By Ellen Salovaara
Books have long been challenged and banned in schools. In 2001, Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling was one of the most challenged books in schools. Parents complained that the book perpetuated anti-family values and satanist themes.
In 2020, one of the most challenged books in schools was Stamped: Racism, Anti Racism, and You, by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds. The book was challenged and banned because of complaints that it did not encompass racism against everyone and because of the authors’ statements. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas was also challenged for allegedly including an anti-police message.
The history of book banning can be traced back to the year 35. Roman Emperor Caligula openly opposed the Odyssey because it included Greek ideas of freedom, which he believed to be dangerous.
In 1624, Thomas Morten arrived with a group of Puritans to what is now known as Massachusetts. Finding the rules of his new society too strict, Morten founded a new colony with forbidden old-world practices and was promptly exiled by the Puritan militia. He wrote a tell-all book entitled “New English Canaan,” in which he critiqued and attacked Puritan values and practices, even going so far as to referring to Puritans as “crustaceans.” Puritans banned the book, making it the first banned book in the United States.
In Nazi Germany, the Nazi German Student Association’s Main Office for Press and Propoganda declared “Action against the Un-German Spirit,” a campaign that culminated in a “cleansing” by fire. On May 10, 1933, university students burned about 25,000 “Un-German” books. Targeted authors included communists, socialists, criticizers of fascism, and social justice activists.
RPCS’s librarian, Ms. Fox, said: “If we consider the Nazis (or any other authoritarian governments) and their book burning frenzies, you can see the through line of censorship and fear that if powerless people have access to ideas and information, they might rise up to challenge the ruling party. I think there are similar instincts and fears in parents today, that if we somehow prevent young people from encountering difficult texts with a range of perspectives or written by authors with a range of identifiers who might make readers feel uncomfortable or think differently, then we can keep kids naive and therefore, dependent on adults to tell them how to think.”
Today, the subject of banned and challenged books has taken on a new life. On November 8, 2021, members of a Virginia school board called for a book burning. “I think we should throw those books in a fire,” stated board member Rabih Abuismail, in reference to “sexually explicit” books in the Spotsylvania County Public School libraries. These “sexually explicit” books contained characters with LGBTQIA+ identities.
Since the beginning of the 2021 school year, school librarians in at least seven states have been forced to remove books challenged by community members. Deborah Caldwell, the Executive Director of the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, said the organization was seeing “an unprecedented volume of challenges,” noting that while she has worked for the ALA for twenty years, she “can’t recall a time [like this] when [they] had multiple challenges coming in on a daily basis.”
Ms. Fox has concerns about the recent uptick in challenged books given that most of the books being challenged center themes of race and LGBTQIA+ identities. She stated: “Students need access to lots of different perspectives, and they need access to mirrors and windows in books, and we have to trust readers to make decisions about what’s the right book for them, especially at the middle and high school level.”
The ongoing fight about book banning is not only occurring between librarians and community members, but with political leaders as well. Oklahoma state Senator Rob Standridge recently proposed a bill that would allow parents not only to challenge books in public schools, but to collect $10,000 for every day their challenged books remain on school shelves. His bill will be considered during a legislative session in February. Stanridge explained: “Unfortunately…more and more schools are trying to indoctrinate students by exposing them to gender, sexual and racial identity curriculums and courses.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott wrote to the education agency commissioner in November, asking to be informed about any “instance of pornography being provided to minors under the age of 18 for prosecution to the fullest extent of the law,” while specifically referencing books like Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, a comic about the author’s gender queer identity.
Recently-elected Virginia Governor Greg Youngkin’s campaign ad featured a white mother speaking about her desire to get Beloved, a book by Toni Morrison, banned from her son’s high school. Beloved is about the trauma inflicted by racism and slavery on Black families. The mother in the ad speaks over somber background music about the book that contains “some of the most explicit material you can imagine,” failing to mention that her son was enrolled in an Advanced Placement class and therefore the books in the course were not chosen by the individual teacher at her son’s school.
Ms. Fox points out the flaw in the fight of parents like the mother in Youngkin’s ad, saying: “If we say ‘oh, you can’t have that,’ it makes it much more exciting to read. So it kind of does the opposite of what parents want…if we say ‘oh you cannot read this book,’ then kids are like ‘ooh, why?’”
Ms. Fox spoke about her initial draw to her profession and her current concerns, stating: “Something that I found really attractive to the profession [of being a librarian] was how everybody had a right to read what they want to read…I wasn’t necessarily supposed to buy books just that I liked, but I needed to be thinking about what my population…what all the different people would want to read…to have parents saying something shouldn’t be [on library shelves] and try to make a decision for everyone, that’s what I have a problem with. That one person’s value would impact all the kids is what’s so problematic.”
The Maryland Association of School Librarians Position Statement on Censorship and the Right to Read recently released a statement, positing that: “School librarians include book titles that meet the needs of a diverse and dynamic school community. School librarians develop collections according to principles of intellectual freedom. They provide learners with access to information that represents diverse points of view and protect learners’ privacy and confidentiality.”
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