A Liberal Dose, Feb. 10, 2022 "Why Taking Maus out of Middle School Does Matter"

 

A Liberal Dose

February 10, 2022

Troy D. Smith

“Why Taking Maus Out of Middle School Matters”

 

Last week I talked about the controversial removal of Maus from the middle school curriculum in McMinn County, a decision made by the school board and not by the teachers (the book is approved for 8^th grade by the state of Tennessee, by the way). Ostensibly, the board’s concern was a handful of swear words (despite it being brought to their attention that some other books they teach, such as To Kill a Mockingbird, have far more) and a picture of a naked female mouse. I looked through my copy of the graphic novel twice and couldn’t find this image; I learned that it was actually a tiny image in the background of a panel portraying Jews being herded into the showers to be gassed. Several board members also complained that the story was too disturbing for 13-year-olds.

My uncle (by marriage), Edgar Lebenhart, was a Jewish Czech immigrant and a Holocaust refugee. He and two of his brothers escaped their homeland when the Nazis took over, and virtually the entirety of their immediate and extended family died in concentration camps. Although he died back in 1978, some of you may remember him -he owned the shirt factories Path and EL Apparel. As a child I met both his brothers and their wives, one of whom was an Auschwitz survivor. I was curious about the number tattooed on her wrist, and my uncle explained the Holocaust to me -I was 8 -and I sought out books to learn more about it. I remember, at age 11, reading a Captain America comic book about an elderly woman who was an Auschwitz survivor, and thinking how much she looked like the woman I had met. My point is, I was certainly able to handle this kind of information by the time I was 13. Where language is concerned, there is nothing in Maus that I did not hear every day within five minutes of getting on the school bus. It is imperative that kids learn about this stuff -and 13 is not too young -and in the context of just how terrible it really was, or else it will be forgotten (as it already is by many young people, as I pointed out last time).

But there’s more going on than that. Word of the Maus banning came scarcely more then a week after news that a state-sponsored Tennessee adoption agency, under Governor Lee’s “religious freedom” law, had denied a family a child because they were Jewish. It came at the same time as news of hostages being taken in a synagogue in Texas… just three years after the horrible synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh… which was only one year after white nationalists marched through Charlottesville, Virginia (where they killed one counter-protester), chanting “Jews Will Not Replace Us” and “Blood and Soil” (which was a Nazi catchphrase.) In-between there have been countless incidents of synagogue vandalism and assaults on Jewish people. Heck, just the other day a dozen protesting Nazis in Florida beat up a Jewish bystander whose grandfather had survived the Holocaust. After decades of being done mostly in subtle ways, suddenly anti-Semitic prejudice is becoming open and violent. Similarly, violence or antagonism toward other minorities have increased dramatically.

All this would seem to indicate that education about the Holocaust, slavery, Jim Crow, and other such topics is becoming more vital than ever for young people. Yet, at the same time, more and more conservative politicians -egged on by their base, who in turn are egged on by reactionaries in the conservative media -are passing laws making it harder to teach such topics because it might make white people feel uncomfortable or guilty. It doesn’t take a genius to see the potential results. Maybe that McMinn board was influenced by such thinking and maybe it wasn’t, but considering all the books they didn’t ban it certainly doesn’t make them -or Tennessee -look good.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

A complete list of Liberal Dose columns can be found HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE   

A Liberal Dose, Feb. 3, 2022 "A Graphic Novel, A School Board, and Confronting History"

 

A Liberal Dose

February 3, 2022

Troy D. Smith

“A Graphic Novel, A School Board, and Confronting History”

 

30 years after winning the Pulitzer Prize, Art Speigelman’s graphic novel Maus: A Survivor’s Tale is back in the news (and back on the bestseller list). Spiegelman, who got his start as an underground comics artist and publisher in the 1970s, spoke at Tennessee Tech a few years ago about his work and about the history of comics, and is a wealth of information. His award-winning Maus was autobiographical. The framing story was about Spiegelman, the artist, trying to get his elderly father to tell him his story -while also trying to understand what caused the suicide of Spiegelman’s mother and the emotional and personality issues of his father, with whom he had a very tempestuous relationship.

The heart of the book was the story his father told him, detailing the experiences he and his wife had as Jews during the Holocaust who ultimately ended up in a concentration camp. Spiegelman depicted Jewish people as mice, playing on the fact that Nazis referred to them as “vermin,” and Germans as cats (with other nationalities being represented by other animals). He has stated that his reason for taking such an approach was to show how absurd it was, and by extension how absurd it is to divide people by race and ethnicity. Another effect is that seeing the intense suffering of such “cute” animals makes it easier for the (presumably human) reader to sympathize with them and be shocked by their treatment.

Obviously, the book has some extremely mature themes. On the other hand, you can’t talk about the Holocaust WITHOUT having extremely mature themes. Many teachers of middle school, high school, and college (myself included) have used it as a medium to delve into those themes, which are extremely important for our young people to learn about. The Holocaust, like slavery, segregation, the Trail of Tears, and many other things, is something that all citizens should know about and think about, and it needs to start when they are young. If that doesn’t happen, you wind up with the situation we have now.

A poll of Millennials and Gen Z people (so folks from their late teens to their late 30s) two years ago showed a “worrying lack of basic Holocaust knowledge.” 10% had never even heard of it. 63% did not know how severe it was (that 6 million Jews were killed), and more than half of those estimated the number at less than 2 million. More than half could not name one concentration camp. 11% (higher in some states) believed that the Jews caused it. That was two years ago -imagine how it’s going to be now, with state legislatures in red states passing laws banning “critical race theory” or anything that could cause anyone to feel guilty or be uncomfortable. This has led to, among other things, a school principal insisting to teachers that they now have to give equal and fair consideration to the Nazis, and a superintendent advising students they need to ask their parents whether the Holocaust really happened, not their teacher. Principals and teachers who continue to try teaching the truth about history, meanwhile, are getting fired.

The school board in McMinn County voted to remove the book from their 8^th grade curriculum, despite the fact teachers supported the use of it, ostensibly over a couple of swear words and a crude representation of a naked mouse (Remember, this is the Holocaust, where people were stripped naked and sent to their deaths). One board member thought that people being hanged or committing suicide should not be discussed in public education. 13-year-olds can handle a lot more than 5-year-olds, and they shouldn’t be treated the same. It was very unfortunate (for the reputation of Tennessee, such as it is nowadays) that this vote took place on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. 

That is the situation. Next week I will explain why it matters so much.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

A complete list of Liberal Dose columns can be found HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE