Storm in the Mountains: A Case Study of Censorship, Conflict, and Consciousness
By James Moffett
Curated by Jonathan M. Marine and Paul Rogers
Speaking to some of the most urgent issues we are facing in education today, Storm in the Mountains (recipient of the David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English in 1992) recounts the aftermath of one of the most prolonged, intense, and violent textbook protests in American history. The protests were a response to Moffett’s comprehensive language learning program, Interaction: A Student-Centered Language Arts and Reading Program (1973), which he developed after garnering widespread acclaim for his early publications, including Teaching the Universe of Discourse (1968). Interaction consisted of a vast array of different language arts materials, utilized culturally diverse subject matter, and was designed to approximate organic, self-sponsored reading, writing, and speaking. Yet, by 1974, it was precisely because of these progressive ideas that Interaction was protested to the point of cancellation by residents of Kanawha County, West Virginia. To write the book, Moffett returned a decade later to Kanawha County to speak to and interview the protestors and advocates of book banning who had objected to Interaction. Interweaving their unedited interviews with official objections written by citizens in 1974, Moffett presents a moving case study of censorship in America that lays bare the many political, cultural, and religious issues which undergird society and education in our country.
Table of Contents
Part 1. The Drama
Prologue. West—By God—Virginia
3. Kanawha County and Orange County
Part 2. Voices from the Fray
Part 3. What’s in the Books
11 . The Innocence Is the Crime
Part 4. Diagnosing Agnosis
About James Moffett
James Porter Moffett (1929–1996) was a ground-breaking teacher, author, and theorist of language learning who had a profound impact on the fields of English Education, Language Arts, Composition, and Educational Psychology in the mid-to-late 20th century (Warnock). Moffett also had a lasting impact on the National Writing Project (NWP), was influential at the 1966 Dartmouth conference, and figured closely into the history of National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE); speaking at a number of NCTE conferences and events, publishing more than thirty articles across the many NCTE journals, and helping to found the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning (Blau). In addition to his core pedagogical contributions, and in particular his paired 1968 publications, Teaching the Universe of Discourse and Student-Centered Language Arts, Moffett's prescience and foresight in advancing holistic assessment, progressive education, the centrality of peer-to-peer interactions, social emotional learning, and multicultural and multilingual curriculum led him to be referred to by many as “the North Star” of language arts education (Durst; Spalding et al.).
Publication Information: Moffett, James. (2022). Storm in the Mountains: A Case Study of Censorship, Conflict, and Consciousness. The WAC Clearinghouse. https://wac.colostate.edu/books/landmarks/moffett/storm/ (Originally published by Southern Illinois University Press in 1988)
Publication Date: November 11, 2022
Landmark Publications in Writing Studies
Series Editor: Mike Palmquist, Colorado State University
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