HIRE
Whew! I’m glad I now won’t have to worry about posting bail for Grown Child!
As an assistant librarian in our neck of the woods, she might have gotten a felony if SB 81 had passed.
The issue of that bill has been a rant in our house lately. It got loud at our dinner table one evening. We were agreeing on most points, but it’s a family trait to get louder as we get more excited in our conversations. I’m sure at one point even the neighbors heard a few of our comments.
Grown Child was indignant over the language in the bill itself and its transgressions on the first amendment.
The failed law’s key element held it to be a felony for any issuance or providing any kind of “obscene” material that was “harmful” to a person under 18. Grown Child could have been under scrutiny over anyone’s interpretation of “a material or performance that depicts or describes nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse”.
I don’t want truly harmful material available to kids, but as with almost any government edict it is up to “interpretation”. Who is doing the interpretation?
A patron at Grown Child’s library complained because a book with the word “sex” in the title (nothing racy) was on the end of the shelf and her “son could see it”. It was a book about puberty. I don’t know if the kid wanted to check out that book, but if she had qualms about the content, then she as a parent could say no. Instead, she moved the book herself to somewhere else on the library shelves.
- What if a young teen is in an abusive situation and seeks help, such as defining it, how to cope with it, what actions to take, and the book is not available? What if a student is writing a research paper on human trafficking? “Sorry, kid, we’ve got some info on that but you have to wait until you are 18. Oh, you are in college and your birthday isn’t until late September? Sorry. The law is the law.”
Sounds extreme? It’s all in the “interpretation”.
- Libraries are teeming with “harmful” items depicting nudity and sexual conduct. Yes, they are.
Classic art? Lots of fleshy women..
Greek and Roman mythology? All of it.
National Geographic? Unclothed tribes.
Shakespeare’s plays? Innuendo and crude slang from the 1500s.
History? You bet. All those harmful things we were exposed to in school before we were 18!
- I ranted at the dinner table because I just taught a novel that has been challenged and in some places even banned.
The Memoir Night, by Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, is too much for some folks due to its “violence”, or in other words, its historic description of what went on in the Nazi concentration camps. Things like starvation and abuse. Let’s rewrite things about the Holocaust to make it more like a church camp where they all wear striped pajamas and play all day and eat healthy meals and no male guard ever forces himself on a prisoner. (It is not graphic, only mentioned in the book) That way we wouldn’t get arrested under the failed bill.
It’s not a book for young children, but my reluctant high school readers devoured it and talked about it to other teachers.
---
Since Night was a “questionable” book, I got on the internet to see what other books have been pulled or challenged in some libraries.
Charlotte’s Web: Because animals talk.
The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe: For violence,mysticism and gore.
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?: Folks confused the Bill Martins. One Martin wrote about ethical Marxism, and a school district banned that, so all books by Bill Martin were banned. Even those by Brown Bear Bill Martin because someone didn’t actually know there were two Bill Martins.
- In California, even Corrie Ten Boom’s book The Hiding Place was pulled off the shelf because a school district superintendent insisted that the district “does not allow sectarian materials on our state-authorized lending shelves.” Was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speeches pulled because of his references to Scripture?
Therein is a concern that if the government mandates, at local, state, or national level, starts interpreting what we can’t read, no matter the age of the reader, who says it would not progress to further censorship? Let me and my conscience do the restricting. Let parents do the restricting within their own household.
- My theory on parents wanting to challenge a book taught is this: 1. The parent must have personally read the whole book, or at least more than the title, and not rely on what someone else said. (As in, do not assume The Witch of Blackbird Pond is teaching witchcraft.)
2.Check the lyrics of everything in your student’s playlist first
