Accusations of left-wing free-speech authoritarianism — whether through corporate restrictions, the state targeting “misinformation,” the shouting down of dissent in universities or the canceling of dissenting voices — are well-documented. Attempting to even the ledger, liberals have begun alleging that conservatives are engaging in “book bans” in public school districts.
The newest outrage on this front comes from a ProPublica investigation in which Superintendent Jeremy Glenn of Granbury Independent School District in North Texas is taped saying chilling things like: “I don’t want a kid picking up a book, whether it’s about homosexuality or heterosexuality, and reading about how to hook up sexually in our libraries.” (“Minutes later,” reports ProPublica, “after someone asked whether titles on racism were acceptable, Glenn said books on different cultures ‘are great.'”)
ProPublica repeatedly refers to the efforts of a volunteer committee set up to review titles as a “book ban.” This is a category mistake. Public school curriculum and book selection are political questions decided by school boards. Schools have no duty to carry every volume liberals demand.
Here are some examples:
“The three books the committee voted to remove were ‘This Book Is Gay,’ a coming out guide for LGBTQ teens by transgender author Juno Dawson that includes detailed descriptions of sex; ‘Out of Darkness’ by Ashley Hope Perez, a young adult novel about a romance between a Mexican American girl and a Black boy that includes a rape scene and other mature content; and ‘We Are the Ants’ by Shaun David Hutchinson, a coming-of-age novel about a gay teenager that includes explicit sexual language,” according to ProPublica.
Now, though I’d always rather see more books on shelves than fewer, Glenn’s position isn’t unreasonable. If parents want, they can, in only a few minutes, order “This Book Is Gay,” “Out of Darkness,” or “We Are the Ants” at a reasonable price. But Granbury Independent School District has no constitutional obligation to stock its shelves with novels touching on rape, abortion or transgenderism; there is no tenet of free expression that demands libraries make books on racial identitarianism available to kids; there’s no rule that state schools must keep books on a shelf in perpetuity simply because a librarian ordered it. If such requirements did exist, do they also have a duty to carry “The Road to Serfdom” or “The War Against Boys”? Why are schools banning Heroes of Liberty or Ben Shapiro’s books?
Refusing to carry a book is not tantamount to the heckler’s veto, now regularly used by woke college students to shut down ideas in institutions where ideas are meant to be debated. Elementary-school-age kids do not get to choose the topics they learn. Adults do. The debate is about who gets to make that decision: parents or administrators?
Parents who choose to live in conservative communities are now expected to adopt progressive curricula and ideas. The same people bleating about “democracy” are suddenly aghast at the prospect of school boards, elected by parents, using the same powers that districts around the country take for granted. Libraries in liberal school districts aren’t — and I can attest to this personally — home to anti-abortion messaging or books about teens finding God and rejecting gay lifestyles. The cultural conditioning that goes on in blue districts is simply relentless. And the kids — unless their parents are wealthy or make great sacrifices — are usually held captive in state schools. Most of these districts never need to remove books (unless, perhaps, we’re talking about classics like “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Huckleberry Finn”) because heterodox titles have never been welcomed in the first place. But why should parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, be empowered in ways that the parents of Hood County, Texas, are not?
If you don’t like this kind of stifling state-run school system, join me in advocating for choice. But you can’t have it both ways.
David Harsanyi is a senior writer at National Review and author of “Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent.” To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
The liberals ban the classics and then condone filthy books in the schools, so they can destroy the school children. Moral bankruptcy defines liberals to a tee!!!!!
Children learn most of their life long values and character between 2 and 8 years old.
So the disgraceful, immoral, demonic Democrats want to condemn the children even before they come aware of Good and Bad, Moral and Immoral.
To fully advance the Demonic, Lying, Treasonous, Socialist Democrat Party’s destructive agendas: is to divide our citizens with hate and promote; rioting, burning, looting, open borders, gun control, radical feminism, abortion-on-demand, the LGBTQ lifestyle, unfettered sexual identity, transgender “gay marriage” and the like, the pagan Liberal left Democrats must do away with GOD, our Constitution, common sense, morality, Christian values and free religious exercise altogether.
Under the guise of “anti-discrimination.”
The left’s been neutering good books for DECADES.. NOW we conservatives, want to just REMOVE THEM from classrooms at Kindergarten on to high, and they get outraged.. SORRY GUYS, but cry me a river.. PERHAPS WE SHOULD BURN THEM.. Right along side the depraved school admins who LET THOSE sick books INTo schools…
There seemed to be this idea that academics were the most qualified to in charge of the educational system, that was the time before the higher education establishment came under the thumb of the radical liberals who trashed the free exchange of ideals as education for compulsory indoctrination of radical leftist and socialist ideals. What they did was done furtively and subtlely, hardly noticed until the pandemic when remote learning was illconceivedly forced on students and parents became very aware of what was being taught in schools and behind their backs. The veil of secrecy was lifted, the left was exposed, and it fought back to criminalize any attempt to question or change their actions. Books are only part of the scheme of things, replace the race relations account in Mark Twain, which conveys the attitude of the times with The 1619 Project. The liberals are afraid of all that ‘baggage’ that is real history, real people! The period of indoctrination by radical special interests is coming to a close and people are awakening to the disservice the ‘woke’ mob is doing!