Textbook War in West Virginia

The people of West Virginia are victims. They are the victims of powerful and cunning outsiders, of themselves and their own kind, and of social and historical forces with regard to which they have no control or understanding. For a full year now, a battle over “progressive” textbooks has convulsed Kanawha County. Set in an environment that might have been the creation of Faulkner or Steinbeck, the protest over some 325 secondary and elementary school books, selected by the local board of education upon the recommendation of the county’s teachers, has brought political polarization and violence to this quiet industrial valley. Originally objecting to four-letter words in a literature series intended for high schools, th...