READING, INTERRUPTED

Two American communities – Fulton, Mo., and Orono, Maine – recently worked their way through crises involving complaints by parents over exposing students to vulgarity.

In Fulton, the flap was over a scheduled school stage production of “Grease,” the popular musical about 1950s teenage life in a fictional suburban Chicago high school, and “The Crucible,” Arthur Miller’s play based on a Salem, Mass., witch hunt in 1692, as a commentary on Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s hunt for Communists in the early 1950s. Both have long been favorites for high school productions.

The drama teacher at Fulton High had softened the language in “Grease” to avoid trouble and advised parents that it was not suitable for small children. But a month after the November performance, three members of a local church congregation protested that scenes of drinking, smoking and kissing glorified improper conduct.

Fulton’s superintendent of schools agreed that the play was “unsuitable” and, seeking to avoid future complaints, canceled a scheduled spring showing of “The Crucible.” He called it a fine play but said he wanted to keep the school from being “mired in controversy” all spring.

In Orono, the parents of an Orono High School student, joined by some supporters, objected to an assigned book, “Girl, Interrupted,” a memoir about an 18-year-old girl’s commitment to a psychiatric hospital. They complained about the book’s coarse language and vivid descriptions of suicide, incest and sexual acts and demanded that it be removed from the curriculum.

Orono High School has a policy for dealing with such complaints. It immediately took the book off the shelves pending review by a committee of Principal Cathy Knox, two teachers, the school librarian and a community member. After review, they backed the teacher, Claire Moriarty, who had been using the book in her ninth-grade English classes. They also noted that some parents may consider the book too mature for their children and that Ms. Moriarty had offered a list of alternative reading. It made the useful suggestion of adding a means to inform parents of the contents of books beyond the syllabus lists now available.

The School Committee voted unanimously to approve the review committee’s conclusions and resumed classroom use of the book.

Unlike the Fulton authorities, Orono handled the matter just right. Complaints are to be expected and deserve to be taken seriously. The final decision in the Orono case provided the students with an out-of-classroom lesson, an example of a community that could discuss difficult issues raised in books such as “Girl, Interrupted,” weigh them in the context of students’ age and maturity, and arrive at a reasonable decision.