It's a gamble to take silliness too seriously. Except that there are too many examples of it getting real, as the kids say.
Some of us warned that those advocating Defund The Police earlier last year sounded serious enough that they should be taken seriously. Or at least their threats should be. Our concerns were brushed off; they don't really mean "defund" the police. But they did. Google police department budget cuts.
There is an outfit now, or maybe a small movement, called Disrupt Texts, although because of Twitter, we suppose, you have to put a pound sign before it and make it one word: #DisruptTexts. There appear to be chapters of some sort in several cities and states. It has caught on enough that The Wall Street Journal reported on it the other day.
Basically, the people behind Disrupt Texts hope to disrupt those teaching verboten books in schools. It's a modern book-burning mob.
The mob, in this case, wants to "disrupt" certain classics like "Lord of the Flies" and "The Crucible" and "The Odyssey," along with plays by a writer named Shakespeare. The reasoning behind targeting these works is, well, not so well reasoned. The calculations about what should be taught, or better yet what shouldn't be, sound like the workings of an all-night dormitory bull session. But we are lead to understand that adults are behind this.
To disrupt "To Kill a Mockingbird," one of the greatest American novels ever, the mob leaders say this: The Black characters "are mistreated, misunderstood, underrepresented." We never meet the real Tom, "but we only hear from him as he responds when called upon" in court. And Atticus, while representing Tom in court, never protests anything. Or as the critique puts it: "He doesn't use his privilege to bring about change."
We had to check to make sure we weren't reading The Onion, because the whole column was dripping with so much idiocy to be almost funny. But apparently this is a thing, this Disrupt Texts.
Where to start?
Of course the Black characters in "Mockingbird" are mistreated and misunderstood. That's the whole point the author tried to make, isn't it? And no, Atticus doesn't riot, but tries to take on the system like the lawyer that he is.
We could keep on picking apart the oh-so-modernized criticism of the book, but what would be the point? Those putting together this Disrupt Texts outfit probably don't read many newspapers. And what is it said about American jazz? If you have to ask somebody to explain it, you'll never understand it.
Speaking of jazz, "The Great Gatsby" is on the disruption list. Imagine how these folks would react if they ever got ahold of anything by Cormac McCarthy or Larry McMurtry.
Meghan Cox Gurdon's piece in The Journal last week included this paragraph: "The subtle complexities of literature are being reduced to the crude clanking of 'intersectional' power struggles. Thus Seattle English teacher Evin Shinn tweeted in 2018 that he'd 'rather die' than teach 'The Scarlet Letter,' unless Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel is used to 'fight against misogyny and slut-shaming.'"
We thought it did.
We'd rather die than have to read "The Scarlet Letter" again, because it was so boring the first time. But give us some "Grapes of Wrath" or "Mockingbird" or "Little Women." Or is that last title misogynistic?
We'd bet "A Farewell to Arms" would be considered too militaristic. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" would be too able-ist. "The Last of the Mohicans" would be right-out. And the Black characters in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" would be too mistreated and misunderstood to be used in today's classrooms. Don't even get us started on anything by Mark Twain.
One must wonder how the modern book burners, or book cancelers, would teach English and history and other subjects once they've cut down all the trees in the literary forest. How would kids know about the evils of Jim Crow without "Mockingbird"? Would sitting through lectures, memorizing dates, and taking notes do a better job than Scout and Jem and Atticus? Doubtful.
It seems as though the progressives in this movement might one day be at odds with their goals--if one of their goals is for their charges to understand America's past, how so many wrongs had to be righted, how slavery is America's original sin, how a whole war had to be fought to end it, how Jim Crow weaseled his way into the South after that war, and segregation after him, how We the People had to rise up to defeat our worst demons, and how we're still not finished even today--then the great classics of American literature tell that story better than any modern disquisition from contemporary academicians. To be fair, most contemporary academicians would probably agree.
If it all seems too silly right now, remember how silly police-free zones sounded the first time you heard about them. Bad ideas can spread. Like a sickness.