Book Crime

A column by The Star's Heather Mallick dredged up memories of my teaching day, memories that are not altogether pleasant.

Many years ago I was teaching a Grade 10 advanced level English course. The thorn in the side of all of us teaching it was a novel Entitled Obasan, by Joy Kogawa. An important book detailing the terrible injustices faced by Japanese Canadians during World War 11, it detailed the personal suffering resulting from the Canadian government's expropriation of their homes and businesses and forced relocation into internment camps. It is a shameful period of our history that we should never forget, and one that prompted Brian Mulroney to issue an apology to survivors and their families in 1988.

The problem was that the novel was far too advanced stylistically for Grade 10 students. Indeed, another school within my board taught it at the Grade 12 level, which was far more appropriate for such a difficult book. After many years of frustrations, we banded together and asked our department head for permission to find a substitute. She agreed, with two major stipulations: the replacement had to be written by a woman, and she had to be Canadian.

While we eventually found another novel, I objected to her selection criterion. In my view, literature cannot be judged by either gender or nationality. It either addresses universal themes or it doesn't. That being said, I am not one of those dinosaurs who insists that only the canon of dead white men is worthy of study. However, it cannot be a reason to exclude such works while at the same time seeking out works works from other cultures and sensibilities. The two are hardly mutually exclusive.

Which brings me back to Heather Mallick, who opines about the decision by the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board to remove William Golding's Lord of the Flies from the curriculum. This strikes me as an extreme overreaction to a thought-provoking piece by a 17-year-old who describes herself as a Black, Jewish, feminist, and social justice activist advocating for greater diversity in the curriculum.

The author of the piece, Kyla Gibson, writes:

The OCDSB has no right to claim that the education system is inclusive when I spend my time learning about white and male supremacy. I do not need to learn about Lord of the Flies and how these boys cannot act in a civilized manner to protect one another without desiring power, hierarchy and having a thirst for blood. I need to learn about why it is important to protect one another and to be allies to those who are less privileged.

Perhaps a little unfairly, Mallick dismisses her concerns:

I fear for students like her. The novel is at base about bullying. A plane full of children crashes on a tropical island. Their means of survival is a plot that will be re-enacted in every workplace, social justice enclave, airplane flight and Green party meeting she will ever encounter.

What she seeks, she wrote, is “to learn about why it is important to protect one another and to be allies to those who are less privileged.” But this was precisely what “Lord of the Flies” revealed.

 I can’t see how she missed the novel’s slide into group madness led by frat-boy Jack and the killing of Simon and his fat, asthmatic, bullied friend Piggy. But then I frequently finish murder mysteries and have no idea who the killer was.

As she wrote, Golding’s boys were all white so perhaps they seemed much of a muchness, fair enough, but blood is blood and by the end Simon and Piggy were simply covered in it...

Truth be told, as you may have discerned, I feel some ambivalence about this whole issue. On the one hand, as stated earlier, important themes dealing with human nature should have no cultural or racial restrictions placed upon them. On the other hand, all Ms. Gibson seems to be asking for is literature that also accommodates her cultural and racial realities. The two are not incompatible.

Is she really asking for too much, and has the Ottawa-Carleton Board been too hasty in its decision to jettison an important piece of literature?