"Hatchet’ will still remain part of fourth grade curriculum

 The mother of a fourth-grader in the White County school system addressed the school board last week with an emotional plea to remove a specific book from the required curriculum.

Misty Johnson spoke to White County School Board members, on Feb. 9, 2023, and requested they reconsider their decision to include “Hatchet” as mandatory reading for the fourth-grade students.

“Thank you for allowing me to raise our concerns as parents,” Johnson said. “We live in District 1. Our youngest child currently attends Woodland Park where our other two children also attended. We’re here tonight to appeal against the decision made by the book review committee on the book ‘Hatchet’ in the ‘Wit and Wisdom’ curriculum – not only this book but all of ‘Wit and Wisdom.”

According to Johnson, “Wit and Wisdom” was not originally approved curriculum and failed the Tennessee textbook review.

“A waiver had to be requested to adopt this curriculum,” she said. “The book ‘Hatchet’ uses God’s name in vain several times. Involves infidelity, has a cuss word, and the character feels hatred toward his mom for her infidelity, and he loses all hope and tries to commit suicide by cutting his wrists with a hatchet.”

Johnson said her daughter was “disturbed” and “uncomfortable” with the content of “Hatchet.”

“We had requested an alternative for our daughter because this does not reflect our Christian values,” Johnson said. “It’s not suitable. It goes against our deeply-held beliefs, but we were denied this request, stating that she must read this book and participate in all the activities that accompany this book and stated that it was mandated.”

Johnson said she was concerned for not only her children but all children who will be required to read this book.

“This material can be so detrimental to so many children,” she said. “Why do you want to subject our children to this kind of material? The ‘Wit and Wisdom’ curriculum is based on sadness, anger, dark and graphic imagery, negative emotions, infidelity, cursing, suicide attempts, rape, murder, cannibalism, torture, scalping, killing whole families…”

Johnson then read excerpts from “Hatchet.”

Bob Young, school board chairman, responded to Johnson’s statements.

“Under the direction of the director [of schools], we had a committee review that text,” said Young. “At the last meeting, we had discussion over it. We appreciate the concern, and I think that a lot of people understand that those things are hard at certain ages. There may be some that are mature enough, and they need that kind of understanding of how that takes place. There are some that may not be ready.”

School board member Dewayne Howard asked what options the board had after hearing Johnson’s request.

“I’m absolutely confident in our teachers that they can find an alternative source for his,” Howard said. “I will make the motion again to let ‘Hatchet’ be removed from the curriculum.”

Board member Sherrie Stone seconded the motion.

School board members Adam Hickey, Kenneth Robinson, and Bob Young vote “no.” Dewayne Howard and Sherrie Stone voted “yes.” Diana Haston and Jayson McDonald were absent.

The motion to remove Hatchet from the fourth grade curriculum failed for lack of a majority vote.

The Expositor spoke with Kurt Dronebarger, White County director of schools, on Feb. 14.

“It’s a book [Hatchet] that’s been read in our schools for decades, and it’s actually part of the fourth grade curriculum,” Dronebarger said.

He explained the book had already been available in school libraries for many years.

“It’s not a book that we can just pull out – it’s actually 17 lessons in the fourth grade curriculum that goes on for a matter of weeks, and that made it challenging to just substitute it on the fly,” Dronebarger said. “It was looked at extensively by the staff. We went through the procedure by policy with a review committee that was initiated by the school librarian and had parent volunteers.  They recommended to keep the book. That was passed on to the school board.”

Dronebarger said the school board originally voted on the book during the January 2023 meeting, with five in favor and two against.

“It’s been several years since our last English textbook adoption, and it’s part of the curriculum,” Dronebarger said. “The whole theme of the module is about survival, so there’s some other text they bring in throughout those days of teaching, but it’s centered mainly around ‘Hatchet’ and survival.”