After hearing about the Republic, Missouri school board decision to ban Slaughterhouse-Five from its high school classes and library, I was happy to hear that the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library is giving away copies of Vonnegut's World War II masterpiece to any student from Rebublic who requests one. Hi ho.
I was then shocked to learn that the ban's catalyst, Wesley Scroggins, doesn't even have children in the high school. His kids are home-schooled! It's quite backwards that a book by Kurt Vonnegut, who fought in WWII to protect America's freedoms, is now being banned in such an un-American way.
Lucus Kavner of The Huffington Post wrote a nice article regarding the ban, and it includes a fitting Kurt Vonnegut quote regarding censorship.
All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values… and I say let’s get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States — and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!"
I couldn't agree more, so yesterday [after donating to the KVML cause], I searched for knowledge by rereading one of my copies of Slaughterhouse-Five and, once again, I was blown away by Vonnegut's wit. I especially enjoy this passage regarding Billy Pilgrim watching a movie about WWII in reverse while he was slightly unstuck in time:
American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses, took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.
The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.
The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.
I'm hoping the Rebublic school board will do the right thing, reverse its decision and tell Wesley Scroggins to mind his own business. Keeping kids away from Kurt Vonnegut is the opposite of education.
