READ BEFORE BANNING
Recently I was talking to someone about education. Before long, he was lecturing me on critical race theory, sex education, Marxism (apparently, it isn’t enough to just smear something as “communist” these days) and something called a “woke” curriculum, which he couldn’t actually define. Then he launched into libraries.
Parents should have control over what their kids read, he said. And if that means banning certain books from libraries, so be it.
I was a little taken aback. “Like what books?”
He rattled off a half dozen, only two of which I’d actually heard of.
“Have you read any of them?” I asked.
Now it was his turn to look shocked. “Of course not!” he said. “Why should I? Everybody knows they’re bad for kids.”
“Well, maybe you should,” I replied. “That way, find out for yourself.”
By now he was turning red and starting to stammer. Then I asked him a far more important question.
“So Bill (his name’s not really Bill), what was the last book you read?”
His stammering stopped, and he just stared at me. “Come on Bill,” I said. “You can remember all those Facebook and Twitter posts. But how about your last book?”
He turned and stormed away. The reason was pretty obvious. Bill couldn’t remember his last book.
Maybe I take all of this differently than most people. I grew up in a family where the act of reading was considered almost sacred. My Father was the first in his family to graduate from high school. I was the second.
My Mother was fortunate enough to complete college. Both she and my father were emphatic that reading was the most important single factor in determining where you ended up in life. Yes, they recommended plenty of books, but their message to me was much more basic.
Read every damn book you can get your hands on.
No matter the author, no matter the subject. Read. And keep reading. Then talk about it.
They trusted that if I read enough diverse opinions by enough diverse authors, I could sort out the contradictions on my own. The local library was my source of knowledge (thank you, Miss Marie Ohlhausen). The idea that any book would be “banned” there was simply out of the question.
The last thing my parents cared about was preventing me from reading.
My, how times have changed.
Recently, armed protesters demanded that an Idaho library remove over 300 books from its shelves. Turns out, none were even in the library.
Florida banned over 50 math books because they were somehow connected to critical race theory. What’s race got to do with math? Beats me. Ask Ron DiSantis.
Closer to my home in Nebraska, a story about a York County farm family was selected by The Nebraska Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Library of Congress, for its “One Book Nebraska” award.
The award was never presented.
Why? Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts refused to issue the necessary proclamation. According to the Governor, the book’s author, Ted Genoways, had been critical of President Trump and was an “activist.”
Activist? There goes any award to Carl Sandburg, Sinclair Lewis, John Steinbeck, or for that matter, anyone describing the teachings of Jesus Christ.
And what did the Governor have to say about the book itself, “This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm?” Nothing. He never read it.
Sadly, this has been going on for centuries. A lot of it doesn’t make much sense. George Orwell’s classic “1984” was banned in the Soviet Union because it was deemed anti-communist. Some libraries in Texas and Florida have taken it off the shelves because they viewed it as pro-communist. Some books have been banned in certain areas for being anti-black, and in others for being anti-white.
Book banners of all political persuasions frequently lift a single passage out of a text, ignore the book as a whole, and demand the book be removed. I’ve read a book many times that vividly describes rape, torture, incest, and murder. It’s called the Bible. Should we ban it?
Sorry, but reading a book by Karl Marx won’t turn you into a communist. Reading a book by Ayn Rand won’t turn you into a fascist. Reading about a gay kid won’t make your kid gay. Reading the Bible won’t make you a Christian.
What books will do is make you think. The rest is up to you.
And if our world has a shortage of anything these days, it’s critical thinking. Instead of removing books, we should be encouraging one another to read and write more.
Recently, the Grand Island (Nebraska) Northwest High School journalism class published an article in their school paper The Viking Saga. The piece titled History of Pride was sandwiched between articles on the school’s FBLA program success and the local skeet-shooting club. Unfortunately, an LGBTQ article was too much for local authorities.
Not only did they shut down the school paper, they cancelled the entire journalism program. So much for critical thinking.
But this is exactly the sort of thing book banners do.
So here’s a suggestion. The next time you might be inclined to ban a book, try reading it first. Then make up your own mind.
It might just surprise you.
All great, Dr. Frey. At the risk of being accurately accused of spreading Facebook memes, exposing children to ideas with which you disagree is not indoctrination. Exposing them to only the ideas with which you agree is the definition of indoctrination!
Excellent point Josh. And it happens all too often. We unfortunately see the impact of such narrow thinking every day
As always, you are right on. Do you have a list that you send your blog to?
Thank you Cella. The post goes out to anyone who signed up to a previous post And unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of issues to write about.
Loved Marie Ohlhausen!
Hello Karen. Yes, she was someone very special.
Another great article I have enjoyed reading. I, like you, read everything I could from the school and local library.
Thank you Sheryl. That’s how we all learned about the world in those days, wasn’t it?
The whole “Critical Race Theory” stuff is bafflingly stupid, even by today’s standards.
I first learned of CRT as a law professor in the 1990’s. Now, I don’t agree with every piece of it, but its principal goal was to shed light on seemingly neutral legal rules that de facto discriminate. One of its biggest successes was in revising the federal sentencing guidelines regarding crack and powder cocaine.
For reasons I don’t know, whites generally prefer powder and blacks prefer crack — choosing, of course, from the universe of cocaine users (not one, I’ve never tried it). Because of the way the guidelines were written, those using crack got vastly longer sentences for ingesting the same amount of active ingredient.
With a lot of pushing, the guidelines were drastically revised.
CRT also looks for racial themes in literature and legal opinions that might not be obvious.
But it’s NOT (and never has been) about making a 6th grader feel bad about his or her race. It’s not an elementary (or even undergraduate) field.
I recall hearing last year at the Nebraska Bar Association a very interesting talk by a black lawyer who does consulting with big law firms about how to diversify. The common refrain is that “we hire lots of minority junior lawyers, but they never seem to work out.”
So one of the first things he does is he divides the partners (senior lawyers) into two groups and asks them to evaluate a draft brief as if they were looking at the work of a junior lawyer. What he doesn’t tell them is that they’re all getting the same brief. But one brief has a picture and a very “white name.” The other has a picture of a minority and a non-white name.
On average, the white brief scores about 4 out of 5 and the non-white brief (remember, same brief) scores 3 out of 5 and readers of the non-white brief identify typographical, formatting, and citation errors at three times the rate.
No wonder the junior minority lawyers don’t “work out.”
Great points, Pat. And it works that way in many other areas, too. When researchers sent identical job resumes out to several prospective employers, applications with the first names “Conner” and Tiffany” got called for an interview 50% more often than the same applications from “Jamal” and “Lakesha.” I once wrote a piece comparing all of the irrational concern about CRT to trying to chase away elephants.
https://afamilydoctorlooksattheworld.com/critical-race-theory-and-chasing-away-elephants/
I hadn’t seen your post on CRT, so thanks for that. By the way, the Supreme Court is going to outlaw affirmative action for all governmental entities, and for those who take federal funds (e.g., private universities). It will happen this Term. This is from the guy who claimed that the Supreme Court would overrule Roe and Casey (“that will never happen!” I heard more times than I can count). I also predicted that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) would be mostly upheld by the Supreme Court, with Roberts (not Kennedy) being the swing vote.
But hey, what do I know?
Thanks, Pat. I certainly won’t disagree with any prediction you make, based on your track record. At this point in time, it seems we have at least 4 justices who can rationalize even the most blatantly political decision they make, and do it with a straight; a fifth who is almost at that level, but not quite; and a chief justice who seems like a deer in the headlights, wondering how the hell did we wind up here? Looking at polling data, it appears America’s trust in SCOTUS is falling faster than Donald Trump’s trousers. It’s hard to be optimistic at this point.
Do you believe there are any books that should not be allowed in K-12 school libraries? I’ve seen some LGBT materials have been found in school libraries, as close as Iowa, that are quite pornographic, but are justified as helping young LGBT people feel validated.
Great question. Here are my thoughts, for what they’re worth.
Anything in school should be age appropriate. We teach arithmetic in first grade, but not calculus. It seems sex education should be no different.
Gay or straight doesn’t seem to be the issue, that I can see. It’s the level of information. If you’d shown me films of gay or straight sex when I was in first grade, I would have fainted. On the other hand, if you had told me “some guys like girls, and some guys like guys” I probably would have said, “OK. Now how much longer until recess?”
The other question is whether the material is salacious or pornographic–that is, is it meant purely to stir up sexual feelings and not to be educational?
Also, how does the level of information fit in to what kids already know and see? This obviously varies widely. But now, a time when anyone smart enough to use a mouse and keyboard can access unlimited sexual content, is vastly different than when I was in school. When I read Norman Mailer’s “The Naked and the Dead” when I was 14, I’m sure some of my teachers would have thought it was pornographic. Now, years later, I don’t remember much about the language and sex. I just remember the horrors of war.
So I guess that’s it. Gay or straight doesn’t matter. Is it age appropriate? Is it overly graphic or salacious, regardless of whether it refers to gay sex or straight sex? How does it relate to the world the kids live in–which certainly could vary from region to region? But then again, the internet isn’t region specific, so I don’t know.
Finally, is this something that’s taught in a class to everyone, or something only a kid who knew exactly what he wanted to know and had specific questions would know how to access? I think that’s important, too.
No easy answers. Just food for thought.
Thanks, Bob. Don
Books allow for the mind to consider both pros and cons of issues in a more relatable context and therefore to better understand both the pros and cons.
The number one priority of dictators has been to control media (written and otherwise) to discourage any free thoughts which challenge the dictators control. Ignorance is often the cataylist enabling control without challenges.
I see book banners the same way, they fear that their beliefs would not survive without ensuring ignorance about other beliefs.
The book Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury seems to be very relateable to the subject of banning books.
Thanks Chris. And it’s no surprise that Fahrenheit 451 is usually on the list of books most widely banned in schools.
Great article
Thank you,Helen. I hope all is well in Weston.
Good to know.