A Taxonomy of Book Restrictions

For the last year or two the term "book banning" has done a great deal of heavy lifting. There are a variety of policies and tactics being used to regulate books, and they are not created equal. If the debate comes to your town, it's useful to know exactly which debate you're involved in.

I want control over what my kid reads

This usually involves a call for some mechanism to monitor what the student takes out; not that hard in a digitized era to allow parents to see what their child has checked out of the library. Also not that hard to flag certain books so that if the child tries to take it out. 

Note: this is not great parenting, and it is only going to actually work if your child has no friends. Mostly it will draw a big "Look At Me" arrow on your disfavored books, while encouraging your child to become adept at keeping secrets from you. But you do you.

There should be a review process for adding books.

There probably is. Your school's library doesn't have infinite space and your school's teachers don't have infinite hours, so choices must be made. Much of the protests around this issue are really protesting the "how" of the review, or the fact that "review" doesn't mean "block all books that have Naughty Things in them." 

There's no reason to fight against a review process (in fact, it's way better than administrators just quietly yanking any book they think will lead to cranky phone calls to their office). The real issue here is what the process will look like and whether it will involve the judgment of education professionals and the concerns of parents, or whether it will involve a checklist of Scary Things that some folks object to. So pay attention to what folks want the review process to look like.

You can't teach that to my kid.

I taught 11th graders, and in the AP class we taught some works that were definitely beyond PG, and I always gave students the option of opting out and taking an alternative assignment. It's not a big deal. Not for the student who doesn't want to encounter Certain Words. Not for the student who lost a family member recently in a manner too much like an event depicted in the book. 

You can't teach that.

Some debates have been over what may or may not be included in the curriculum. For one thing, after so many schools have pushed to drop teaching whole books so that more time can be devoted to test-prep excerpts, it's kind of refreshing to be talking about actual books. For another thing, on the surface this is not that big a deal; with very few exceptions, if you tell me I can't teach X any more, I could come up with a suitable substitute (probably from my list of "Things I Would Teach If I Had More Time"). 

However, once again, process matters a great deal. This kind of curricular horseplay can reveal a great deal about the weaknesses of building administration. When an administrator walks into your room and announces, "You're not going to teach that book any more," it delivers several messages. It disrespects and disregards your professional judgment. It demonstrates that you are not seen as part of a team, but just as a flunky to be ordered around. And, if your administrator turns out to be doing this because of one or two phone calls--or worse yet, zero phone calls but he doesn't want to risk it--then it also demonstrates that administration does not possess enough spine to have your back. And if, God forbid, he's doing it because the book offends him personally, then he's totally lost the plot and you are in professional danger.

You can't teach that to any student.

Now we're into problematic territory, because the people yelling at your board or your principal or you (and it does always seem to yelling, doesn't it) are trying to make decisions for other peoples' children.

If you have known a religious conservative in your life, you may understand that there's a sliver of reasoning behind this, which is the notion that a nation is blessed or falls because of how all its citizens behave. It's an Old Testament kind of view, a notion that a nation has to keep all its people in line or else God is going to punish everyone for allowing That Sort Of Thing Go On. So there is, potentially, more going on here than simply a desire to control everyone else.

But also, there's a powerful desire to control everyone else. This is when it's useful to remember that plenty of folks on the far right do not actually believe in democracy, but instead believe that legitimacy in government comes from alignment with the proper rules. That's why advocates for this level include plenty of people who don't even have actual children in the school.

Additionally, only a monster would oppose Scholastic book fairs. 

You can't let any students even see that stuff. 

This is the "pull from the library" level, where the rationale is that no child should even lay eyes on the book or be exposed to the ideas because that will, somehow, warp their young minds. Also, That Stuff (variously described over the years as evolution, immoral mixing of the races, critical race theory, LGBTQ stuff and evil indoctrinatin') needs to be stamped out of society entirely, starting by raising kids to not know that such things are in the world, a technique that has not actually worked ever in the history of the world. 

Consider the words of Adrenne Quinn Martin at the Granbury, Texas board meeting:

Being a taxpayer does not grant special privileges over students, staff, and parents. I do not want random people with no education background or experience determining what books my child can read, what curriculum they learn, and what clubs they can join. Just because you can get up at every meeting and rant and rave does not give you authority over my child’s education.

Your personal religious beliefs, people in this room and on this board, should not have an effect on my child’s education either. Our school are not to be used for personal political agendas and our children are here for education, not religious indoctrination.

I implore the board to put an end to attempts to appease these extremists. Focus on retaining staff, providing excellent public education and a safe and welcoming learning space for all students. The speakers speaking about what great Christians they are? Great. Go tell your pastor. Our schools are not your church.

You can't let anyone see it. Nobody.

This special level is the one where they go after public libraries in the community. There is zero justifiable reasoning behind this. It makes roughly as much sense as demanding that the internet be outlawed. It is dumb, as dumb as insisting that since you don't think people should eat grapefruit, everyone should be forced to pretend that grapefruit doesn't exist. Insisting that there is just one acceptable view of life is one level of dumb, but trying to enforce that view by getting rid of books is an even greater level. 

By all means, be a responsible steward of your child's experience. Work to be the best judge of what they are and aren't ready for, even as you remain open the possibility that they will surprise you from time to time. But when you try to forcibly curate a particular reality for everyone else, you are over the line. You cannot force people to see the world a certain way, and the very attempt is just plain wrong.