The House Education Committee heard hours of testimony Wednesday from school employees, librarians, and others across Indiana who expressed opposition to a proposed amendment to a bill that would strip these employees of a legal defense against charges they distributed material harmful to minors.
The hearing was the latest evolution in a months-long legislative process driven by concerns among some parents that pornography is rampant in schools. While lawmakers have drafted legislation to address these concerns, they’ve presented little evidence to suggest it’s a widespread problem. The latest iteration of the legislation also targets public libraries.
Rep. Becky Cash (R-Zionsville), who crafted the amendment, said she’s heard from “thousands” of parents who have lodged complaints with their schools over books they believed were objectionable.
“Parents have testified in school board meetings and come to me, and many members of this committee and assembly many, many times over the last couple of years saying that the system did not work for them,” Cash said.
She explained that the amendment mandates schools and public libraries lay out a transparent process for parents and residents to lodge complaints.
But several Democratic members of the committee expressed concern that the bill would empower some parents and disempower others by creating a system in which some parents could control access to books for all children. They also expressed opposition to a portion of the amendment that strips librarians and school employees from a legal defense.
“We are not the court of appeals from parents who are unhappy with school board decisions,” said Rep. Ed DeLaney (D-Indianapolis). “But if we were the Court of Appeals, we would want evidence. What parent? What school? What book? What hearing? What process? Not this vague discontent.”
These attacks on librarians and on the freedom to read are despicable. The red states are empowering ignorant censors who want to impose their values on people who don’t share them.
There is a popular stereotype of librarians: Mild-mannered, quiet, unassuming, and of course, bookish. But the Republicans in the Texas legislature seem to think that behind that compliant demeanor lies a sinister purveyor of dangerous ideas and books. What other explanation can there be for proposed legislation that would place book selection in the hands of a parent committee? And why strip away the legal protections accorded to librarians doing their job?
As a former school librarian and mother, I have always believed parents have total control over what their children select to read from the school library.
SB 13 transfers the decisions for acquiring library materials into the hands of a council of parents, the majority of whom do not work for the district but only have children attending. What possible experience or credentials or rights does this committee have to make decisions on what children can and can’t read in an entire school district? After a long, convoluted process spelled out in the bill, the school board must then approve the list of library books before they may be purchased.
First of all, it is clear the authors of this bill have a poor understanding of school library programs. In Austin ISD, there are 116 schools. This Local School Library Advisory Council, appointed by the school board, is required to meet only twice a year to decide on the library collections for all 116 schools. A single campus librarian purchases materials throughout the year. It’s not a one and done process.
This bill will greatly delay the timeline between ordering books and getting them into the hands of children. The additional 30-day waiting period further impedes the process. As a librarian, I had the freedom to pre-order the next book in a popular series so that I could add it to our collection the very day it was published. Kids clamoring for the next book in a beloved series will now have to wait for months if not all year.
The bill also invites parents to opt in to a program in which the librarian emails them each time their child checks out a book, including the book’s title and author. One elementary school in south Austin averages 196 checkouts per day. How is it possible for the librarian to send these emails while also running her library program? Instead, why not integrate the library catalog information into the parent portal, the website which parents already access to see their child’s grades? Parents can then look up their students’ library records. It would even help librarians with the bane of our existence: long overdue books.
The portion of the bill that enables anyone to prosecute individual librarians for distributing “harmful material” under the Texas penal code (Sec. 43.24) is the most shocking and destructive piece in this bill. It removes affirmative defenses for educational purposes. Does this also remove legal protections from members of the advisory council if a “bad” book slips through the cracks?
I can’t believe the state of Texas wants to allow frivolous lawsuits against librarians, school boards, principals, and teachers. We are already experiencing a teacher shortage, with at least 59 districts switching to four-day weeks.
If passed, this bill will bring a culture of fear and intimidation to our schools.
The men and women who choose to serve as school librarians are among the most intelligent and ethical people I know. They are not just serving the children of the five parents on the Local School Advisory Committee; they are representing the interests of all children and the parental rights of all families at their schools, upholding their First Amendment Rights to read.
If the Senate Public Education Committee had only consulted in good faith with the vast majority of school librarians whose patrons are extremely satisfied with the library collections they curate, this bill would have been able to find a balance between respecting parental rights and ensuring better oversight in purchasing materials without adding unwieldy, impractical layers of bureaucracy and red tape that will prevent children from having ready access to the books they want and need to read.
Sara Stevenson is a former school librarian in Austin ISD. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.
Republicans have gone stark raving mad. They are terrified that their children might read a book that will turn them gay or transgender or might make them feel bad about racism. of course, their children have access to the internet, where they can see stuff far more sensational than anything in a book.
Somebody has to be punished for the racy books in the libraries.
A bill that would allow parents to sue libraries and school districts for allowing books containing material considered “obscene” on their shelves is one step closer to becoming law.
The “Children’s School and Library Protection Act” passed the Idaho House on a 40-30 vote Monday afternoon.
The bill lays out a proposed definition for what it calls material that is “harmful to minors,” including material that contains description or representation of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement or “sado-masochistic abuse.”
The bill also specifically mentions representations of “intimate sexual acts, normal or perverted” along with descriptions of “masturbation, excretory functions, or lewd exhibition of the genitals or genital area.”…
One legislator made a good point:
A representative from Latah County says libraries are not the main place where kids are being exposed to mature content.
“This telephone and this computer has more damage than any library is ever going to have to our children,” Lori McCann (R), representative of Legislative District Six, said.
How many of those voting went home to watch porn on their phone or computer?
JEFFERSON CITY — The chief Senate budget writer said he plans to restore state funding for Missouri’s public libraries that was stripped out of the House version of the state’s spending plan.
Sen. Lincoln Hough, R-Springfield, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Tuesday that the panel will place $4.5 million back in the budget, which covers spending for the fiscal year beginning July 1.
“There is no way that money is not going back into the budget,” Hough told the Post-Dispatch.
The restoration could mark the second reversal of a House budget prioritythat has stirred controversy under the Capitol dome. Hough and Senate President Caleb Rowden earlier said they oppose Republican language in the House blueprint that would prohibit the state from spending tax dollars on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives….
The library money was removed from the House blueprint by House Budget Chairman Cody Smith and backed by the Republicans who control the chamber last week. He cited a lawsuit by two library groups to overturn a new state law banning sexually explicit material in school libraries.
The ACLU, the Missouri Association of School Librarians, and the Missouri Library Association in February asked a judge in Kansas City to find the law unconstitutional or clarify how and when it applies.
Smith, R-Carthage, believes the state shouldn’t subsidize the lawsuit by giving public libraries money.
Hough’s hometown library district, which covers Springfield and Greene County, would receive an estimated $368,000 if the money is restored.
Hough said libraries serve multiple purposes in communities, allowing people to not only get books, but internet service, job assistance and programs for adults and children.
“Libraries are an important resource for so many people,” Hough said.
Virginia Governor Glen Youngkin sends his own children to an elite private school that never bans books and teaches critical race theory, But the governor ran on a platform of “parental rights,” which has unleashed censorship and book banning in the state’s public schools.
The books were challenged for having “sexually explicit material” in them, according to a message to families from superintendent Mark Taylor.
The superintendent of Spotsylvania public schools has no prior experience in education. His appointment was made after hard-right conservatives won control of the school board. Aside from his lack of experience, Mark Taylor was controversial because of incendiary comments he made on social media. “They allegedly include memes mocking trans people and school shootings, racist innuendos and calls for parents to pull their children out of public schools.”
By the end of the week, the school district will remove:
In a statement, Taylor pointed to a Virginia lawthat requires school districts to establish parental notification policies for instructional materials with sexually explicit materials, saying the 14 books fall under that category.
Taylor added that the division doesn’t have the resources to review whether the roughly 390,000 books in all school libraries have similar materials, so purging the 14 books from the shelves would be the only way to ensure they aren’t accessible….
Taylor noted in his message to families that the decision won’t stop teachers from including the pulled books in classroom assignments, which would have to be shared with parents under the law. According to the district, the books will be stored until they are donated.
What teacher will be brave enough or foolish enough to assign a banned book?
Katherine Marsh is an award-winning novelist who writes for children in grades fifth-through-eighth. At that age in the 1980s, she remembers falling in love with books. But she knows that children today are not reading for fun as much as they used to. NAEP data say so; parents as well. She knows that the ubiquity of cell phones, the Internet, abd television explain some of that decline in reading.
But she believes there is a problem with the way children are taught reading. No, she’s not talking about phonics and how children learn to read. She refers to the pedagogical approach that is required by the Common Core. children in school are taught to analyze what they read. This technical mindset, she believes, kills the joy of reading.
What I remember most about reading in childhood was falling in love with characters and stories; I adored Judy Blume’s Margaret and Beverly Cleary’s Ralph S. Mouse. In New York, where I was in public elementary school in the early ’80s, we did have state assessments that tested reading level and comprehension, but the focus was on reading as many books as possible and engaging emotionally with them as a way to develop the requisite skills. Now the focus on reading analytically seems to be squashing that organic enjoyment. Critical reading is an important skill, especially for a generation bombarded with information, much of it unreliable or deceptive. But this hyperfocus on analysis comes at a steep price: The love of books and storytelling is being lost.
This disregard for story starts as early as elementary school. Take this requirement from the third-grade English-language-arts Common Core standard, used widely across the U.S.: “Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, distinguishing literal from nonliteral language.” There is a fun, easy way to introduce this concept: reading Peggy Parish’s classic, Amelia Bedelia, in which the eponymous maid follows commands such as “Draw the drapes when the sun comes in” by drawing a picture of the curtains. But here’s how one educatorexperienced in writing Common Core–aligned curricula proposes this be taught: First, teachers introduce the concepts of nonliteral and figurative language. Then, kids read a single paragraph from Amelia Bedelia and answer written questions.
For anyone who knows children, this is the opposite of engaging: The best way to present an abstract idea to kids is by hooking them on a story. “Nonliteral language” becomes a whole lot more interesting and comprehensible, especially to an 8-year-old, when they’ve gotten to laugh at Amelia’s antics first. The process of meeting a character and following them through a series of conflicts is the fun part of reading. Jumping into a paragraph in the middle of a book is about as appealing for most kids as cleaning their room.
But as several educators explained to me, the advent of accountability laws and policies, starting with No Child Left Behind in 2001, and accompanying high-stakes assessments based on standards, be they Common Core or similar state alternatives, has put enormous pressure on instructors to teach to these tests at the expense of best practices. Jennifer LaGarde, who has more than 20 years of experience as a public-school teacher and librarian, described how one such practice—the class read-aloud—invariably resulted in kids asking her for comparable titles. But read-alouds are now imperiled by the need to make sure that kids have mastered all the standards that await them in evaluation, an even more daunting task since the start of the pandemic. “There’s a whole generation of kids who associate reading with assessment now,” LaGarde said.
Under the duress of Commin Core, students are analyzing passages without reading the whole book. They are getting read to do the same on the tests. This is a sure fire way to make reading a chore, not a pleasure.
The architect of the Common Core standards, David Coleman, used to claim all sorts of miraculous things that would happen, if everyone taught the way he wanted. Test scores would rise, achievement gaps would close, etc. in the decade after Commin Core was introduced in 2010, none of those miracles came to pass.
Coleman believed that children needed to interpret what was put in front of them, without context. Understand the four corners of the text in front of them. This may make sense for a test, where the only thing in front of the student is a short passage, but it’s no way to read for pleasure.
Worse, this approach is a sure fire way to turn reading into a dull exegesis of language, not into a source of joy.
We are living in a perilous that demonstrates the need for tenure and unions. With so many astroturf parent groups making spurious charges against public schools and their teachers, who will dare to stand up to bullies? In New Hampshire, it’s the president of the state AFTDeb Howes.
AFT-NH Statement on Bill on ‘Obscene Materials’ in K-12 and Higher Education Classes, Public Libraries
CONCORD, N.H.—The following is a statement from AFT-New Hampshire President Deb Howes on HB 514, a bill to provide a procedure for people to complain about so-called obscene materials in K-12 and higher education classes and public libraries but that does not even clearly define what would be considered obscene:
“For all intents and purposes, this legislation about the dissemination of obscene materials is a book ban bill. Incredibly, the bill’s sponsors don’t even have the guts to clearly define what would be considered obscene, so it’s really meant to intimidate teachers and deprive students—both school-aged and adults—of books that one person who files a complaint deems objectionable. It practically begs parents or guardians to complain about a particular book to their local school board in the case of public schools, opening the way to a chaotic free-for-all. For public universities, public libraries and museums, it adds the Department of Education to the agencies that can initiate legal hearings to find material ‘obscene’ after receiving anonymous citizen complaints. Higher education faculty actually could be arrested, charged and indicted if they are found to be using a book that is judged to be obscene, whatever that means.
“This is disgusting and meant to censor students’ education and deprive them of quality books. Book bans have no place in New Hampshire K-12, public libraries or higher education classes. We will fight vigorously to ensure that our students have the books they need to receive a well-rounded, honest education. We also will stand firm for the right to access the whole world of ideas through public libraries and universities.”
Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters seems to have absorbed all his talking points from ALEC, the rightwing bill mill or he may just be trying to duplicate whatever Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is doing. All the talking points are there about critical race theory, “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” the “science of reading,” the fear of students turning transgender or being recognized as such, the readiness to censor anything that mentions sexuality or gender, and of course, vouchers for home schoolers and religious schools.
Superintendent Walters adds another item to his “reform” agenda: pay for performance, which has been tried for a century and never worked anywhere. It is hard to find an educational program that has been more thoroughly discredited, especially in the past dozen years. Performance these days equals test scores, and the teachers in the most affluent schools always come out in top, while those who teach the most vulnerable children are always on the bottom. No need to reinvent that broken wheel. Even Republican legislators know instinctively that “performance,” defined as test scores favors those in the whitest, most advantaged schools.
John Thompson, historian and former teacher, writes:
Last week, rightwing Oklahoma Secretary of Education Ryan Walters tried to “Shove ‘Choice’ Down the Throats of Unwilling Schools and Parents,” but he received serious pushback by influential Republicans for ignoring legislative norms in budget-making. This week, Walters’ revealed more of his plans to divide and conquer public schools, while ramping up the stakes for educators who don’t comply with ambiguous and weird mandates. The response by numerous Republicans, however, seems to indicate that a bipartisan effort against Walters’ and Gov. Kevin Stitt’s extremism is growing.
Walters started the Board of Education meeting, where his budget was presented with a prayer, which included a “reference to his school choice goals.” He then condemned “a loud and vocal crowd, a minority for sure, that say that all that is needed to fix the problems in education is to toss more money and to leave everything alone.” Walters then promised:
“There will be school choice. We will ensure that indoctrination and CRT (critical race theory) are eliminated in our state. We will also make sure that our kids are safe. There will be no boys in the girls bathrooms. There will be no pornography in our schools. We will make sure all of our vendors and the schools are focused on education and not diversity, equity and inclusion.”
Then, Walters met with rural superintendents in Atoka, the home of the Republican Speaker of the House Charles McCall, who has opposed voucher expansion. Walters explained that his “incentive pay plan that would reward a select few highly rated teachers in each school with up to $10,000 on top of their salaries.”
Walters then complained that:
“Tulsa has done so poor that if you took Tulsa Public Schools out of what we’re doing, we’re in the top half nationally. If you take Tulsa and OKC out, we’re in the top 15.”
So, the Tulsa World reported that Walters said:
“He would be open to pushing for Tulsa Public Schools to be broken up into smaller schools because of academic results there he says are dismal and parents who complain they are locked in because they can’t afford private school tuition and suburban schools bursting at the seams.”
At the same time, Walters’ allies are revealing more options for punishing educators who don’t comply with confusing mandates. While Walters seems to be backing off from his suggestion that all federal education funds be rejected, Sen. David Bullard filed a bill to “develop a ten-year plan to phase out the acceptance and use of federal funds for the support of K-12 education.” Sen. Shane Jett would “add seven more prohibited topics to House Bill 1775, which bans eight race and gender concepts from K-12 schools.” Jett and Rep. Terry O’Donnell seek to ban “teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity to elementary-age children,” And Jett “would outlaw any school policies that respect or promote ‘self-asserted sex-based identity narratives,’” as well as hosting “drag queen story time.”
Moreover, Sen. Cody Rogers “would prohibit school employees from calling students by names or pronouns that differ from the students’ birth certificates, unless having received written consent from the child’s parent.” Rep. Danny Williams would completely ban sex education from public schools.
And the Tulsa World reported, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education responded to Walters’ “urgent request” to audit spending on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs. The Regents, “scrambled hundreds of employees to compile a 10-year review of its spending history on and current materials used for … DEI programs.” They found that DEI spending was “a third of 1%” of the budget.
But, on the eve of submitting his budget to the legislature, Walters, as well as his ally Gov. Stitt, faced more bad news. As the Oklahoman reports, Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who defeated Stitt’s appointee, John O’Conner, announced an “investigation into misspent education funds” which “hung over the state Capitol on Wednesday.” As an investigation by Oklahoma Watch and The Frontier found, Connors’ lawsuit led “some critics to question whether the lawsuit was an honest attempt to recoup the funds.” Consequently, The Oklahoman reported, “some high-ranking lawmakers appeared hesitant to heed funding requests from Oklahoma’s new state superintendent because of his alleged part in the controversy.” The reason was it was “a mix of Walters’s and Gov. Kevin Stitt’s staff, not a state agency [that] was overseeing the program.”
The Republican Chair of the House Appropriations and Budget subcommittee for Education, Mark McBride, said (and Speaker Charles McCall confirmed) he had been authorized to investigate the lawsuit, and was wrong in not doing so. But now, as Nondoc reports, A.G. Drummond said he “would pursue accountability for state officials, potentially including Walters owing to his prior role as director of an organization tasked with dispersing the funds.” (for what it’s worth McCall, a likely candidate for governor, attended the budget presentation.)
The Tulsa World added that Stitt had blamed the parent company of ClassWallet for the “unflattering audit of federal pandemic relief funds under Stitt’s control.” But, the audit was critical of how the Stitt administration spent $31 million to provide pandemic relief for students’ educational needs.”
Nondoc further explained that Walters’ presentation to the committee “took the opportunity with some of the lawmakers’ questions to expound on campaign rhetoric, including addressing questions regarding his ‘liberal indoctrination’ comments and past declarations to get federal funding out of Oklahoma public education.” And, his two-point plan, funding “science of reading” and pay-for-performance, drew plenty of criticism.
Republican Rhonda Baker, chair of the Common Education Committee, told Walters, “We have, as a legislative body, voted on the science of reading.” She added, “We’ve been very supportive of that, and we have made sure that there has been funding for that, so none of that is new. What is challenging, though, … is that we are not keeping teachers.”
Moreover, Democrat Rep. Andy Fugate said Walters performance pay plan would backfire by drawing teachers away from high-challenge schools and finding schools where “it’s easiest to teach.” Similarly, McBride said:
“Merit pay, I’m OK with it if you work in the oil field or some industry, but in education I just don’t see it working. … If you’ve got a classroom of troubled youth, how do you compare that to the classroom over here where the teacher’s got all the A and B students? It’s just almost impossible to me to evaluate that.”
I’ve heard mixed appraisals as to whether Walters really believes his own words. Regardless, as his ideology-driven claims become more extreme, it seems more likely that there will be more bipartisan pushback against Walters, Stitt, and MAGA true-believers. And, who knows, maybe it will open the door to Republican Adam Pugh’s bill, based on discussions with hundreds of superintendents and education leaders and over a thousand educators, that “would spend $241 million on teacher pay raises, guarantee 12 weeks of maternity leave for teachers and offer $15 million in scholarships to future educators who pledge to work in high-poverty schools,” while bestowing respect on teachers.
Sara Stevenson was a librarian in an Austin, Texas, middle school. The following opinion piece was published in the Fort Worth Telegram.
When schools went remote at the beginning of the coronavirus era, parents were briefly in awe at teachers’ patience and skills.
As schools remained closed and parents grew angry, educators quickly fell from grace, and 370,000 have left the profession since the beginning of the pandemic.
Even at that, school librarians experienced the steepest fall.
During my 15 years as a public middle-school librarian, I frequently received affirmation for my vocation to encourage young people to read.
But ever since then-Rep. Matt Krause of Fort Worth published a list of 750 questionable books in fall 2021, Texas librarians have been put on the defensive.
School librarians fully support parents’ rights to monitor their children’s reading choices. In fact, some parents use the selection of library books as a way to facilitate conversations and even read books together.
Problems arise when particular parents try to usurp this role from the professionally trained librarians and decide which books belong or don’t belong in the library — not just for their kids but for all children.
School librarians in Texas are required to hold master’s degrees (or be working towards them) as well as teaching certificates and are charged with curating their library collections.
Each school population has different age levels, interests, needs and community standards, and the librarian’s duty is to choose suitable titles while making sure many points of view are represented.
A book’s inclusion in a library is not a librarian’s endorsement of the content. The book is there to provide access and choice.
Now, several Texas House members have introduced bills that would directly affect school libraries.
House Bill 338, filed by Republican Rep. Tom Oliverson of Cypress, would skip the role of the librarian altogether by putting the onus directly on the book publishers. Under this measure, publishers would have to rate every book for age appropriateness and display these ratings on their covers.
The labels wouldn’t just rate for sexual content; they would even warn if a book might be too scary for a child younger than 7.
How can anyone possibly decide this for all children? How would Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” be rated? It has monsters, yes, but it’s also adorable.
The consequence for a publisher’s failure to include the rating would be that its books will not be available for school libraries to purchase.
This demand on private companies certainly seems like overreach, and it would significantly slow down the process of getting new books into the hands of eager readers.
And once again, we are faced with the question of who decides. Is it the publisher, who may be quite liberal or overly strict in standards? Will the publisher hire readers to count “dirty words” and “inappropriate” or “scary” scenes, or will the book be judged as a whole? Will every parent in every Texas community agree with these ratings? And why bypass the professional librarian in this process?
At the other end of the pendulum, we have House Bill 552 from Republican Rep. Ellen Troxclair of Austin. This law would remove the education protection clause, “repealing the affirmative defense to prosecution for the criminal offense of sale, distribution, or display of harmful material to a minor.”
This stems from the accusation that certain librarians are “groomers” for sexual deviancy.
This threat will affect the contents of libraries, causing librarians to self-censor and limit books with mature or controversial themes, LGBT characters or racial conflict.
Librarians cannot possibly read through every book acquired, so they will err on the side of safety and limit the choices of their students, especially when threatened with arrest.
During the last year and a half, I’ve watched clips of school board meetings that have been hijacked by Moms for Liberty and other organizations that ironically seek to curtail the liberty of students to select and parents to monitor their children’s reading choices.
When schools have to compete with Tik Tok and every new app that comes along to get children to read in the first place, this manufactured fight against libraries is not just misdirected but harmful.
If you want to protect kids from bad influences, take away their phones, not their library books.
Jeffrey Fleishman of the Los Angeles Times describes the assault on librarians by rightwing groups and parents who want to ban books. Across the country, but especially in red states, librarians are vilified as “the arm of Satan” by those who want to control what books are on the library shelves. If you want to read a concise summary of book-banning, read my book The Language Police, published by Knopf.
He writes:
In her time as a Texas school librarian, Carolyn Foote watched the image of her profession veer from “shrinking violets behind spectacles” cataloging titles to “pedophiles and groomers” out to pollute the minds of the nation’s youth.
“Librarians came from a climate of being so appreciated to hearing this message that we’re reviled,” said Foote, co-founder of Freadom Fighters, an advocacy group for librarians that has nearly 15,000 Twitter followers. “It was an astonishing turn of events.” A lot of librarians are asking themselves whether they want to remain in the profession, she added. “At least five people I know have retired early.”
Once a comforting presence at story circle and book fairs, librarians have been condemned, bullied and drawn into battles over censorship as school and library boards face intensifying pressure from conservatives seeking to ban books exploring racial and LGBTQ themes. Those voices have grown stronger in red states since the pandemic, when parental groups opposed to mask mandates expanded their sights and became more involved in how and what their children were taught.
Recent polls suggest most Americans are not in favor of banning books. But concentrated pressure by politically connected parental groups, said Peter Bromberg, a board member at EveryLibrary, a nonprofit library advisory group, “has librarians facing a great deal of stress. There are signs on people’s lawns calling librarians pedophiles.” They face pressure from principals and administrators over book displays, and “neighbors talk about them being an arm of Satan.”
The Patmos Library in Jamestown, Mich., which lost public funding after a campaign by conservatives, forcing it to rely on donations.
(Joshua Lott / Washington Post via Getty Images)
Some librarians are fighting back; others have lost or left their jobs. The culture wars over books come at a time when about 27% of public libraries have reduced staff because of budget cuts and other reasons, according to a 2021 national survey. Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozado, president of the American Library Assn., said librarians’ problems are compounded by attacks that are part of an effort “seeking to abolish diverse ideas and erode this country of freedom of expression. I see it as the dismantling of education.”
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A number of school board meetings in recent years have become explosive and emblematic of the country’s political animosities. Parents yell, boo, shake fists and hold up sexually graphic images in dramas that play out on social media. Similar scenes have erupted at public libraries, including at the Patmos Library in western Michigan, where at least two librarians have quit amid pressure and harassment from residents demanding the removal of LGBTQ books and young adult graphic novels.
(Joshua Lott / Washington Post via Getty Images)
At the library’s December board meeting, librarian Jean Reicher denounced critics a week after the building closed early over fears for the staff’s safety. She said that signs around town labeled her a pedophile and that she’d received abusive phone calls and had iPhones pointed at her. Her emotional retort came a month after a campaign led by conservatives succeeded in defunding the library, forcing it to rely on donations.
“We have been threatened. We have been cursed,” said Reicher. “How dare you people. You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me. You have said I’ve sexualized your children. I’m grooming your children.”
She raised her hands. Her anger welled.
“I have six grandkids out there,” she said, ticking off the offenses aimed at her. “I moved to this town 2½ years ago, and I regret it every day for the last year. This has been horrible,” she continued. “I wasn’t raised this way. I believe in God. I’m a Catholic. I’m a Christian. I’m everything you are.”
School and library boards are encountering demands from conservative lawmakers and parental groups, such as Moms for Liberty and Mama Bears Rising, and in a few instances the far-right extremist group the Proud Boys, to scour libraries of what they consider upsetting pornographic and LGBTQ depictions. Many conservatives criticize schools as overrun with progressive ideas that are confusing children about race and gender.
“By exposing our children to adult concepts such as gender identity we are asking them to carry a load that is much too heavy for them,” Kit Hart, a Moms for Liberty member, said in a video posted last year from a school board meeting in Carroll County, Md. “A 10-year-old should not be reduced to his sexuality.”
A video posted on the Moms for Liberty website shows another one of its members outlining her concerns at a public meeting in Mecklenburg, N.C.: “Parents beware of terms like social justice, diversity, equity, inclusion. Those inherently good things are being used to disguise a biased political agenda,” she said. “Our schools are becoming indoctrination camps and a breeding ground for hatred and division.”
Florida and other states have placed tougher restrictions on books that schools can stock. A Missouri law passed last year makes it a crime for a school to provide sexually explicit material to a student. After a discrimination complaint filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating a Texas school district after a superintendent directed librarians to remove LGBTQ-related books.
“We have been thrown to the forefront of the cultural wars whether we want to be there or not,” said Amanda Jones, a middle school librarian in Livingston Parish, La., who last year broke out in hives and fell into depression after she was threatened for speaking against censorship. “It’s not fun to be vilified in your small town or the country at large. It’s all related to their using political fear and outrage. And they’re using children to do it.”
Jones was skewered by conservative activists, including Citizens for a New Louisiana, after she warned at a library meeting that “hate and fear disguised as moral outrage have no place in Livingston Parish.” A picture of her appeared online with a red circle around her head — resembling a target — and she was called a pig and a supporter of teaching anal sex to 11-year-olds. Someone suggested she should be slapped.
Martha Hickson, a high school librarian in Annandale, N.J., endured similar stress and said she lost 12 pounds in one week after she was accused by a parent at a school board meeting of being a groomer by providing graphic novels and memoirs, such as “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe and “Lawn Boy” by Jonathan Evison, that could influence children toward “heinous acts.”
“What really stung was that my name was used in that context,” said Hickson, 63,whoin 2020 received the American Assn. of School Librarians’ Intellectual Freedom Award. “It was devastating. I broke down and I couldn’t stop crying.” She couldn’t catch her breath, she said, and “couldn’t speak in full sentences. I cracked two teeth from grinding and was fitted with a night guard. I go to the pool now and swim three times a week. It washes the stress away.”
Jessica Brassington, head of the Texas-based Mama Bears Rising, which advocates for increased parental oversight in education, said her intent is not to rebuke librarians or teachers but to get stricter state guidelines on selecting school books in what she sees as a broader war against her Christian faith.
“We want to protect our children. We’ve seen the dark side of what can happen beyond the book. Suicide. Alienation,” said Brassington, whose organization has pressed for the removal of books in school districts and warned against children being indoctrinated by an “evil” sexual agenda.“We want to know what books are available to our children. … The parents are being bypassed.”
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Calls to ban certain books in schools have arisen for generations among liberal and conservative parents, educators and activist groups. Classics such as Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” have been pulled from reading lists. Books deemed to be obscene such as “The Catcher in the Rye” and “Tropic of Cancer” were censored for decades. In the 1980s, well-funded and organized groups like the Christian right Moral Majority condemned books on secular humanism.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has pushed laws to restrict school instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation.
(Paul Hennessy / SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Those battles echo today and have accelerated as religious conservatives and right-leaning politicians, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have backed bills to limit school instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation. Of the 1,648 titles banned in schools across the country in the 2021-22 school year, according to a PEN America study, 41% had prominent LGBTQ characters or explicitly explored LGBTQ themes.
“It’s hard to compare this to anything other than the Red Scare in the 1950s,” said Foote, a retired high school librarian of 29 years who was named a Champion of Change by President Obama. “There’s nothing else remotely close to this.”
Open the link and read the rest of the article. It might be behind a paywall. I subscribe to the Los Angeles Times. It’s a terrific newspaper.
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