Unfettered Letters

A Kansas Taliban?

When I moved to Kansas two years ago, I thought I was getting away from big city crime and violence. Instead of getting away, I have moved to an area that is moving toward not allowing free speech, free thought and new ideas.

Those on the far right have in effect declared that if you do not think as they do, you must be wrong — and, worse, you must be silenced. The Kansas Board of Education waffling on teaching science with religious leaning, the Blue Valley School District continuing its battle over literature and readings in the English classes: What differentiates Kansas from Afghanistan?

What is next — should women cover their heads, faces and bodies? Parents who knowingly raise children to believe that what they think is the only way to think have done a disservice to the state and the country. We must stop the intolerance for differences. Let’s allow discourse on other points of thinking to flow freely.

Dorothy Thiel
Overland Park

Don’t ban books

We applaud the recent vote by a Blue Valley School District committee to keep the novel “Song of Solomon” by Toni Morrison in the district’s curriculum. The novel was challenged by an Overland Park resident who wanted the book removed because that resident believed it had inappropriate content. The courage displayed by the district committee is something all Americans can be proud of.

The attempts of pressure groups to censor literature in our public schools do nothing to further the intellectual growth of our children. Censorship only serves to stifle the creative thought process. The ability to read and have access to great works of modern and classical literature is vital to the attainment and advancement of knowledge.

United States Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan once wrote, “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric.”

Harlan’s words sum up the impossibility of developing a definition of obscenity that isn’t hopelessly vague and subjective. If Americans allow pressure groups to arbitrarily determine what is obscene and what is not, we shall allow a terrific injustice to be thrust upon our children and the future of our diverse culture.

Brett Shirk, Executive Director
ACLU of Kansas
and Western Missouri,
Kansas City;
Henry E. Lyons, President
Olathe NAACP;
Boo Tyson, Executive Director
MAINstream Coalition
Prairie Village

No to banning books

I am a parent of two Blue Valley School District students. I fully support the district and the Blue Valley Board of Education in the decisions they have made regarding the suppression of books (“State board chief faults Blue Valley book rulings,” 11/16, Metro).

The district has appropriately provided for parental involvement, including allowing for parents to opt out of having their students read any book the parents deem objectionable. What I find objectionable is the way many of these book-banning parents, and Kansas Board of Education chairman Steve Abrams specifically, have stated that they speak for me. They do not.

I have complete trust in the abilities of the teachers of Blue Valley, and indeed in the teachers of Kansas, to use these literary works as a way to open up greater opportunities for understanding among students. I am also hopeful these works of literature will offer opportunities for important discussions with my children in our own home.

I know educators from all over the state. We have excellent and dedicated teachers working daily to ensure that our students receive the best possible education. Let’s let them do their jobs.

Kay Hopkins
Leawood