If that woman standing pretty much alone to speak to the school board in favor of keeping a controversial AP biology book in the system looks familiar, she is. Karyn Storts-Brinks, Fulton high school librarian, was also speaking out against censorship last spring, She eventually ended up as the co-plaintiff (with 15-year-old Bryanna Shelton) in a suit brought by the ACLU against Knox County Schools when KCS did not respond to ACLU requests to quit filtering gay education websites on school system computers.
Last night, she spoke up about the inadvisability of censoring a textbook, any textbook, on the basis of a single word. (See Metro Pulse's Jesse Fox Mayshark's coverage of the meeting, and the eventual lack of resolution, here.) The main controversial passage in the book, Asking About Life: "... teaching evolution and creationism, the biblical myth that the universe was created..." "It's not just about this one word, but about the greater issue of censorship and setting that precedence for intellectual freedom," said Storts-Brinks.
Storts-Brinks says her input was "not beloved by the crowd" and she
was "absolutely shocked" at the way the school board meeting "spiraled
out of control" after a few more speakers, with school board members who
had no role on the committee reporting on the suitability of the book
still expressing personal and religious views and recommending banning
the book. "Maybe I'm naive," she says.
Storts-Brinks
found it "serendipitous" that the book issue and the budget cuts that
might affect many of her co-librarians' job statuses were to be settled
at the same meeting. "This is what librarians do, how we serve," she
says. "This is an issue of providing students with equal access to
information and freedom of inquiry. I would feel the same about anything
where a single word, in a book that's already been reviewed according
to policy and procedure and found to be okay, led to the suggestion of
censorship. That's such a dangerous, such a risky, precedent."
Storts-Brinks
did have one personal issue with Farragut HIgh School father Kurt
Zimmerman, who spoke at the meeting and made the original request for Asking About
Life''s removal. "Here's this man talking about the profound
effect his stepping forward has had on his family, how extremely
difficult it's been. I don't understand him. In this community, he'll be
draped in laurels for speaking out. I'm like, 'Dude, you've got it
all.' And the best part of the story, he's saying that, and after I
spoke and they noted the reaction to my words--I'm the one who had to
have a police escort out of the building."
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