Creating a Context for School Board Decisions
Janet Farrell Leontiou, Ph.D.
January 31, 2022
The recent decision by the Tennessee school board to ban the use of the book Maus within their school district has created an understandable controvency. Most people are looking at the school board members as raging anti-Semites. I do not know who these people are because we only know the consequences of their actions. I will say that the decision corresponding with Holocaust Remembrance Day makes their decision suspect.
I think, however, that the school board’s decision allows us to see that we are currently suffering through a crisis in our capacity to think. More specifically, we suffer from the capacity to think in context. We have learned to question the status quo and to understand that one can no longer use words that are degrading and harmful. We have, however, in our zealousness thrown the baby out with the bath water.
The school board saw pictures of nudity and the use of curse words. These elements lead them to render their decision. Their decision is extremely reactionary and disregards any element of context. Context shapes what something means and something taken out of context, changes what in fact we see. The board members seemed to fail to understand the concept of context and therefore thought that school kids would fail to see it as well.
This is not the first time we have seen examples of words or images taken out of context. We have seen professors be disciplined because they have used certain words or have shown certain images within the context of teaching. I teach my students about the meaning of the nazi swatika and have drawn it on the board. It is not the same thing as drawing a swastika on a public building and I trust my students know the difference. How do I talk about what the symbol has meant if the student does not know what the symbol looks like? Similarly, how do we teach about the holocaust if we render accounts of lived experience too graphic for kids?
I think that the school board may be a product of the times in which we live. Sure, they may be raging anti Semites but maybe they are people who have lost their capacity to think. The vote was unanimous so maybe, there was some group think at play. The board’s decision is a cautionary tale of what happens when we abdicate our capacity to think.
The public response regarding the board’s decision should have them, at the very least, revisit their decision. At best, they look like thoughtless, reactionary people caught up in group think. On the worst side of the spectrum, they look like raging anti Seminites who are objecting to the teachings of the lived experience of the holocaust. The community is left to question who what kind of people would make such a decision especially on Holocaust Rememberance Day?
