No One Is Banning Books in Your School Library
Library books on a bookshelf in a file photo. (John Moore/Getty Images)
While reading the California Education Code the other day, I made a stunning discovery. School districts are allowed to burn books. Is California that far ahead on the road to totalitarianism? Not so fast.
Though it seems like we’re living in Ray Bradbury’s "Fahrenheit 451" where school districts can technically burn books, the reason for the law is more mundane. Section 60530 in the Education Code describes the process of destroying obsolete books that cannot be donated or sold to anyone else at the end of their useful life “by any economical means.” Matches are cheap and no doubt many districts have employed a bonfire for old books since the law was enacted in 1976.
And because mature adults can use discernment and context to realize the very harmless procedural nature of that statute, they should also be able to distinguish between book bans and decisions not to buy, use or facilitate books in school libraries or classrooms that have either no educational value or are inappropriate for minor children.
Yet, in an era of bumper sticker—or meme—politics, it’s easy for dystopian activists to claim that every time a library doesn’t carry controversial material more suitable for an adult bookstore than an elementary classroom, parents are attacking academia and trying to ban books they don’t like.
Activists who believe that all books (no matter how offensive) should be available to all children (no matter how young) seem like the obvious culprits inspiring this cultural moment. And they have a role to play. Let’s not also forget that the teachers unions use the supposed “book banning” mantra to distract from their failure to increase academic rigor or improve student performance.
Just as I believe woke progressives should not cancel works that offend them, as they recently have with Dr. Suess or Roald Dahl, schools should not ban books. There are also real reasons that "See Spot Run" is not on a high school literature syllabus and calculus textbooks are not in kindergarten classrooms. Recognizing that school districts have a limited budget and capacity for books in their classrooms means that school libraries are not the Library of Congress.
And just as the California legislature requires all manner of food products to be labeled so people can make informed choices about the food they consume, parents should know what is going into their children’s minds.
Addressing this issue last year, the Utah Legislature passed House Bill 374 which provides a process to rank books in schools so parents, board members, librarians and teachers can be better informed on the age-appropriateness of books per grade level. Such policies allow for thoughtful reviews of concerning books on crowdsourced sites like this one.
With more accurate information, schools can be better equipped to provide books that are relevant, accurate, thoughtful, educational and age-appropriate. Salacious or pornographic material that would not be read in front of our grandmothers or allowed on network television does not belong in the classroom. Yet there is a growing list of readily accessible books that are violent, graphic, sexually explicit or simply inappropriate for our kids in many school libraries across the state.
If school districts feel like it's appropriate for kids to be exposed to raunchy, graphic, or explicit material, they should be prepared for concerned parents who show up at their school board meetings and protest. And when a parent reads an objectionable portion from the book the district has approved, the presiding officer needs to hear them out rather than shutting them down.
As more school boards take a closer look at which books their policies and budgets are putting into the classroom, it will focus accountability on teachers unions efforts for improving student achievement rather than raising a ruckus.
To be clear, our kids should read challenging books that help them explore new ideas and wrestle with difficult issues. Books like "Huckleberry Finn," "To Kill a Mockingbird," and "Of Mice and Men" were game-changers for my social and political views as a young man. So were books like "Anthem" by Ayn Rand, "Visions of the Anointed" by Thomas Sowell, "Suicide of the West" by James Burnham, "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis, and "Road to Serfdom" by Friedrich Hayek. I doubt any of these titles are on many public school bookshelves right now.
When you hear "book ban," that's your cue local teachers unions are drafting off of their progressive activist friends’ manufactured outrage and hard at work reframing their incompetencies by eliminating discernment in curriculum and decoupling teacher pay from student achievement.
So, let’s dial down the temperature and dispense with the narrative that schools are banning books because they don’t house every title from some activist wish list. If parents want to buy objectionable books for their kids, they are unlikely to encounter any firemen putting out bonfires at their local bookstore.
This article was originally published in The Epoch Times on April 4, 2023.
Lance Christensen is the Vice President of Education Policy and Government Affairs at the California Policy Center and former candidate for State Superintendent of Public Instruction.
