First Liberty Institute, a legal organization in Texas dedicated to religious liberty, has asked the superintendent of Steamboat Springs High School, located in Colorado, to protect the conscience rights of students and parents, and honor school protocol about how teachers present graphic subject material in class.
First Liberty sent a lengthy letter to the superintendent of Steamboat Springs describing an instance this fall regarding curriculum in a high school literature class that disturbed at least one student and violated routine school district protocol about introducing graphic material to young, malleable minds.
The letter describes the fall out that occurred after Ryan Ayala, a young literature teacher at Steamboat Springs High School, introduced his class to a poem called Howl, by renowned poet, Allen Ginsberg. The poem contains explicit, graphic language, and the teacher read the work out loud in class, requiring male and female students alike to write down the graphic words, which included “f—,” “ass,” “c—,” and “cock.”
Ayala did not warn parents or students ahead of time that in Howl, Ginsberg uses, as First Liberty described in their letter to the school, “extensive cursing, sexually explicit descriptions, repeated vulgarities, prurient language, and a debased storyline of the most offensive nature.” Ayala also then assigned students the task of listening to a list of songs he believed aligned with the poem, including Psst, teenagers, take off your clo by Car Seat Headrest. Again, neither parents nor students were informed of this ahead of time.
Skylar Cason, a 16-year-old girl in the class, was particularly disturbed by the episode. Cason’s parents went through somewhat of an unapologetic appeals process through the school. All this occurred despite the fact that the school district’s policy typically requires that teachers inform parents of any upcoming graphic or disturbing school content and the option to decline that assignment.
A portion of the letter First Liberty sent the Steamboat Springs School District, SSSD for short, reads:
First Liberty maintains that “In presenting lewd content to Miss Cason and ignoring SSSD’s policies on teaching controversial materials, multiple school officials violated Miss Cason’s civil rights of religious liberty and rights of conscience” and they’ve asked the school, on behalf of Cason and her family, to remedy the situation by requiring teachers to maintain school district policy regarding advanced warnings and sensitivity training for teachers, among other things, so that the conscience rights of students are respected and upheld.
Jeremy Dys, First Liberty legal counsel on the case, told me in an email, “Teachers are welcome to teach on controversial materials, but they should warn parents and give them an opportunity to choose an alternative assignment for their children. In the age of #MeToo and Harvey Weinstein, it is hard to understand why Superintendent Meeks would think requiring teenage girls to meditate on a song normalizing sexting would be acceptable. Students should never feel shame and guilt as a part of an assignment at school.”
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner‘s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
