PA: Going After Climate Change Porn

Wiser heads have pushed back in Kutztown, but it's worth noticing how the boundaries of what kinds of books students must be protected from just keep expanding.

Kutztown schools have a cool annual tradition, the One Boo, One School program, in which every student in every class reads a selected book, thereby allowing for all sorts of projects and discussion and shared educational experience, including a meeting with the author, and it's one of those things that makes me wish I could go back to the classroom to pitch it at my own school.

Only this year's program was almost scrubbed because some of the new conservative members didn't like the book choice.

Too much sexualized content? LGBTQ stuff? 

Nope. Climate change.

The book selected was Two Degrees, by popular teen lit author Alan Gratz. It's a sort of disaster/adventure story featuring teen characters who must navigate a world that has become hostile due to climate change. So readers get adventure stuff and also discussion of climate change issues. 

Board member Jason Koch did not like this idea. 

“We’ve gone through a couple of years where fear was used to shape our students’ perspectives,” he said. “Is that a good thing to continue as we talk about climate change, using a fear-driven book? Do we want our children to look at us in the way we live in this community and say it’s wrong?”

I'll give him credit for articulating what drives so much of these attempts to limit students' reading rights-- what if our children look at some aspect of our lives and say it's wrong--but not much else. 

And so, reported the Philadelphia Inquirer, the program was axed:

The district superintendent, Christian Temchatin, had already called off the “One Book, One School” program before that board meeting, after some teachers told him they didn’t want to get dragged into a political controversy over a program intended to promote literacy. Call it a different kind of dangerous “climate change”: a political climate in which global warming is now joining racism and LGBTQ issues as under fire by culture warriors who don’t want young minds exposed to debate around such ideas.

That was a few months ago. Since then, the progressive grassroots organization Red Wine & Blue raised money to buy 200 copies to give away to Kutztown students. Gratz heard about the cancellation, and arranged to have a meet-and-greet at a local bookstore, with two signing events happening last Saturday.

“The reason I’m writing these books is because kids are asking me to write about these topics,” Gratz told me. “We always want to say we’re trying to protect children by keeping these kind of things from them, but honestly the world is coming at kids faster than before. The kids have been going through active shooter drills since kindergarten” and have also been exposed to debates over tough issues like racism at a young age. The world is coming at them, he said, “and I hope that books like mine can give them a way of seeing what’s happening in the world without having to experience it just yet.”

May 16 is election day in Pennsylvania, and in Kutztown, with several seats open on the board, the contest is heating up. On one side, a slate from the Concerned Citizens of KASD, who call for banning what it called “critical race theory” as well as diversity programs in the Kutztown schools, and which has been showing up at board meetings with signs like, “We Do Not Co-Parent With the Government.” On the other side, KOFEE (Kutztown Organized for Educational Excellence) running on an “Open Books, Open Minds” platform. Four KOFEE candidates were at the book signings Saturday.

Again, none of this was sparked by alleged porn or CRT or SEL or any of the ideas already on the Naughty List. Just climate change. The list of ideas that some folks want to hide from children just gets longer and longer.