Despite all the “mediocre appeals for excellence” (in Mr. Daniel Boorstin’s phrase) that have been dinned into our ears the past few years, many school administrators, school-board members, and parents continue their campaign against great literature in American schools. The onslaught, indeed, seems to have intensified recently.
In Michigan, last year, several schools were plagued by busybodies who demanded that Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter be removed from the classroom, and even the library! Apparently they had heard that Hawthorne’s romance touched upon adultery; arid of course our innocent secondary-school pupils have not heard, and must not hear, of such naughtiness. Every drugstore provides these innocents with the works of Mickey Spillane, Ian Fleming, and near-pornographers much worse. But Hawthorne, the Bad Man of Salem! Save our children from his vicious influence!
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