Not quite. When the first novel of this series, Virtual Mode, was published in hard cover, a reader who was Penny’s age named Jessica bought it, read it, and liked it. Jessica’s seven-year-old daughter Samantha, also a fan of mine, saw the book, and asked to take it to school so she could read it during her free time. Now these Mode novels are adult, and I don’t recommend them for children. Had I been on the scene, I would have urged that she take a Xanth novel instead. But some children are more mature than others, and can handle adult material. Indeed, even Xanth may not be safe, as I had discovered two years before.
On that occasion, a Florida grade school student, Tommy, had taken a Xanth novel to school, because he was hyperactive and his counselor recommended that he take something interesting to read instead of running around. So he took a copy of Heaven Cent, a humorous fantasy about a nine-year-old boy, and was reading it in the cafeteria when a teacher approached, looked at the book, and took it away from him. The book was not returned. When Tommy’s mother protested, she was lectured; apparently the school administration felt that it owed no accounting to the child’s parent. Now I once taught school in Florida, and I know the general procedure: if a book is inappropriate, the teacher takes it from the student, but returns it at the end of the day with the admonition not to bring it to school again. Policies may vary from school to school, but this is really all that is required for a first offense. One might ask why the schools are not the first place where reading should be encouraged, and censorship discouraged. But if there is too much freedom, the kids will be bringing in whatever they believe will freak out the teachers, including wild pornography. So there do have to be reasonable limits. A Xanth novel is hardly a taboo-breaker, however, and many schools encourage the reading of Xanth novels because they do get students interested. Xanth has taught many folk to read. Also, this was not just any trashbin junk; this was a copy specially autographed to Tommy, of some personal value. When I learned of this, I wrote to the principal. “What is the difference between this and theft?” I inquired. But the principal fudged the issue, claiming that books weren’t allowed in the cafeteria. The counselor, whose advice Tommy had been following, pursued the case, challenging the teacher, in the presence of the principal, to establish why the book was forbidden. Well, it seemed there was a picture of a naked man in it. The counselor had a copy of the noveclass="underline" Would the teacher show the bad picture? Of course the teacher could not. Could it have been the cover, which does show the back of a bare boy? No, it was an interior illustration—though there are no interior pictures in that novel. Still the book was not returned, and no apology was forthcoming. Probably the teacher, with the arrogance of a minion almost impervious to accounting, had simply thrown the copy away. Yet there was no recourse; I saw that the principal was covering for the teacher’s mistake, stonewalling it, and would fudge the truth as far as necessary to avoid admitting error. Florida education is not first-rate; I knew that from my own days as part of it. Many teachers are dedicated, but the bureaucracy too often weeds them out while protecting the inferior ones, because a dedicated teacher is apt to be the first to protest injustice. By the bureaucracy’s definition, that’s a troublemaker. I sent Tommy another autographed copy, with the note “Some battles need to be fought. ” Even when, as in this case, they are lost. Virtue is not necessarily rewarded, and truth is too often secondary to convenience.
So this time, with Virtual Mode, I would have recommended caution, because that is a novel of a different nature. It is, in its way, an expose of the reality of too many public schools, where drugs abound and girls get raped in stairwells while the administration covers up.
However, I was not there, and it is the parent’s prerogative to determine what type of reading is appropriate for the child. Jessica had read the novel, and knew her daughter, and judged that Samantha could handle it. Samantha was a bright girl, with advanced reading ability and maturity. If the school disagreed, there are procedures to clarify such things, even if they aren’t always honored. So Samantha took the book to school. And—how did you guess?—she got in trouble. The principal sent Samantha home three hours early, and suspended her for a week, because she had been caught reading “such immoral trash. ” Jessica went to see the principal, and—I see you’re ahead of me, here!—got lectured herself. In fact, the principal suggested that her daughter should not be allowed to read any more Piers Anthony books. Because, he said, they contained such things as rape, suicide, bodily functions, and sex. Perhaps it was incidental that this novel also poked fun at stuffy principals. A child, he explained, might be harmed by such material, because at that age they can not distinguish fantasy from reality.
I have to say that the man did have a case. Virtual Mode does contain such elements, and some children might indeed be harmed by such exposure. I would question whether children are not more likely to be harmed by the endless violence they watch on television, but that does not justify harming them in school. Yet the principal hardly buttressed his case by condemning all my work outright, attributing elements to it which are not found, for example, in my Xanth series. He should have informed himself, before making a statement which could be regarded as slanderous. Unfortunately, ignorance of this type abounds in the school system and in communities at large, with even classic works of literature getting banned for spurious reasons. The principal also erred when he attempted to preempt the parent’s authority, and to dictate what a child might read in her free time—and indeed, to punish the child for what was at worst an error in judgment by her mother. The moment any person outside the family or legal guardian attempts to ban certain books from being read within the family, that is censorship, and I believe unconstitutional. The principal had far overstepped his authority.
But the principal did not stop there. He filed a report with the local Social Services, charging Jessica with negligence for giving questionable reading material to a minor. Because Jessica was a single parent with little formal education, he questioned whether she was capable of raising a child with above normal intelligence. Never mind that she was obviously doing so, for Samantha was doing well in school. It was evident that the man had a private agenda, and was determined to punish mother and daughter yet more for the nominal crime of bringing Virtual Mode to school.
You might think that such a vendetta would be laughed out of existence, the moment the basis of it was discovered. Not so. An investigation was made. This led to court proceedings. In the preliminary hearing, the judge decided that there were sufficient grounds to remove both Samantha and her five-year-old brother Joshua from Jessica’s custody. They were placed in a foster home, and Jessica was forbidden to visit them. How could this happen? Well, Jessica had to work to support her family, so she had a full-time job. But she was also trying to improve herself, so she was taking classes three nights a week. She couldn’t afford a day-care center, so a neighbor took care of the children before and after school, until Jessica got home from work in the afternoon. She couldn’t afford a car, so time was also lost with the bus schedule. The Social Services folk made six surprise visits. Four times, Jessica wasn’t home, being at work or school. Once they came on Saturday, which was her cleaning day. So the beds were apart, the children’s room had toys scattered across it, the kitchen sink was piled with dishes, and the living room was turned upside down so the children could play and watch TV there while Jessica did the other rooms. Her clothes dryer wasn’t working, so she had strung a rope up in the bathroom and hung the wet things there. That was when what looked like southern dowagers, complete with white gloves, walked in unannounced. There was Jessica in this mess, wearing a T-shirt and cutoff shorts, and her children still in their pajamas. She was horribly embarrassed.