News You Can (ab)Use: AR High School Makes History; First Ever Not to Require The Great Gatsby

Dateline: North Little Rock, AR
      Since its publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tragic tale of unrestrained materialism set on Long Island during the Jazz Age, has experienced an unbroken run as required reading for every single high school student in the country. Although educators privately acknowledge that most students only give the Cliff's Notes a panicky scan the night before the test, the book's tenacious grip on the reading lists of the nation's high schools has held for decades. Until now.
      Principal Anita Cameron of North Little Rock High School unwittingly enacted the historic change in a memo to her school's English teachers before the adademic year began, and seems taken aback by the national attention her groundbreaking decision has drawn.
      “I just wrote a little note to the English Department for our annual planning session," says Cameron, "saying something like, ‘Hey, maybe we could replace Gatsby this year with Harry Potter or maybe Watership Down or Holes, just to shake things up a bit,’ and next thing I know there’s a satellite news van parked out in the corner where we've had so much trouble with kids sneaking cigarettes.”
      As soon as the historic memo went public, Cameron's e-mail was flooded with hundreds of messages from parents, some supporting, and some attacking the controversial decision.
      "I had to slog through the damn thing when I went to that school," wrote one angry parent, "and by God my kid's [sic] should have to do it to [sic]."
      A message from the advocacy group BURN-IT [Banning Uncomfortable Revelations and Naughtiness In Textbooks], read in part, "God bless you, Mrs. Cameron, for banning this vile book, with its alcoholism and sexual deviancy from your classrooms. Perhaps you are unaware, however, of the complete unsuitability of the replacement books. On our website there's a page-by-page accounting of those books' many offenses, including the unabashed promotion of sorcery and devil worship, rabbits given the gifts of speech and prophecy that God reserves for man, and countless instances of back-sass."
      Cameron doesn't know how her internal memo was leaked to the press in the first place. "But I'm pretty sure it was Mrs. Rogers," said Cameron, referring to the school's 11th grade literature teacher. Cameron then lowered her voice, "She's been teaching Gatsby from the same dog-eared notecards for about twenty-five years now, and the change has forced her to do some actual work." Cameron hasn't confronted Rogers over the issue because Rogers has not spoken to her since the school year began. "She just huddles there in the teacher's lounge, clutching one of her eight cups of coffee for the day, giving me the stinkeye," said Cameron.
      Although the national attention has been a disruption for the school, Cameron said there was a silver lining. "Just this morning two young men in suits and dark glasses came by looking for me--they looked like police or Secret Service or something--but it turned out they were from Simon & Schuster [the current publisher of The Great Gatsby]. At first they were very rude and tried to bully me, but Mama didn't raise any fools. To make a long story short, next year we'll go back to reading Gatsby--with all new free copies--and we'll have two brand new overhead projectors to replace the ones that are always broken, compliments of Simon & Schuster."
      Cameron then excused herself from the interview, explaining that she had two more meetings scheduled with representatives from Random House and St. Martin's Press to discuss the future of their textbooks' presence at the school.