IN FOCUS : Mrs. Taylor
Posted on Friday, August 19, 2005
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/nwat/Editorial/31282/
I told her the other day that what she’s done has become "the story of the summer" in Northwest Arkansas. She blamed or credited me for that, but I don’t believe her. Seems if you write a newspaper column anywhere in the Natural State, you’ve had to weigh in on Laurie Taylor and her "one woman crusade" to clean up literature in Fayetteville’s public schools.
I can’t say anything bad about her. I’ve talked to her on a number of occasions. She seems like a nice person, intent on achieving her goals and intent on protecting her kids. She’s left a big impression on some newspaper writers with considerably more talent than I have. However, for some reason, what she’s said and what she proposes leave me cold, and bother me quite a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not at the point of screaming at her, and I don’t think she wants to bring down the American way of life, but she worries me. We crossed paths again this week, and she reminded me that we agree on this. I reminded her that we agree on a single thing — we both love our kids and want the very best for them. After that, our directions diverge.
I spent some time thinking about all of this over the past week, and came to a conclusion you might find acceptable to end all the discontent. First, Laurie Taylor has a lot of energy — she is, as we’d have said in the military (she knows this, as we both served in the U.S. Navy) "highly motivated." That means she has no intention of backing down, and she wants to get something accomplished. However, she feels the school district has stymied her efforts, which has just made her more energetic, and also made her detractors more energetic as well. We have some sort of feedback loop going on here...
So, remembering what the wise old journalist once said to his younger wards, "The cure for speech with which we don’t agree isn’t censorship, it’s just more speech" I’ve decided we can solve the problem.
Laurie’s problem right now is that she’s taking negative action. She wants to put the beast back in the cage, put the magic back into Pandora’s box. That usually won’t happen, so she’s fighting a negative, uphill battle, and she’s fighting a growing number of parents concerned about censorship and Taylor’s proposed book-rating system, which would essentially give all reading material in the public schools "G" through "NC-17" ratings. Librarians would become like ticket takers at the Razorback Cinema, but without popcorn.
My suggestion? Take that negative energy, that negative and angry effort to close down speech and corral thought, and do a kung-fu sort of thing with it. Laurie should do the opposite of what she’s done, right now, and take advantage of all that anger and opposition she finds herself encountering. Instead of censoring and rating the books, she should combat that speech with which she disagrees by bringing more speech into the public libraries. If Laurie can single-handedly dominate the state’s newspaper columns, radio programs and the attention of both parents and media alike, she could take that energy to get parents to buy more books for the libraries, or maybe even start more reading and literacy programs.
Can you imagine the results? Those naughty Toni Morrison books that have Laurie so concerned would be completely buried by an influx of copies of Tim LaHaye’s "Left Behind" series, or endless editions of "The Hardy Boys" mysteries or other like minded, yet innocent, fare. Kids who have a hard time even getting enough to eat would never have a problem owning their own library of truly appropriate written work! Her boundless energy could go from negative to positive! No one would have any reason to fight her over her concern for the books in schools, because she’d simply combat those naughty passages with tons of new books! If she only realized how many local authors would benefit from her largess and drive to get the books into the schools, she’d actually have every single parent on her side along with the school district administrators! No one would have time to worry about the alleged handful of volumes containing scurrilously sexual passages!
Not only would she change her image and gain followers, she’d make the "story of the summer" truly come alive, and give it a happy ending. Imagine, no one would be angry anymore about this... no more screaming matches, no more name-calling and nasty e-mail from detractors, no one with a reason to illogically claim some shadowy force wants to "homosexualize" the public schools, no one to blame her in the letters to the editor section for creating an environment in which someone would burn down a local gay bar. The surprise of the move would change the entire feeling of the story — she might even just jump right past all of us in the local media and find herself suddenly spending a morning with the likes of Katie Couric or Charlie Gibson on national television. The story would have a happy ending, no freedom of speech principles would end up violated, no one’s rights would get smashed, and Laurie would be a hero to everyone. Every parent could thank her for her efforts.
Doing the unexpected, doing the positive thing in this story would be fantastic.
This week, Mrs. Taylor told me she wanted to hold a public meeting to ask like-minded parents for advice, for suggestions on what she should do. At last glance, it looked like she might have to go to court and file paperwork against the Fayetteville School Board. Instead, she could make them her allies. She must realize that all those people have kids, and all of them are "on the same page" with her wanting the best for those children.
She could become the hero of the summer, and not the heel, if only she’d consider this. Who knows, I didn’t go to the meeting, so maybe somebody already proposed doing this. Remember, you can only protect your kids from things for so long, and we all do. But at some point, you need to arm them to be able to protect themselves and their children. It helps to have read a lot, and to have an open mind in doing that. Putting all that energy into helping those kids read more would achieve that goal, and give the rest of us some real heroes to glory in this summer.
Don Elkins is lead anchor at KNWA-TV in Fayetteville. His column appears on Fridays.