Carroll schools deem parts of book by grandson of slave inappropriate for some students
A Carroll school district committee that reviewed teachers’ requests for required reading determined that a book about the grandson of a slave contains some content that isn’t appropriate for seventh-grade students.
Carroll Superintendent Lane Ledbetter said in an emailed statement that a seventh-grade teacher requested the book as required reading material.
“I want to be clear — ‘Life is So Good,’ the book written about the life and legacy of George Dawson, has not been banned or placed under reconsideration as part of the formal challenge process outlined in EFA (Local) policy for Instructional Materials,” Ledbetter wrote in the statement.
“This book was reviewed this summer with every other requested book for classroom required readings and it was determined that content in one chapter of the book was not appropriate for this age group.”
The district didn’t provide information on the content that was inappropriate.
“Life is so Good,” co-written by George Dawson, the grandson of a slave, contains descriptions of a lynching that Dawson witnessed. Dawson’s friend was lynched after he was accused of raping a white woman.
Dawson Middle School, in the Carroll school district, was named for George Dawson.
Ledbetter wrote that the committee determined that the book can be used with “teacher-led instruction in a few sections of the book to facilitate the delivery of sensitive content and still convey the author’s message.”
According to Ledbetter’s statement, the book was reviewed under the Curriculum Review of Required reading. The internal committee is made up of teachers, principals and curriculum coordinators.
There are some in our community, including @Carrollisd administration, that are arguing that George Dawson’s book hasn’t been banned at George Dawson’s school, but merely “tabled.”
We have some thoughts about those semantics, so here comes a :
tl;dr? The book is banned.— Southlake Together (@Southlake4All) August 24, 2022
According to his obituary in the Washington Post, George Dawson did not learn to read until he was 98. A lifelong Dallas resident, Dawson died in 2001 at the age of 103.
He grew up on the family farm in Marshall in East Texas, and left at age 12 to pursue work to help his family.
Dawson worked doing many things including breaking wild horses, building levees on the Mississippi River, and shoveling dirt into a mule-drawn wagon.
He later moved to Dallas where he did road work for the city, worked on the railroad and worked for a dairy.
Dawson also loved traveling and sometimes rode the rails with hobos.
He worked with Washington state elementary school teacher Richard Glaubman to write his memoirs.
Dawson was also featured on programs including “Nightline” and the “Oprah Winfrey Show.”
A former Carroll trustee suggested naming Dawson Middle School after him, and there is a bronze statue of Dawson in front of the school.
