ASCD Book Banned
David Snyder
"No school adequately trains for American citizenship unless it helps students develop skills in dealing with controversial issues," Kimball Wiles argues in the article "Building America: A Case in Point," from the November 1948 Educational Leadership. Yet for a California legislative committee and grand jury, the books in the Building America series, owned by ASCD, were too controversial for classrooms and school libraries.
Read the article: Building America: A Case in Point (PDF)
Why were the books inappropriate? Among the reasons were that they used pictures supplied by Sovfoto, a stock photography company specializing in images from Eastern Europe and China that the California Investigating Committee called "the official Soviet propaganda agency"; they included cartoons critical of presidents Lincoln and Jefferson; and the authors included in the text were allegedly "affiliated with Communist front organizations," according to their critics.
In the books' defense, the California Curriculum Commission, the state superintendent of schools, and the California Library Association spoke up, saying the books "stimulate students to assume their responsibilities in upholding and improving the traditional principles of American life."
The fate of Building America in California was unresolved at the time of publication of this article, but the article is a fun and fascinating read. In today’s schools, students have access to an enormous amount of content online, representing a very wide range of viewpoints, many controversial. The way schools choose to act in filtering and restricting access is a complicated issue that tests educators' values, and this blast from the past provides some historical perspective.
In "My Back Pages," we look at important issues through the historical lens of the Educational Leadership archives. ASCD members can access EL issues from 1943 to the present by signing in at the right.
David Snyder is a reference librarian in ASCD’s Information Resource Center.