Banning books is hardly a new occurrence and people have been riled up about it for decades.
Parents pay taxes to fund their public schools. They absolutely have a right to voice concerns about books in those schools. Schools are administered locally. What parents in San Francisco want read/available in their school libraries may not be the same as what parents want read/available in Norman, Oklahoma. We don’t have nationally run schools in this country nor do we have a nationally mandated curriculum. Tennessee is an excellent example. The book Maus will not be read as part of the 8th grade Holocaust curriculum and other books will be used instead bc parents had issues with language and nudity in the book but it’s not being banned from the school overall.
That said, I think there should be a review process which parents use in conjunction with the schools to voice concerns about books and determine what should and should not be available at the elementary, middle and high school libraries.
Also, as many posters have pointed out banned books are available via the internet as well as public libraries, Amazon and bookstores.
We know we don’t have a nationally mandated curriculum. The argument people are making is that we should. And these local issues highlight precisely why.
Of course, this means that the College Board, ACT, and (to a lesser extent in the US) IBO have become somewhat national curricular guides, at least for most* high schools trying to get their students into college, due to desire to have students do well on the tests used for college admission and placement. But then that could mean culture wars regarding the content of (for example) AP US history and AP US government.
*Other than perhaps a few academically elite schools that choose to have their own advanced curricula, or which cater to students who want more advanced material than the “normal advanced” college frosh level material, or which are academically specialized niche schools.
I’m not as concerned about students going to college. When McMinn County residents insisted on teaching creationism in their public schools (all the way up until 1968. Thanks, Supreme Court!), it wasn’t the students going to college who were the most impacted.
Each state wants to teach local history for a start. California history is not the same as Massachusetts history. Are you going to forbid Utah from teaching about the great trek? Or force every other state to learn about it? Neither is feasible.
Not to mention that federal powers in this area are strictly limited. So in any case this is purely a matter for the states. If they want to exert more power over local school boards then they can.
Not only do they want to teach it, sometimes it is a state law. I know in Colorado they have to do both US history and Colorado govt/history in grade school. In Wyoming, even college students have to take Wyoming history or govt and take a test on it. Even dance majors and engineers and nurses.
I have read George, Lawn Boy and Grown. In my opinion, Grown was the best of the three. It included rape, violence, alcohol, but it was mostly about the abuse and abduction of underage girls. Lawn Boy was OK, not my favorite book, but not bad. I do have some concerns about George and it being targeted towards younger readers who may not be mature enough for the content. By high school, kids should have access to most everything, but still some things are for adult grown-ups over age 18. We don’t let high schoolers access internet porn. There are some limits.
I don’t believe in limits or censorship. Public spaces can’t cater to the whims/preferences of a narrow group. Just because you don’t want your child exposed to LGBT themes, doesn’t mean you should be able to prevent others from accessing those materials.
When my kids were younger, we didn’t restrict their reading materals. There was one instance where my daughter started to read a horror novel from our shelves that she was probably too young to read. But we let her figure it out.
With the same daughter, in 7th grade she had some book on queens of England (I don’t think it was part of the Royal Diaries but it might have) that she let a friend borrow. The friend’s mom looked at part and was so offended that she confiscated the book and didn’t even give it back to us.
I’m with you. I let one of my sons read Khaled Hosseini’s “A Thousand Splendid Suns” for a book report, and the teacher was upset/concerned he would talk about a rape scene in his oral report. This was a 13 year old boy – while he was emotionally ready to read that book, and that scene, I guarantee you he would never get up in class and go into that scene! He would have been mortified!
