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Fayetteville Schools Retain Deal with It!A materials reconsideration committee for Fayetteville (Ark.) Public Schools recommended December 6 that the high school retain Deal with It! A Whole New Approach to Your Body, Brain, and Life As a Gurl by Esther Drill, Heather McDonald, and Rebecca Odes. The 1999 self-help book about teen issues such as sexuality, drug use, and suicide was the fifth school-library book challenged in 2005 by parent Laurie Taylor, who contended that Deal With It! was too sexually explicit for minors to read unless they had parental consent.In a one-page report, the eight-member committee of administrators and teachers, as well as a parent and a student, characterized the book as “a valuable addition to our library collection [though] it may not be appropriate for every female student.” The committee went on to say that the book “contained important information students might not get elsewhere,” such as the topic of sexual assault. According to the December 7 Springdale Morning News, a separate committee is still reviewing the school system’s overall reconsideration policy in light of a list of some 70 titles on school-library shelves that Taylor says she finds inappropriate. The committee is expected to issue a report this academic year. Meanwhile, Stephen Crampton, chief counsel of the American Family Association’s Center for Law and Policy, announced that he was preparing a lawsuit against the Fayetteville School Board, seeking the establishment of a restricted-access section in K–8 libraries. Crampton is representing a group of Fayetteville parents who back Taylor’s campaign. “All they’re asking for is that some reasonable controls be placed on access to these explicit materials. That’s the same sort of thing that we do in bookstores all over the country,” Crampton said in the November 23 online Christian news outlet Agape Press. Posted December 16, 2005. |
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