be appropriate for junior and senior

students and those in Advance Placement classes. Due to the powerful images

of torture in the book, I have asked our Office of Teaching & Learning to

develop professional development guidelines, so that teachers can be trainedto present this strong, but important content. We are also considering whether

the book should be included, after appropriate teacher training, in the

curriculum of eighth through tenth grades. [Emphasis added.]

This memo makes it clear that the book has in fact been removed at all levels while school

administrators decide whether it will be taught and, if so, to whom and how. Neither this memo,nor your letter, indicates what kind of procedures will be employed to carry out this review, how

the book will be evaluated, who will be involved, and whether there will be an opportunity for

input by teachers, parents, students, and other interested parties.

As the Supreme Court noted, in language particularly germane to this situation, [t]his would be

a very different case if the record demonstrated that petitioners had employed established,regular, and facially unbiased procedures for the review of controversial materials[Instead],

petitioners' removal procedures were highly irregular and ad hoc -- the antithesis of thoseprocedures that might tend to allay suspicions regarding petitioners' motivations.Pico, 457 U.S.

at 874-75. At a minimum, school officials are required to show that their decisions are basedupon constitutionally valid concerns.Id., at 875.

CPSs actions with regard toPersepolis strongly suggest that there is no pedagogical rationalefor the removal of the book, but rather that the explanation offered now is a post-hoc

rationalization for a poorly conceived and executed decision. This conclusion is compelled by
http://cps.edu/Programs/Academic_and_enrichment/Documents/ChicagoSTTPCurriculum.pdfhttp://cps.edu/Programs/Academic_and_enrichment/Documents/ChicagoSTTPCurriculum.pdfhttp://cps.edu/Programs/Academic_and_enrichment/Documents/ChicagoSTTPCurriculum.pdfhttp://cps.edu/Programs/Academic_and_enrichment/Documents/ChicagoSTTPCurriculum.pdfhttp://cps.edu/Programs/Academic_and_enrichment/Documents/ChicagoSTTPCurriculum.pdf


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the absence of a professional review and evaluation of the literary and educational value of thebook for students in these grades, as uniformly recommended by educational professionals,

including the National Council of Teachers of English, International Reading Association,

American Library Association, and widely employed in school districts large and small

nationwide.

The decision to removePersepolis, a modern-day classic of unquestioned literary, historical andsocial value, undermines not only the reputation of the Chicago Public School system but also

the education of its students. We strongly urge you to reconsider.

Sincerely,

Joan Bertin

Executive Director

National Coalition Against Censorship

Chris Finan

President

American Booksellers Foundation for Free

Expression

Larry Siems

Director, Freedom to Write and International

Programs

PEN American Center

Charles Brownstein

Executive Director

Comic Book Legal Defense Fund

Judith Platt

Director, Free Expression Advocacy

Association of American Publishers

Kent Williamson

Executive DirectorNational Council of Teachers of English

Lin Oliver

Executive Director

Society of Childrens Book Writers & Illustrators

CC: Rahm Emanuel, Mayor of ChicagoBarbara Byrd-Bennett, CEO of Chicago Public Schools

Teresa Walter, Chief Officer of Curriculum and Instruction, Chicago Public SchoolsMembers of the Board of Education, c/o Susan Narajos