Expelled for a Poem About Jonah: A Davenport Boy Takes On His School Board
Henry Selde recited a comic verse hinting the whale never swallowed Jonah. His teacher cut him off mid-recitation, the board backed her, and a secular union carried the case all the way to the state superintendent — who said he had no authority to act.
Over in Davenport, Lincoln county, a son of a citizen of that county recited some doggerel verses in school, intimating that the whale did not swallow Jonah. A bystander reported that the teacher inquired one afternoon if the boy had a piece to recite. He said that he knew but one, entitled "Jonah and the Whale." The teacher made no further inquiry; but remarked, "The whale swallowed Jonah, all right." The next day, when the boy had nearly completed the recitation, the teacher ordered him to stop and take his seat. He promptly obeyed. The teacher declared, "I will not allow any such blasphemy in my school; we all love our God." On Monday the said boy — Henry Selde — was expelled from the school.
His father, Peter Selde, Sr., waited on the members of the school board and entered a protest, demanding the reinstating of his son as a pupil of the school. He was informed the board would sustain the teacher. The child has thus been deprived of the right and privileges of education since that time, Dec. 14, 1891.
Peter Selde, Sr., the father of the said pupil, Henry Selde, thus testifies: "I waited on the school board, they promised to look into the matter and let me know their decision. Myself and family were taken down with la grippe and I did not hear from them; soon as I got well enough to go to town I called on Mr. Plough, one of the school board. He said the board had decided the boy could come to school if he would ask forgiveness of the whole school, and speak a piece to be selected by the teacher, and not otherwise. Mr. P. told me to go to the clerk and he would give me this decision of the board in writing. The clerk declared no decision had been made, other than that the school board would sustain the teacher."
C. B. Reynolds, secretary of the Washington Secular Union, has sent Superintendent Bryan the facts of the case, saying: "I respectfully solicit your issuing peremptory orders to the members of the school board of school district No. 14, Davenport, Lincoln county, Washington, to reinstate the said pupil, Henry Selde, in the school, and that he be allowed to resume his studies without prejudice, let or hindrance on account of any religious belief or sentiment he or his parents may entertain. And will you please instruct the said school board and the teacher of said school that it is not the teacher's right, privilege or duty to dictate in matters of religious belief, or to reward or punish pupils because of their entertaining religious belief or sentiments at variance with those held by the teacher or the school board, much less to expel children from the school and debar them from pursuing their education because they recite something the teacher had failed to first read or hear."
Mr. Bryan had no jurisdiction in the case and so informed Mr. Reynolds.
“"I will not allow any such blasphemy in my school; we all love our God."”
The shape of the argument has not changed in 130 years: what a teacher may require of a child, what a school board may forbid, and where religious conviction stops and public education begins. In 1892 the state superintendent pleaded no jurisdiction and left the family to the local board — the same dead end parents still hit when a district answers only to itself.
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