‘Dear Martin’ pulled from Tuscola class
Students at Tuscola High School will no longer be able to read “Dear Martin,” (Crown Publishing Group, 2017) after administration decided the book is too inappropriate to use as assigned reading.
“The intended educational message or purpose of the book was being diminished by the way it was written, by the amount of profanity and innuendo,” said Superintendent Dr. Bill Nolte.
“Dear Martin” is a young adult novel written in 2017 by Andrea Nicole Livingstone, who publishes under the name Nic Stone. It debuted at No. 4 on the New York Times Bestseller List. The book follows Justyce, a Black high-schooler attending a predominantly white preparatory school. After an incident with a police officer turns violent, Justyce begins writing a journal of letters to Martin Luther King, Jr.
Near the end of his first entry to MLK, Justyce writes “I wanna try to live like you. Do what you would do. See where it gets me.”
The story that unfolds is one that grapples with coming of age and the intricacies of racism in today’s United States. The book was written for ages 14 and above.
At the Jan. 10 meeting of the Haywood County School Board, Tim Reeves spoke in public comment to inform the board of his issues with this book being assigned to his son’s class.
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“Some of this has been resolved, but I’m looking toward the future as well,” said Reeves. “My son began 10th grade English II last Wednesday, Thursday was presented with a book entitled ‘Dear Martin.’ He read six pages within that book, came home and shared his experience of his day like he and his sister do all the time and shared with us that there was some explicit language.”
Upon investigation of the book his son had been assigned, Reeves found what he called “a lot of language, a lot of sexual innuendos, a lot of things that are concerning to me as a parent that’s being presented to my child as a text.”
For reference, the first chapter of “Dear Martin” contains a total of five expletives and at least one innuendo of physical intimacy, as well as an encounter with police that is frightening for the central character.
Reeves reported his issue with the book to the teacher and spoke with the principal at Tuscola High School, but ultimately it was Nolte’s decision to pull the book.
“I simply asked the principal to ask the teacher to pick another book and the teacher, according to (Tuscola Principal) Ms. Blackmon seemed to be OK with that,” said Nolte.
According to Nolte, Reeves is the only parent that lodged a complaint against the reading assignment. Normally, when a parent takes issue with an assigned reading, the course of action in Haywood County Schools is for the parent, teacher and principal to discuss the issue and then provide the student with an alternative reading assignment for that portion of the class.
Nolte described his decision to pull the book in three parts. Number one, the book had not been outlined on the syllabus, so parents were not previously notified that their children would be reading “Dear Martin.” Second, the book contained enough profanity and innuendo to diminish the educational value. Third, there are other books with the same educational value without the inappropriate distractions.
According to Tuscola Principal Heather Blackmon, the teacher did not replace “Dear Martin” with another reading assignment and instead moved on in the syllabus.
Nolte did tell The Smoky Mountain News that had the book been delineated on the syllabus, the parent complaining may have been provided with alternate reading options. However, Nolte said that if the parent had persisted and asked administration to look into the appropriateness of this book, he would have come to the same conclusion.
The book will still be allowed for students to choose to read in situations where teachers allow students to choose a book for a particular assignment. However, according to Tuscola Librarian Megean Wantz, there are no copies of “Dear Martin” in the library at the high school.
Michael Boatright is a professor of education at Western Carolina University and a researcher of adolescent literature. Prior to his work in higher education, he taught high school English for six years.
“Adolescent literature, like Nic Stone’s ‘Dear Martin,’ is a frequent punching bag for school administrators and school boards,” he said. “Whereas novels such as ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ ‘The Great Gatsby,’ and ‘Frankenstein’ have a long history of being taught in the English classroom, young adult novels are not afforded that history. Commonly taught novels are regarded as safe because they are decades if not centuries old. They do not reflect life in America in 2022.”
Boatright has found that Young Adult novels are reflections of the times in which they are written.
“In reflecting social and political issues of the day, authors place characters in realistic situations who use authentic language, which may include language that might be offensive to some but is nonetheless a true depiction of how teenagers interact on social media and with one another,” said Boatright.
During his public comment, Reeves admitted that students encounter foul language in their day to day; however, he took issue with the fact that neither he nor his child had been asked for consent to read this book.
“Yes, they’re presented with lots of things in middle school, they pick up lots of things in middle school, my children hear lots of language every day, but as a textbook that should not be in there,” said Reeves. “I really feel strongly about that.”
The book has been banned in at least one Georgia school district and a Missouri High School. Still, Boatright argues that “Dear Martin” is a commentary on the country’s fraught history with race.
“To work through the trauma caused by experiencing police brutality himself, the main character begins writing letters to the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to make sense of a senseless act,” said Boatright. “Teenagers need positive role models and heroes, and the protagonist in ‘Dear Martin’ appeals to his hero, a quintessential Civil Rights leader who represented the quest for peace, pursued nonviolent means to achieve peace, and was violently murdered for his beliefs.”
Boatright questions the motive for pulling this book at Tuscola High School.
“Was the book banned at Tuscola High School because there is a high ratio of expletives per page?” he asks. “Was it banned due to its omission from a syllabus? Teenagers are no strangers to expletives, and teachers often make changes to their syllabi based on the needs of their students. Or, was ‘Dear Martin’ banned because of a desire to shield students from the reality of current and past events involving race and police brutality?”
