Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
American society has entered a dangerous phase. School libraries are being forced to remove books based on the views of even a single parent—or nonparent—that they are inappropriate for children.
I understand parents’ desire to govern what their own child is exposed to—though in today’s world, a child brought up with computers can find just about anything. As Thomas Friedman said in a recent column, “We’re debating whether to ban books at the dawn of a technology that can summarize or answer questions about virtually every book for everyone everywhere in a second.”
Despite their futility, the efforts of some in this country to ban books because they personally find them offensive are alarming. School systems from all over the country are banning books, from “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” to “To Kill a Mockingbird,” because they contain crude language or concepts that some find offensive.
I wrote on this topic a couple of months ago. In the intervening two-month period, the situation has only become worse.
Most readers recall Amanda Gorman, the nation’s first-ever youth poet laureate, who at age 22 recited her poem “The Hill We Climb” at President Biden’s inauguration. No matter what one’s politics, it was uplifting to see this serenely confident young woman recite a poem about hope for the future and calling on all to reach out and build bridges between groups to make our country better.
The poem, which she read cheerfully and with evident hope, included this line: “If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.”
And this: “We know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation; our blunders become their burdens. But one thing is certain: If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.”
The poem is a beautiful challenge to today’s young people to live lives of mercy and hope, so that their children’s futures will be brighter. I would suggest this is a poem every child should have the opportunity to read.
But a single adult’s complaint about the poem caused the Miami-Dade (Florida) school district to remove it from an elementary school library. Ironically, the adult first demonstrated confusion about the author, claiming it was Oprah Winfrey. Answering the question, “Why do you object to the material?” The complainant answered, “Is not educational and have indirectly hate messages[sic].” Answering, “What do you believe is the function of the material?”, the person said, “Cause confusion and indoctrinate students.” It seems to me that the only person confused by the poem is the complainant. Nonetheless, the poem is out.
Now book-banning is coming to a school near you. Near the end of the legislative session, a conference committee slipped into an unrelated bill language that had stalled in the Indiana House due to expressed concerns about free speech and book-banning. Now school librarians can be prosecuted for stocking books that some interpret as “material harmful to minors”—a vague statutory definition that was previously reserved for pornography or near-pornography.
This means a single adult can force the removal of a book even though most parents might disagree. And the school can’t defend itself on the basis that the book has educational value.
Under threat of prosecution, school districts will remove books that might have true educational value for students.
Is this America, the world’s most vigorous defender of free speech? Doesn’t look that way.•
__________
Daniels, an attorney with Krieg DeVault LLP, is a former U.S. attorney, assistant U.S. attorney general, and president of the Sagamore Institute. Send comments to ibjedit@ibj.com.
Click here for more Forefront columns.
Editor’s note: This column has been updated to correct the name of the poet who recited her poem at President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.
Sometimes I read an article and particularly an opinion piece and think, There has To Be More To This Story.
The more is Republican Party’s lack of a substantive platform that instead focuses on culture war issues. They are working very to make themselves irrelevant to all but their brainwashed hardcore base.
Specious argument as most of the books involved aren’t To Kill a Mockingbird, Huck Finn, or similar titles. No one is banning books; what’s happening is people are wising up to age-inappropriate content and teachers touting personal ideologies. You can still go buy it and give it to YOUR 3rd grader if YOU choose. So called “book bans” are a canard the left trots out when someone brings up inappropriate materials in school libraries. Not content with giving inappropriate content to their own kids, the left instead insists on inflicting it on other people’s children.
There’s a lot of books out there that are age inappropriate, sexual and otherwise. Perhaps you can regale us with why books such as Lawn Boy, with it’s sexually explicit scenes and allusions to pedophilia, belong in a grade school library? Or perhaps you would like to post the sexually explicit illustrations from Gender Queer, a book also found in grade school and Jr. High libraries, on the front page of the IBJ? Why not just be honest with people Deb, and post the top ten “banned books’ in 2023. It won’t fit your narrative and there isn’t a Harper Lee or Mark Twain authored book on the list.
Thank you for the very well balanced article on book-banning.
It’s fascinating to see all the media attention on censorship focused on this relatively minor area of book banning, while meanwhile the FBI and other federal agencies are directing tech platforms to ban accurate speech – election reporting, pandemic reporting … the list goes on. But yeah, let’s “look over there” and focus on book banning, while the intelligence state polices our national discourse and selects our presidents. Eyes on the prize!