Harry Potter Commentary
TopazOwl

Sun Sep 24 20:07:44 2000
The Miami Herald, By Leonard Pitts, 24 September 2000*br*leonardpitts@mindspring.com*p*Here is something to make your day ... miserable.*p*The National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the federal*br*Education Department, ranks reading ability at three levels : advanced, proficient and basic.  The center reports that an estimated 38 percent of the nation's fourth-graders were "below" basic in 1998.  In addition, nearly a quarter of all high school seniors were unable to perform at even the minimum level of reading ability.*p*So it is easy to understand why concerned parents would march down to the library and demand that something be done about ... witches.*p*No fooling.  It seems that parents and church groups in Jacksonville,*br*Florida, recently mounted a crusade against a local library after it*br*awarded young readers certificates announcing that they had completed a term at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.*p*That is the school that Harry Potter attends in the wildly popular*br*children's book series.  The library saw the certificates as a "harmless gimmick" to promote reading.  The parents and the church folk saw it as a means of promoting witchcraft.  The upshot : no more certificates.*p*The truth is, the Jacksonville brouhaha is relatively mild as such things go. By which I mean, no bonfire of books yet.  The Potter series is, according to the American Library Association, the most frequently challenged children's literature in the country.  "Challenged" is the association's word for what happens when people demand that a book be yanked from library shelves because they don't think children -- or, indeed, adults -- should be allowed to read it.*p*At least Harry is keeping good company.  Maya Angelou's "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings" and Mark Twain's "The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn" are among the other regularly "challenged" works.*p*I don't deny that parents have a right to regulate the literature their children are exposed to.  What irks me is when they try to regulate the literature my children are exposed to.  And what bugs me even more is when librarians and other supposed guardians of intellectual freedom cave in to some small but vociferous group, some priggish, censorious bunch for whom fantasy is forbidden and invention enjoined.*p*News flash, folks.  There is no such thing as witches riding broomsticks or turning tykes into toads.  It is child's play, the exercise of healthy imagination.*p*Some folks never will get that, so I understand why the library in*br*Jacksonville decided to give in.  I also understand that the second time you accede to a bully's demands always is easier than the first.*p*The fact is, the last thing any of us need to do is discourage a child from reading.  It inspires me that J.K. Rowling, Harry's creator, is treated and feted like a rock star wherever she goes.  I like that her work has made reading cool again.  Because people who can't read can't participate fully in the nation's life.  They become, in a very real sense, second-class citizens.  Not to mention that illiteracy makes the United States less competitive in the international marketplace.*p*So I am less concerned with the issue of children reading about witchcraft than I am with the issue of children reading, period.*p*I know some folks will say I am just not taking witchcraft seriously*br*enough.  They will point to Wicca, the pagan religion whose shadowed*br*rituals and talk of witchery strike some folks as faintly sinister.*p*On the other hand, the last time church folk and parents took witches*br*"seriously enough," the result was more than faintly sinister.  Twenty*br*women were executed in Salem, Massachusetts, many of them on the word of a single 12-year-old girl.*p*The truth is, when most people think of witches, I suspect they think less of Wiccan rituals than they do of a TV show with Shannen Doherty.*p*Not that it matters.  Harry Potter promotes neither.*p*Granted, I am no expert on the boy wizard; I am about three-quarters of the way through the first book.  But all I have seen is a tale of good and evil, magic spells and derring-do -- a children's book and a pretty entertaining one at that.  If Ms. Rowling is out to lead children to Satan, she really needs to do a whole lot better.*p*If, as I suspect most of us would agree, she isn't, then the library in Jacksonville needs to find a spine and use it.*p*Twenty-seven million American adults couldn't read this sentence.  Nothing in Harry Potter scares me as much as that.*p*