High School English Teacher on Paid Leave for McCarthy Book
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:26 pm
There’s some interesting book news coming out of the state I spent 14 years in.
A supposedly popular and well-liked 25-year-old third year high school English teacher and assistant football coach in the 700-strong town of Tuscola, Texas has been placed on paid leave after a student picked Cormac McCarthy’s “Child of God” off a reading list. Evidently the book is about a murderer who has sex with his victim’s bodies. Evidently this constitutes distributing harmful material to a minor.
And evidently 120 people packed into a meeting last week where the school board voted to keep the teacher, Kaleb Tierce, on paid leave. Of those who are upset and want to see the teacher disciplined, I wonder how many are like me and have not even read the book in question?
Tuscola is south of Abilene and so Tierce has a few things against him. The area is deeply religious, conservative, and generally right of the dial. Though many similar themes, if not ones more harsh and disturbing, can be found in the bible than necrophilia, I doubt it’s the kind of community that puts up with such things as tolerance, liberalism, and pursuit of knowledge.
But Kaleb has one great thing going for him beside the fact that he’s very well liked: he’s a football coach. In Texas, that’s the trump card. He’s not a sissy, liberal, hoity-toity, English teacher from the East Coast. He can throw a spiral and explain nickel defense. He can get the line backers pumped up.
And he can teach kick ass books. So I’m sure he’ll be back in the classroom by the next Friday night football game.
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