Aug 28 2006
The devil’s in the details
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I’ve volunteered to read aloud to Nathan’s class every Monday afternoon. So when Sparks Fly High: The Legend of Dancing Point
Sparks Fly High: The Legend of Dancing Point is a Colonial Virgina folk tale about Colonel Lightfoot 
and the Devil competing in a dancing contest to reclaim a parcel of marshy land. The book is beautifully illustrated, well written, and my children loved it. Also, this tale brought back childhood memories of Jersey Devil stories.
As a folk tale that meshes with what the kids will be learning about Colonial America, I thought it was a good choice. Then I remembered the story of Tresa Waggoner and the Bennett, Colorado school district.
As reported by Madeline Jenkins Millard at Music & Vision Daily:
The mischief erupted when she showed approximately 12 minutes of a children’s videotape about Faust to 200 six-through-nine-year-olds.
Waggoner had discovered the video from the Who’s Afraid of Opera? series in the school library. It features Dame Joan Sutherland who introduces three puppet friends to the stories behind Faust and Rigoletto, then performs their highlights in complete costumes and sets.School staff had pre-approved Waggoner’s use of the video in her lesson plan.
[Shorty after showing the video] some parents complained to the school superintendent that their children had been exposed to a satanic video. Cory Babi, wife of school board member Michael Babi, claimed: ‘My child came home and asked me what "abortion" was and what "suicide" was.’ Neither word appears in the video.
Later on, Waggoner was accused of being a devil worshiper and a lesbian, as reported by Playbill Arts and the Rocky Mountain News.
Taking into consideration that Bennett is about 54 miles away from our charter school and that there are a faction of parents there who are religious conservatives, I told Nathan’s teacher about the book. She feels that it’s fine that I read to her class. After all a dancing devil is pretty harmless compared to a child-eating witch and evil step mother in Hansel and Gretel. At least, that’s how I hope people will see it.
Technorati tags: children’s books, devil, Faust, education, Core Knowledge, controversial teachers
electric fireplace
Well, I am assuming that since you have decided to go ahead and read the book, you are prepared for any possible back lash. I can only venture to say, that as a “conservative” myself, I wouldn’t read it to my small children without accompnaying discussion about our beliefs. I also think that most “conservatives” feel defensive a lot of the time, and are almost looking for opportunites to defend themselves. Having said that, I would like to ask your forgiveness, on behalf of my fellow “conservatives”, ahead of time for any negative feedback you may encounter. Sometimes in the pursuit of protecting one’s beliefs, the “conservative” movement gets carried away and loses track of what it is defending and instead becomes inflamatory. Hope you don’t have to experience any of that unloving behavior.
There are several violent children’ stories that we all grew up with. And don’t forget the nursery rhymes: Three Blind Mice, Ring Around the Rosie (The Bubonic Plague, I think), There Was An Old Lady Who Lived In a Shoe, to name just a few.