In the mid to late 1970’s I taught at a Catholic high school in New Rochelle, New York.

I was teaching American Lit when Jaws the movie and Jaws the book came out.

We were covering Herman Melville in class, and the kids were required to read Moby Dick.  I had stressed the unabridged version, leaving the opening for the abridged version, knowing full well the Cliff Notes version, when discovered, would be the version that was most widely read.

Regardless which version the students read, I eventually showed the movie.

A couple of students saw some similarities between Jaws and Moby Dick, and asked if they could get extra credit if they compared the two stories.

They found such things as the final hunt in both books took three days; that the names of both boats was based on the Pequot tribe from Connecticut; That one had a white whale and the other a great white shark; and that at the end one character floated on a piece of what was left of the boat/ship while the captains of both had been killed by their prey.

Now I would have been naive to accept that the kids who did the reports read the book Jaws after having read the unabridged version of Moby Dick, but they were able to see the similarities between the classic and the movie based on the modern novel.

A show of hands revealed that every student in that class had seen the movie, so it was an easy thing to explain that in the time of Melville people didn’t have movies, so in many cases, as a lot of people could not read, people would sit together at night in groups while someone read the book to them in serial form.

I was able to use the student’s report in conjunction with the popularity of Jaws to explain how big some works of literature were to their audience back in the day.

Moby Dick was the mid 19th Century’s jaws.

Years later, about 30 or so, I found that at another school at which I taught there were not enough copies of The Red Badge of Courage to have each of my students read it, so, as classes were then 84 minutes in length because of the school’s schedule, I would begin each class by reading at least two chapters to the students after which we would discuss what was read, both plot and characters, as well as the possible theme that was developing.

One student in my first hour class who had been notoriously late to school throughout his years in school, and for which the administration at his various schools had been seeking a remedy, was in my first hour class at the bell each day because he did not want to miss any of the book.

Of course, in their wisdom, the administrators at this school did not ask if this approach to the book was effective or if it had any positive influence on any students, but banned me from ever reading to my classes again because they viewed this as wasting valuable test preparation time.

A teacher of literature being told never to read anything to his class struck me as odd, but I digress.

Back in the class in the 70’s the students had been the source for a good lesson.
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However, I was notified by the principal to whom I had bragged about what the kids had done and who, in turn, told some other priests connected to the school, that one of the priests who lived at the provincial house (regional HQ as it were for that religious order that was just up a small hill from the school) wanted to have me fired because I had allowed and encouraged students to read an obscene novel.

There was to be a meeting at which this offended priest would present his findings to a board who would then decide my fate.

I was not going to be allowed to defend myself, but the principal, Father Earl, was to do it instead.

According to the records of that meeting and from conversations after with various participants, the meeting did not go as the old priest had assumed it would.

He presented his case by going through the novel, Jaws, pointing out every use of the F word and every use of the Anglo-Saxon term for feces that he had underlined with a red pen. Apparently he had found a lot of them.

In response, Father Earl, began by asking detailed questions of him about the plot and characters which the old priest could not answer.
Then Father Earl proceeded to read some of the comparisons the students had found between the two books.

At the end of his presentation and defense, Father Earl simply pointed out that if there were any perversion, it was not on my part as I had gotten my students to do some critical thinking by allowing them to draw connections between a classic work of American Literature and a recent cultural phenomenon, but any possible perversion was on the part of the old priest who, while not reading the book, had sat quietly in his room underlining all the curse words and could not answer questions about plot.

I was exonerated and kept my job, although I was warned by the principal, Father Earl, that if I stayed in education I might find myself in similar situations if I continued to teach outside the box and had administrators with agendas.

He told me that now that I was aware of such things I should keep doing what was best for the kids, but be aware of the possibilities of stupidity in the name of education.

He was not wrong.

I was reminded of this episode when I read recently that parents in Dallas, Texas objected to certain books that they found offensive being available or recommended to students in a local school, and how to justify their objections went to a school Board meeting and read what they considered to be the naughty bits from those books.

Students may have read the whole book of which the naughty bits were a part, and a miniscule part at that, while their parents saw nothing wrong with standing at a public meeting that was being televised reading only the dirty parts of the books to which they objected.

If they watched this, the students could have skipped reading the books for the obscene parts because their parents were reading them out loud in a public setting,

Who should be banned?

The books, or the lewd and lascivious parents who titillated the audience with the naughty bits?