Henry J. Stern
June 1, 2007  

This story is too good not to share.  You may have seen it in today's Times and Post, but you might have missed it. Anyway, we provide more comment and detail  
 
On B5 of today's Times, below the fold, one reads: TEACHER'S NOVEL, AND HIS DEPARTURE, STIR UP A BRONX SCHOOL.  We found some irony in the description in the headline of the celebrated Horace Mann as "a Bronx school." 

 The story was written by the talented and prolific Sewell Chan.  This is his lede:
 
"A furor has erupted at a New York City private high school over a history teacher's satirical novel, his impending departure and now, accusations that administrators barred the student newspaper from publishing a letter by prominent historians and scholars who had come to the teacher's defense."
 
It was an achievement for Chan to get that complicated story into one sentence.  It took 46 words.
 
In today's Post, on five columns of page seven, Hasani Gittens writes a story which expostulates on the issue. The headline is straight tabloid: OH, MANN!  PREP SCHOOL GAGGED - Paper Gets Censored Over Sacked Prof.   The Post ran  four photographs above the text, a school building, the cover of the novel,  the editor in chief of the school paper, and a high school photograph of her father, a Horace Mann alumnus.

Mr. Gittens' lead, expressing his view of the situation, took just 14 words:

"Posh Riverdale prep school Horace Mann is giving its students an education in totalitarianism."
 
Dr. Thomas M. Kelly, the head of school (the neutered form of headmaster or headmistress) forbade the school newspaper, The Record, from publishing two letters to the editor and a petition by academics .  The school's excuse for the ban was that personnel matters should not be "vetted" in the school paper.
 
The conflict arose over the dismissal of  Dr. Andrew Trees, a young History teacher, who wrote a novel, basically a roman a clef, about Horace Mann, its students and parents, and their fervent desire to attend top-rated colleges   The contents are described on amazon.com.  The question of whether Dr. Trees should be allowed to continue to teach at the school is an entirely different one than the issue over whether the newspaper should be suppressed.

TEACHER'S NOVEL RIDICULES SOME STUDENTS AND PARENTS
 
There is a seriousd claim that high school students have a right to privacy which should not be invaded, certainly not by one of their own teachers.  If someone obtains personal information about other people because he is in a position of trust, he should not discuss it with others, least of all publish it to the world.  There are, or should be, standards of conduct relating to fairness and decency here which Andrew Trees may have violated.  We assume he did not seek permission from the people he depicted.  If he sought and received it, that could be another matter, because we do not believe the reputation of the school is at risk, except for the vagary of their hiring Trees...
 
There is an extremely vulgar phrase describing what Mr. Trees has done, which we will provide only on request.  It is not unreasonable that the managers of a school, acting on behalf of the parents and the students, would not want to give the teacher-novelist another opportunity to ridicule their students, whom they oversee in loco parentis.  If another school, knowing his background, wishes to hire him that is their business.  Nothing he has done is illegal.  But despite his pedigree, Dr. Trees has not acted as a gentleman.  Should that be a requirement for a high school teacher?   We report, you decide.
 
We cannot judge the literary merits of his work, which was reviewed  by Michiko Kakutani in the Times when it was published last year.  The review is quoted in Mr. Chan's story, which you can link to here.  If you are curious, you can buy the book, whose title is Academy X,  or get it from a library or scan it at a bookstore.   We are just not comfortable with the fact that the privacy rights of students and their parents have been violated in order to satisfy the desire for fame and fortune of a man who was entrusted with their care and education..

SCHOOL AUTHORITIES CENSOR STUDENT NEWSPAPER
 
The action of the Horace Mann administration in forbidding the school newspaper from publishing two letters to the editor and an op-ed piece is foolish and shortsighted.  First, it succeeded in escalating a local controversy into a free-speech issue.  Second, it is an unwholesome example of suppression of legitimate expression of opinion by students and faculty. It does show that even  principals (or heads of school) can make mistakes while trying to do the right thing (or to protect themselves). Disclosure and transparency trump secrecy and opacity, even in prestigious places like Horace Mann.
Just as the cover-up is often worse than the crime, the act of suppression can be worse than what is being hidden. .

PROFESSORS PUBLISH PETITION OF PROTEST.
 
The petition of protest signed by academics and leaked to Gawker.com is scarcely better.  The righteous indignation expressed by the pompous professors ignores the particular situation in this case.  There is an issue of academic freedom here, but the clearer violation is in prohibiting the student newspaper from publishing material about the case.  The failure to renew the contract of the tattle-tale teacher is a much murkier matter.   But that is not the concern of the pious petitioners, ever eager to protest one thing or another in the land of the free, which they seem to find so unjust.

WHO'S WHO AT HORACE MANN

 The case is made more interesting by the fact that the silenced editor in chief of The Record is a young lady named Elyssa Spitzer.  In answer to your question, Yes.  Her sisters also attend the school, and her father was a member of the class of 1977 at Horace Mann.  He did not require parental intervention to get into an excellent college.  His views, if any, on the censorship controversy have not come to our attention.  He has legitimate cause to recuse himself from the case,  apart from the fact that this is unfolding at a private, not a public school.
 
DISCLOSURE:  Our sons, Jared '95 and Kenan '98 are graduates of Horace Mann, which they attended for six years after completing P.S. 6, Manhattan. Their education was first-rate and my wife and I are proud of the school.  It was her idea for them to go there and she was right, as usual.    I went to a public high school which can also be described as "a Bronx school", where I was a reporter on the school newspaper, Science Survey.  Years later, I was managing editor of the Observation Post, an undergraduate newspaper that once flourished at City College.  We and The Campus, the older newspaper, both had censorship issues but nobody went to bat for us.  What a difference a half-century makes.
      

 
#379  6.01.07  1168wds