Fighting censorship in the art classroom.

This is the third in a series of articles examining issues surrounding the censorship and suppression of learning and expression in the art classroom. The first article (January 1996) discussed examples of censorship reported and documented in annual reports by People for the American Way, which kindly permitted us use of their materials. The second article (March 1996) discussed the different faces of censorship and their consequences for art teachers and students, and their respective communities. This third and final article identifies strategies and procedures for helping art teachers, administrators, and parents counter censorship and other attacks on art learning.

When censorship or the threat of it occurs in the art classroom what recourse do students, teachers, and parents have? Should they respond and, if so, how? What strategies and tactics are most effective How can attention be brought to bear on attempts to suppress art materials and visual images? The following suggestions constitute a small sampling of ways art educators can challenge censorship and attacks on the freedom to learn. For the purposes of our discussion, we have organized our suggestions into three basic groups: preventive strategies, responsive strategies, and proactive strategies.

Preventive Strategies

Preventive strategies can be helpful in inhibiting attempts to censor or suppress classroom expressions by developing and putting into place strategies and procedures for responding to incidents before they occur. They can help school districts act in well thought out, systematic, and reasonable ways, and prevent hasty and poorly thought out decisions by school officials when such incidents actually do occur.

1 Initiate the development and adoption of formal selection and consideration policies for your school district if they are not already in place. Selection and reconsideration policies represent the systematic means by which school districts adopt educational materials for classroom use and review should these materials be questioned for their appropriateness. If such policies do not exist in your school district, work together with members of the school's student body, faculty, administration, and parents to initiate selection and reconsideration policies that represent the cultural and political diversity of the school's community.

If such policies exist in your school district, learn about their provisions. Make certain that you clearly understand their limitations and whether or not there is room for discussion that involves students, teachers, parents, and other community members working together with your school's administrators to decide what are appropriate materials and content for the classroom. Make certain that reconsideration policies ensure that no educational materials be removed or restricted during the reconsideration process without a community forum.

Selection and reconsideration policies cannot prevent attempts to censor or suppress content. They can, however, ensure a fair and orderly process for adoption and removal of teaching materials from the classroom following periods of controversy, thereby preventing the "knee-jerk" or "caving-in-to-pressure" reactions so common in the wake attempts to censor or suppress materials.

2 Organize alliances of citizens, parents, and teachers who are willing to address censorship issues in general and able to respond quickly and fairly to specific incidents that may occur in the community. We all censor experience in our daily lives as we decide what is appropriate for our experience and what is not. However, it is when we make these judgments for others that a debate ensues. Such moments of discussion and debate can provide a positive opportunity to reassess and reconfirm those values that best represent the diverse cultural interests of the school's community but only if access to the material or expression which caused the debate in the first place is not sacrificed without due process.

Typically, school officials and parents are not prepared to respond to challenges of censorship, and in the process, they often seem ill-informed and indecisive. Yet, would-be censors are often well-organized groups of individuals with agendas and formalized strategies for challenging school programs. Their tendency is to reduce the complex issues in any debate over classroom materials and content to punitive judgments, or stereotypes that represent the specific ideas and opinions of their groups at the exclusion of the interests of other community citizen groups. An alliance of citizens, parents, teachers, and school administrators that openly discusses what constitutes appropriate classroom content for their children can begin to develop strategies to defend the values and interests of the community from informed and thoughtful perspectives.

An alliance comprised of the school's diverse community represents a culturally democratic body by whom decisions for the community can be made. The decisions of such an alliance are more likely to result in educational content that fulfills the needs of the community as a whole. Remember that the purpose of a community alliance is not, merely to resist censorship but to inform its members. Such an alliance serves an educational purpose as it enables an open exchange of ideas and opinions to determine what best represents the diverse needs of the community.

3 Develop a local freedom of expression policy within your school district. While they cannot prevent attempts to censor or suppress student art expression, freedom of expression policies developed by school districts with input from a representative cross-section of their communities can reinforce the importance of artistic freedom and communicate the school's educational objectives to the public. Such policies can be important tools for addressing censorship when it occurs and can prevent censorship efforts from succeeding. Excellent examples can be found in the People for the American Way's Artsave Project literature.

4 Try to get your state art educational organization to produce a formal position statement relating to censorship and freedom of expression. An example of one such position statement has been developed by the National Art Education Association, a copy of which can be found in the second of this series of articles (March 1996, p. 36). State art education organizations are also in a position to influence instructional policy in school districts and to encourage school officials to think constructively about censorship and freedom of expression. This can be accomplished with a strong freedom of expression position statement that can be published and provided to teachers, administrators, and school board members throughout the state.

Responsive Strategies

Responsive strategies are those that can be implemented once a censorship incident occurs. Since these kinds of strategies are reactive, they are usually not as effective as preventive strategies in inhibiting censorship. However, should an incident occur, the following guidelines may be useful in deliberating an equitable outcome.

1 Inform administrators and colleagues once a challenge is mounted. Be prepared to openly discuss your teaching and curriculum rationales with your colleagues so that you can develop a constituency of support among them. Do not assume that everyone must agree with your point of view. Allow for a free flow of discussion. Try to remain objective about the challenge you can help facilitate a dialogue the incident.

2 Contact educators who have faced similar attacks to talk with them about effective responses. Teachers, administrators, and community members in your school district or in others may be able to provide you with invaluable information and advice as to how to proceed in countering censorship Their first-hand experience may not relate directly to your incident, but their perspectives relative to dealing with such issues may provide valuable information for you to consider as you develop your own strategies to counter the challenge brought against you.

3 Get all the facts regarding the material being challenged, the objectors, the specific nature of the complaint, the objectors' demands, and the educational purpose of the material. Censors thrive on misinformation and confusion. Often the reasons for the challenge are distorted or biased. Make sure you are completely informed about all the facts surrounding the complaint. Take the time to assemble complete information about what is being challenged, what the specific objections are, and who is doing the objecting. Obtain or develop a formal statement, an educational rationale for the material under attack. Find out what actions have been taken in regard to the incident.

4 Try to resolve the complaint at lowest possible level. Make attempt to resolve the complaint challenge through informal discussion at the classroom level. Communicate any school district policies to the complainant which address the issue or complaint. Try to ascertain whether the complaint is coming from a concerned parent or community member or an organized group of which the complainant is a member. Do not succumb to a censorship challenge simply in order to avoid further controversy. This almost surely represents a victory for the censors and encouragement for further incidents.

5 Refer organized challenges to administrators at the school or district level. Provide all relevant information about organized or persistent challenges to school or school district administrators. While it is generally better to address complaints at the classroom level, if possible, some challenges can be highly disruptive and unlikely to be resolved through informal discussion or negotiation. School districts can provide the necessary organizational and legal mechanisms to respond to organized challenges.

6 If the attack is organized, try to assess if and when to go public. Often, educators wait until it is too late, after censors have already had an opportunity to manipulate the media and public opinion. If you feel the need to go public, develop a constituency of support and respond quickly. Acts of censorship are most effective when they go unchallenged and unreported.

7 Enlist the aid of organizations, such as People for the American Way, as well as locally based anticensorship groups, such as the ACLU. Affiliations with national, regional, state, and community-based organizations which deal with censorship matters serve to extend the base of support in your school. Such affiliations are essential to an exchange of information that can be used to develop a case against censorship within your own community. People for the American Way has documented hundreds of censorship cases nationwide. Having the organization's literature available within your school and community provides immediate information that can be used to counter the challenge of materials and content in your school when it occurs. Finally, make use of the local and state teachers associations which can provide legal and financial support to teachers faced with disciplinary action as a result of challenges to teaching materials.

Proactive Strategies

Proactive strategies do not necessarily address censorship per se. Rather they focus on the kinds of positive educational strategies, support, and policies that make censorship and other challenges to art programs difficult to begin with.

1 Develop broad community support your programs and policies. One of the best means of preventing challenges to art learning is to communicate the art program's goals and curriculum to the community. This assumes that art teachers are willing to share their curricular and pedagogical plans, and their teaching rationales in public forums within the school, with their colleagues and with their administrators. More importantly, a willingness to develop broad support for materials and content assumes teachers are also willing to present their teaching plans and rationales to parent groups and other community members at school/community functions like "back-to-school night" and PTA meetings among others. There is much less chance of controversies, censorship, and other challenges to educational practice if strong educational rationales for the use of potentially controversial materials are clearly stated and fully under and accepted by the school district the community.

2 Support groups, such as People for the American Way and the American Library Association. Obtain some of their many excellent publications. People for the American Way publishes annual reports containing state-by-state summaries of challenges to the freedom to learn. In addition, another series of annual reports documents attacks on artistic freedom. Several of their publications offer assistance to teachers and school administrators on fighting school censorship, including The Artsave Action Kit and The Freedom to Learn Action Kit. In addition, check the World Wide Web sites for People for the American Way <http://www.pfaw.org/>, The File Room Archive of the Randolph Street Gallery in Chicago, Illinois chttp://fileroom.aaup.uic.edu/ FileRoom/documents/homepage.ht ml>, and the American Civil Liberties Union <http://www.aclu.org/>. These sites provide on-line access to information regarding censorship and membership information for a number of anticensorship organizations.

3 Develop political allies by introducing yourself and your program to school board members, community leaders, and public officials. Invite them to your events and develop working relationships with them. Introduce yourself and your program to local elected officials and groups. Keep them informed about the details of your program through a newsletter or periodic summary of school activities involving the arts. Invite them to special art events and to speak at school district art functions.

Conclusion

The censorship and suppression of materials and content in the nation's classrooms is a growing problem. While sometimes misdirected, much of the fear that is generated by politically conservative and liberal groups is grounded in concerns about the impact that culture can have on children. The visual arts represent a primary means by which children learn about culture through school materials and content as well as through the mass media. The visual arts also represent a convenient target for those who would use art as a political scapegoat.

The purpose of this third article on censorship in the classroom has been to provide classroom teachers with ideas to engage their colleagues, administrators, parents, and other members of the community in a democratic form of dialogue, one that guarantees that the culturally diverse and complex concerns of the community are heard and taken into consideration whenever decisions about school content are challenged. Just as censorship should not be tolerated without a critical examination of its motives and a public discussion to establish what is best for school children, neither should the content of our classrooms be taught without the same critique and engagement of the public. Art education in a cultural democracy assumes that teachers, students, and parents collaborate in deciding what is best for their communities.

RELATED ARTICLE: Further Reading

Anderson, A. A., C. R. Garoian, M. L. Krumrine, S C. Dubin, E. L. Lankford, and K. J. Foster. "Discussion: The Maja Incident." The Journal of Aesthetic Education, 28, 33-66, 1994.

Bolton, R., ed. Culture Wars: Documents from the Recent Controversies in the Arts. New York: New Press, 1992.

Dubin, S. C. Arresting Images: impolitic Art and Uncivil Actions. New York: Routledge, Chapman, and Hall, 1992.

Mitchell, W. T. J., ed. Art and the Public Sphere. Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1992.

People for the American Way. Artistic Freedom under Attack. Vol. 1. Washington, DC: Author, 1992.

--. Artistic Freedom under Attack. Vol. 2. Washington, DC: Author, 1994.

--. Artistic Freedom under Attack. Vol. 3. Washington, DC: Author, 1995.

--. Artsave Action Kit. Washington, DC: Author, n.d.

--. The Freedom to Learn Action Kit: Fact Sheets on Fighting School Censorship. Washington, DC: Author, n.d.

--. Attacks on the Freedom to Learn, 1990-1991. Washington, DC: Author, 1991.

--. Attacks on the Freedom to Learn, 1991-1992. Washington, DC: Author, 1992.

--. Attacks on the Freedom to Learn, 1992-1993. Washington, DC: Author, 1993.

--. Attacks on the Freedom to Learn, 1993-1994. Washington, DC: Author, 1994.

--. Attacks on the Freedom to Learn, 1994-1996. Washington, DC: Author, 1995.

Reichman, H. Censorship and Selection: Issues and Answers for Schools. Chicago: American Library Association Arlington, VA: American Association of School Administrators, 1993.

Albert A. Anderson and Charles R. Garoian are associate professors of art education at the Pennsylvania State University.