America: The Great Leap Backward

Last fall, Cary McNair – affluent film producer and son of millionaire oilman/Houston Texans owner Robert McNair – pulled his kids and his money out of St. Andrew’s high school. Why? McNair didn’t want his children reading Brokeback Mountain by Pulitzer-prize winning author Annie Proulx in their high school English class (the short story that inspired the Ang Lee movie). By August 2005, McNair had presented St. Andrew’s with a harsh ultimatum: Take Brokeback off the student reading list, or he’d pull his kids out and default on his pledge of $3 million to the school’s developmental fund. In response to McNair’s threatening proposal, the school, though in dire need of his money, surprisingly showed McNair the door, holding fast to their policy of not accepting conditional gifts that allow wealthy donors to control the school’s education policies. Thus, Brokeback stayed on the curriculum. Shocked that money couldn’t actually buy everything that he wanted, McNair immediately yanked his kids out of St. Andrew’s.

As if to add insult to injury, website Virtueonline – an online watering-hole for the less-than-eloquent religious extremist (the site proclaims itself “the voice for global orthodox Anglicanism”) – has prodded the St. Andrew’s community by disparaging the school on, well, Biblical proportions. During the Brokeback incident, the site’s message board quickly devolved into an ideological battle-ground. Chatter among St. Andrew’s students, parents and outsiders got quite nasty, but some of the stuff people have written is just plain weird (one guy threatened to burn St. Andrew’s down, further claiming that “the day some fairie tries to seduce or touch a member of my family is the day he will Meet His Maker” and that “you'd be surprised how many others have my exact attitude…you are living in the Golden Age of Queerness, soon to come to its own crashing end”). Bravo! A truly moving gesture of Christian kindness, that.

But this isn’t the end of the story.

Earlier this year, a new book came under attack at the school. But this time the issue wasn’t homosexuality (or fear thereof). It was about the pedophilia described in a selected scene from The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (bear in mind that another book on the reading list – the exceedingly bleak Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy – contains verbose descriptions of seduction, rape, and murder, yet this book has received no attention whatsoever).

One day in English class a few months ago, graduating senior Rachel Bowling stood up and walked out, refusing to participate in a class discussion over the short but potent passage out of Roy’s novel (one hell of a way to get out of doing your homework). At the behest of her parents, Bowling began to boycott her English class and insisted that she be allowed to read something else for academic credit. When this was denied, the girl’s family began writing anonymous letters both to current school parents and to the parents of prospective students, claiming that St. Andrew’s was pushing an anti-Christian agenda and warning them to stay away from this wicked, immoral sanctuary for the damned. The school responded by granting Bowling’s request.

In campus meetings between concerned parents and faculty, civil discussion turned ugly countless times when parents engaged in shouting matches over the curriculum designed by Kimberly Horne, the English teacher at the center of the controversy. Several of Bowling’s fellow students even started a petition around the high school, claiming Bowling’s special treatment was unfair to the rest of the student body. A majority of students signed the petition. Subsequently, Bowling’s special treatment was called off, but not before the damage to the school’s reputation in the community was done. Because of the derogatory letters the Bowlings have sent to the parents of prospective students, school administrators “have no idea” what their admission numbers will be for the next academic year, and they’re worried. After all, this is a fledgling high school not even a decade old.

And of course it doesn’t help that the student body is evenly polarized over this issue. According to many students, you can feel the unspoken tension in the air as you walk down the hall to class. Everyone is walking on eggshells, especially in Ms. Horne’s English class, where learning is inhibited by the fear of speaking one’s opinion.

You might say that St. Andrew’s high school provides us with a microcosm reflecting the flood of ideological disagreement that plagues the entire country. And, just like our government’s policy-makers, the school’s administrators have no real solutions for the current impasse among students, parents, and faculty. As a result, the quality of education at St. Andrew’s will continue to suffer. Maybe the first step is for the adults on both sides of this charade to start acting like adults (White House, take note.)

Thanks to Austinist for the story. Sad indeed.