PA: Senate Proposes Guide To School's Naughty Bits

SB 7, proposed in April and just last week passed by the Pennsylvania senate, is definitely not the worst Naughty Book bill passed. It is certainly an improvement over its previous iterations. Certainly better than I'd expect in a bill co-sponsored by Doug Mastriano. It's goal is to give parents "control" over what their kids read. I suspect one of its major effects will be to demonstrate the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Much of the debate about this bill is hyperbolic. It's not the worst bill ever passed on the topic, but it's still a bad bill.

It gets one thing very right--under this bill parents can have a book restricted for their own child, but not for everyone else's. So, cheers for that.

What it gets particularly wrong is that it requires an opt-in-- no books with any naughty bits unless you have a note from a parent, so right off the bat we have an issue for divorced parents and parents who do a lousy job of returning school paperwork. Opt-in has the ugly effect of making restrictions on a students' reading the default. 

The law would require the opt-in form to have a very specific and somewhat sensationalized list of things that could be in the naughty books that you're green lighting for your child. The definition of "sexually explicit content" is rather vague:

Materials that contain visual or visually implied depictions of sexual conduct or simulations of sexual conduct. Materials that contain explicit AND EXCESSIVE written descriptions of sexual conduct. Materials that contain visual depictions of nudity accessible to minors in kindergarten through grade eight.

Some of this is doing heavy lifting. What would a "visually implied depiction of sexual conduct" be, exactly? And does the existence and restriction of an "excessive" depiction of sexual conduct imply that there is a "just enough" depiction of sexual conduct that would be okay? Even "visual depiction of nudity" is a fuzzy term--how unclothed must one be to qualify as nude? 

But "sexually explicit content" is basically anything that shows "sexual conduct," and that has a definition of its own:

Acts of masturbation, sexual intercourse, sexual bestiality or physical contact with a person's clothed or unclothed genitals, pubic area, buttocks or, if the person is a female, breast.

And yes, as usual, the bill could be used to restrict access to many classic of literature and also the Bible.

The part of the bill requiring an alternative assignment for students who don't opt in sounds like a good idea. I've done the same thing in my class. But practically speaking, it's not particularly practical. Will the school be required to follow the students around and make sure that they don't get a peek at their classmates' copy of Slaughterhouse Five while in lunch? The end result of this is to harness the power of peer pressure in favor of the forbidden fruit. "All my friends are reading Song of Solomon" is way more compelling than "My teacher assigned Song of Solomon." (This, I suspect, is something the "ban this book for all students" crowd understands.)

The most unfortunate part of this bill is that the Venn Diagram of "students who really need to get some information about sex stuff" and "students whose parents forbid them to get information about sex stuff" has far too much overlap. As State Senator Amanda Capelletti put it “We all like to believe that every child grows up in a family that loves and values them for exactly who they are. We know that unfortunately, is not true. The kids who need books that explore gender identity and sexual orientation, are the most likely ones whose parents are denying them and their communities the right to learn from these books."

The gigantic time-sucking nuisance part of the bill is this one:

The opt-in form must include a list of book titles and materials scheduled to be used as part of curriculum and class discussion or available within the school that meet the definition of sexually explicit content.

Yes, the school must send home a list of every book in the school building that has any naughty parts in it. Presumably this will be a summer special contract for some teachers, who will kick the hunt off with professional development addressing what qualifies as "implied" depictions of sex, how much sexual content is excessive (as opposed to an okay amount), and what constitutes nudity. 

Then they will append this list to the opt-in form, making it the largest piece of paperwork any school ever sent home. 

So every district in PA will be creating and circulating a list of all its books with naughty parts. That's going to be a great tool for the people who want to descend on the district to demand an actual book ban. They'll be waving this list in meetings and declaring that if a work is on the list, it shouldn't be in the school. 

But if you've ever taught in a secondary school setting, I'll bet you can think of some other people who will find a use for the list. Yes, I predict the List Of All The Dirty Books In Our District will be popular among students interested in getting their rebellion on. It will die down pretty quickly once they discover that the Naughty Books aren't nearly as titillating as they expected. This plan reads like a bizarre new way to compete with the internet-- it's so easy to find naughty content on the internet, so let's make an index to make it easier to find in our school. 

This is not the worst bill of this type to ever appear, but it's still a silly bill, a bill that is far more useful as a political gesture than as an actual tool for schools and educators.