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Show Commissioners doing their jobs Dear Editor: In response to the Cyclops column written by Brian Gray, which was published Nov. 20, I would like to comment on his criticism of the three members of the State Textbook Commission who recently voted against approving approv-ing a children's literature series. Mr. Gray's response to their opinions opi-nions was censorship in a real sense. Why censor members of the commission for doing their job? Actually I am comforted to know that the three members, who have read and studied the proposed literature litera-ture in its entirety, were aware of stories which they said could traumatize children and promote an unhealthy interest in witchcraft, satanism and the occult, all of which are on the rise enough without the help of this type of fantasy fan-tasy stories. In addition, culturally, Americans tend to accept the written word as gospel, therefore further causing me to question this type of influence on young, impressionable impres-sionable minds. It was not impressive to read Gray's accounts of the "favorite books" of Governors across the country. The Governors' opinions, or that some of the books may be popular, are not sufficient to automatically qualify the books to be quality children's reading literature. litera-ture. The new fantasy-directed stories of today are much more damaging to children because of the bolder content and the fact that it is introduced to children at ever younger ages. It is well known that the younger children are less capable of reason ing about what is real and not real and what is right or wrong. Furthermore, Fur-thermore, combine this with the reality of the morality of our time. Times have changed. Those with the responsibility of choosing the reading materials for students cannot afford to pass over lightly, questionable materials, with naive assumptions that all will be well when considering the effects on children and ultimately the effects on society. Gray referred to the three members as ' ' Censor No. 1 ," "Censor No. 2" and "Censor No. 3." The more appropriate name for the members should be "Caring Citizens." These members, and other caring citizens who raised concerns about similar fantasy literature lit-erature in this Davis School District, should be praised for caring car-ing about what goes into children's minds and working to do something about it Censoring can be a positive action ac-tion too. The censoring of movies is necessary to protect people from going to the wrong movie. I am thankful that the three members of the State Textbook Commission attempted at-tempted to protect children from what they viewed as unacceptable reading material. They stated their opinion of the approved fantasy literature by their vote against it. Perhaps Gray would wish to ridicule them and others into silence in an effort to censor opinions of which he does not approve. ap-prove. Mrs. Teresa J. Powers Bountiful |