SANDUSKY, Ohio -- Our great state makes national headlines frequently, but when Hudson, Ohio, made national news in USA Today on Sept. 15, I dug deeper to see what the hoopla was all about. Streaming news sources, including the Akron Beacon Journal, NBC News, and cleveland.com, gave more details.
Hudson Mayor Craig Shubert was upset that Hudson High School students enrolled in a college-level class were using a book called “642 Things to Write About,” which provides writing prompts for their course, Composition in the Liberal Arts II. Shubert claimed that students were essentially being exposed to child pornography. This course is offered to high school seniors in association with Hiram College, an accredited institution of higher learning.
Out of 642 possibilities, a few offended him and some parents. It should be noted that students were not asked to write on any of these offensive prompts. But this was enough to incite outrage and requests that school board members resign. Why? What was the crime warranting resignations?
Parents, administrators, students, teachers, and professors all knew what to expect when high school students enroll in college-level courses. At the school board meeting on Sept. 27, community members were in attendance to show support for the school board.
College requires maturity and enough open-mindedness to look at uncomfortable -- and at times controversial -- subjects from various views. Society at large needs this same degree of levelheadedness. These issues don’t and won’t go away simply by not attending to them. Writing about and discussing tough topics within academic environments and our communities encourages intellectual growth and promotes healthy discourse.
Furthermore, why are resignations and grandstanding the answers? There were no egregious acts. Civil debate seems a better approach, especially since we’re dealing with institutions whose supposed mission is education.
Judi Nath is a science writer and textbook author who teaches university students.
Let’s look at key themes spreading across the country: anger and outbursts at school board meetings and bills banning the teaching of specific topics. We’ve seen an influx of enraged parents storming school board meetings, protesting mask-wearing rules, vaccine mandates, and critical race theory instruction, while lawmakers hop on the same bandwagon, writing legislation. Reports are too numerous to cite, but if you’re curious, a simple Google search will reveal 39 million hits for “mask wearing and school board meeting,” 123 million for “vaccine mandate and school board meeting,” and 83 million hits for “critical race theory and school boards.” Indeed, these are hot-button issues. Is ranting at school board meetings and pushing bills the best way to handle key matters?
Circling back to “642 Things to Write About,” this collection is intended for writers to think creatively and write thoughtfully. Yes, some of the prompts are thorny and probably not appropriate for seniors, but these were not assigned (per news articles). The vast majority serve their course purpose.
The bigger issue surrounds education. When did merely thinking about, writing on, or being exposed to uncomfortable subjects become forbidden? Hiram’s catalog describes the course thusly: It is “designed to further develop the critical thinking, reading, writing, oral presentation, and discussion skills developed in Composition in the Liberal Arts I.”
Students attend schools and colleges to be educated. What better places to learn about how young people feel and think about issues than in institutions equipped to teach and direct them to resources? If our academic establishments are prevented from doing this, then learning and education are relegated to avenues less capable of providing accurate information. The internet and social media replace classrooms. When natural human curiosity is stifled, books are censored, and subjects are scrubbed, we end up with a society unable to determine fact from fiction, opinion from truth, and rhetoric from dogma. Thinking crumbles; we wind up living in a world where misinformation shapes our lives and laws; we storm school board meetings, and senseless laws are passed.
Judi Nath is a science writer and textbook author who teaches university students.
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What’s really at stake in the ‘642 Things to Write About’ uproar in Hudson: Judi Nath - cleveland.com
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