Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts

Monday, October 19, 2015

School Book Selection, Challenges, and Censorship

Letter: Regarding Reading Book Selection in Schools

October 16, 2015 


Regarding the issue of book “censorship” in the public school, key points should be considered that may not be heard from other sources.

When a book is challenged, reference should be made to the school’s book selection policy. Even the American Library Association’s creator of “Banned Books Week” said, “On rare occasion, we have situations where a piece of material is not what it appears to be on the surface and the material is totally inappropriate for a school library. In that case, yes, it is appropriate to remove materials. If it doesn’t fit your material selection policy, get it out of there.”

The US Supreme Court allows for the removal of “pervasively vulgar” books right away. Board of Education v. Pico does not allow the removal of books for the ideas they contain, but being pervasively vulgar is not an idea and such books may be removed immediately. There’s no need for a book reconsideration process to complete before removing such a book.

Further, book rating services are flawed for leaving out information about the potential for pervasive vulgarity. Common Sense Media does produce such a list but the American Library Association ordered all librarians to stop linking to that particular list. Besides, it’s a double standard to depend on third party ratings while at the same time ignoring what parents and school administrators are saying.

Know that multiple Harris Polls show the vast majority oppose sexually explicit books in public schools. The person who complains is often singled out as a “censor” when the reality is the vast majority agree with the “censor.” Besides, the issue is neither left nor right; all sides oppose sexually inappropriate materials in public schools.

Lastly, giving students an alternate book to read exposes the student and his family to bullying and the school to not providing a fair and equal education as required by law.

I hope this helps people make informed decisions since there are national organizations attempting to misinform people. Anyone may contact me should they wish to learn more.

Dan Kleinman,

Library Watchdog

SafeLibraries

Chatham, NJ


The Two River Times in the
Red Bank Public Library;
my Letter to the Editor



The above information on school book selection, challenges, and censorship in a nutshell was published in The Two River Times.  Below is much more detail in the full letter I wrote to a New Jersey school superintendent and others:

11 October 2015

Superintendent Dr. Peter Righi 
Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School 
74 Ridge Road 
Rumson, NJ 07760 
Via Electronic Communication 

Dear Dr. Righi and Members of the Board of Education,

I am writing to support your efforts regarding the Rumson-Fair Haven Regional (RFH) High School’s English curriculum vis-à-vis Ariel Dorfman’s play Death and the Maiden and Bernard MacLaverty’s novel Cal.

When a public school receives a challenge to reading material, there are several things to consider:

1)  The school’s own existing book selection policy should be examined to determine whether or not the book violates that policy.  If so, the book may be removed forthwith.  

Judith Krug, the American Library Association’s creator of Banned Books Week and the Freedom to Read Foundation, was once asked, “Are there ever instances when you think it's appropriate for a school to ban a book?”  She replied, “On rare occasion, we have situations where a piece of material is not what it appears to be on the surface and the material is totally inappropriate for a school library.  In that case, yes, it is appropriate to remove materials.  If it doesn't fit your material selection policy, get it out of there.”  “Marking 25 Years of Banned Books Week: An Interview with Judith Krug” http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2011/09/marking-25-years-of-banned-books-week.html

2)  The means by which a school’s book selection policy is applied could be flawed in that book rating services do not account for the potential for sexually inappropriate content and in a case where one does, it was removed from a prominent web site of the American Library Association.  Here is a document from the American Library Association censoring Common Sense Media book ratings for containing information on the potential for sexual inappropriateness and ordering such ratings no longer be used by librarians: http://tinyurl.com/ALAblacklistsCSM 

Book rating services that are allowed do not provide the very information Common Sense Media was cut for providing, and at least one school recognized this flaw and acted accordingly by removing a book despite its having initially been believed to have met the school’s book selection policy based on book rating services: “School Excoriates Book Reviews that Fail to Disclose ‘Graphic Sexual Details’ in Books for Children; Lush by Natasha Friend is ‘Wildly Inappropriate’ for Certain Children” http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2010/12/school-excoriates-book-reviews-that.html


3)  The 1982 United States Supreme Court case of Board of Education v. Pico essentially allows for the immediate removal of “pervasively vulgar” books from public schools: http://laws.findlaw.com/us/457/853.html  That case justified the successful removal of a pervasively vulgar school book from the Rancocas Valley Regional High School in Mt. Holly, NJ, despite its having been vigorously defended by the library media specialist: “School Media Specialist Passes Sexual Content Review to Students; Dee Venuto Says It Is Discrimination to Keep Children From Material Including Lengthy, Vivid Descriptions of a Ménage a Trois” http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2010/08/school-media-specialist-passes-sexual.html

Notably, the library media specialist who could not bring herself to read sexually exploitive material so she let her students do that and who decried “censorship” after the school removed a pervasively vulgar book, was given an award “for fighting against censorship” by the National Coalition Against Censorship [NCAC]: https://web.archive.org/web/20120516110610/http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/slj/newslettersnewsletterbucketextrahelping2/888482-477/ncac_honors_myracle_school_librarian.html.csp

4)  Books may be removed immediately.  There’s no need to leave the books in place until a final decision is made, as organizations like the American Library Association claim.  Let alone the US Supreme Court case that allows for immediately removal, there’s simple common sense.  When a third grader read about squirting sperm in a school book, the school principal and the school librarian removed it immediately while a former head of the state’s library association claimed the book should have been left available to children until a final decision was made: “School Removes Squirting Sperm Book After 8-Year-Old Complains To Her Mother” http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2011/05/school-removes-squirting-sperm-book.html

5)  Two Harris Polls spaced four years apart have twice shown the vast majority of people do not want sexually explicit materials in public schools: “Most Oppose Explicit Books in Public Schools Says Harris Poll” http://tinyurl.com/MostOpposeExplicitBooks  

It is important to note this as school boards are elected by the public, not by the few national “censorship” organizations that like to claim no one supports removing materials from schools.  If schools remove sexually inappropriate books, the public supports that, let alone the US Supreme Court and common sense.

It is also important to note this as parents who raise book challenges are immediately labelled as “censors” and made to look like they are in a tiny majority of, as NCAC writes, “several parents or members of the community” when in reality most people oppose such material.  See "The Parent Trap: ALA Uses Banned Books Week to Ridicule Patrons Complying with ALA Materials Reconsideration Policies": http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2010/09/parent-trap-ala-uses-banned-books-week.html

NCAC even singles out a single parent in its letter to you, discussed below: “a parent or group of parents [who] might find [material] ’inappropriate.’”  The parents who speak up are simply the ones not intimidated by organizations including those in the NCAC letter.  The reality is most people oppose sexually explicit materials in public schools, and the Harris Polls prove it.



7)  Lastly, the issue is neither a left nor right issue.  People on all sides oppose sexually inappropriate materials in public schools.  Consider, for example, "Young Adult Fiction: Wild Things," by Naomi Wolf, The New York Times, 12 March 2006: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/books/review/12wolf.html  When NCAC raises the issue of “‘parents [having] genuine moral disagreements,’” that is a nod to the oft-heard claim that some “right-wing nut” is trying to force his religious views on a school.  In reality, everyone opposes sexually inappropriate material in public schools.

Turning now to the letter dated October 9 from “the National Coalition Against Censorship—along with the American Booksellers for Free Expression, Association of American Publishers, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, National Council of Teachers of English, and PEN American Center,” collectively NCAC.  See: “Petition Demands Only ‘Age Appropriate’ Books in NJ High School,” by NCAC, 9 October 2015 http://ncac.org/incident/petition-demands-only-age-appropriate-books-in-nj-high-school/

“Any decision the Board makes should be based on the books’ pedagogical and literary merit, and not be a simple concession to the views of several parents or members of the community.”  So says the NCAC.

Any decision the Board makes should be based on a number of factors including those I listed above, not just merit.  That a book wins awards does not trump other considerations.  Books that are pervasively vulgar and have been removed from some schools had already earned awards, for example.  Yet the awarded books were removed for being pervasively vulgar.  That a book may have awards is nice but not determinative of whether it is or is not appropriate in a school setting given a school’s book selection policy, and so on.  

If awards and other merit are promoted as the reason to maintain a book and other means for book selection are overlooked or ignored, that is a sign someone is being misleading and cannot make a substantive argument.  Indeed NCAC is advising you of all of the awards and other merit involved in the books in this matter.  More than half of its letter is devoted just to that.  Did the US Supreme Court rule that pervasively vulgar books may be removed from public schools unless they won awards and were otherwise deemed meritable?  Did Judith Krug say “get it out of there unless it won awards”?

Look at the next part of the sentence, namely, “and not be a simple concession to the views of several parents or members of the community.”  This is parent shaming.  Shame on them for having views and for speaking out about them.  For the NCAC, defending censorship only goes so far.

It is also misleading.  Parents are allowed to speak up about school policies and practices.  Schools have a means for addressing those concerns.  If a school acts on those concerns and decides to remove a pervasively vulgar book, the school removed the book, not the parents.  No one is conceding to the parents and removing the book.  Rather, it is the school making that decision as it should.  It is misleading for NCAC to imply that if you remove the book, it will have been “a simple concession to the views of several parents.”  

Most misleading about that NCAC sentence is that it demonstrates both 1) you are not to be swayed by “several parents or members of the community” while 2) you should be swayed by people outside the community who adjudge “pedagogical and literary merit.”  So parents, don’t listen to them, but award granters and book reviewers that are not censored, definitely listen to them.  And NCAC did this all in a single sentence.

“It is our understanding that books go through a rigorous review at RFH before they are included in the curriculum, with literary and artistic merit being a key consideration.”  NCAC's understanding, of course.

A “rigorous review” “with literary and artistic merit being a key consideration” means little given book reviews are known to fail to address issues of the potential for inappropriateness for school children and, given where ratings do provide such information, they are censored and blacklisted so parents and teachers do not see them, both as I described and sourced above.  

Besides, past reviews mean nothing in light of the need for a current reconsideration.  The implication is made that since a book was accepted into the school in the past, it can no longer be reconsidered for removal.  Then why are there materials reconsideration policies in the first place if nothing can ever be reconsidered?  Past “rigorous reviews” are nice but not determinative.  The same goes for books having already been on school reading lists.  And schools do remove pervasively vulgar books that were “rigorously reviewed” in the past, so claiming there’s been a “rigorous review” or a presence on a reading list is not determinative in the slightest.

More than half of the NCAC’s letter is devoted to talking about how others deem the books to be worthy while “the subjective demands of members of the community” are to be ignored.  Even an implied comparison is made between a parent’s request for reconsideration and censorship by the “government of General Augusto Pinochet.”  It borders on the use of Godwin’s Law to advance NCAC’s hyperbolic argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law  As famed librarian Jessamyn West said, "the bulk of these books are challenged by parents for being age-inappropriate for children.  while i think this is still a formidable thing for librarians to deal with, it's totally different from people trying to block a book from being sold at all": http://www.librarian.net/stax/1858

Finally, NCAC addresses only two paragraphs to substantive issues relating to the legality of book removals from public schools.  Board of Education v. Pico is even cited, but, extremely misleadingly, the part about removing pervasively vulgar books is omitted.  How can NCAC be “dedicated” to “the integrity of the public education system” when it comes to you with advice and that advice excludes the very key other schools, such as NJ's RVRHS, have used to successfully remove other pervasively vulgar books?  Where’s the “integrity” in that?

“‘[S]chool officials are bound by a constitutional duty not to suppress unpopular, controversial, or even “objectionable” ideas,’” quotes NCAC.

That court quote is correct but pervasively vulgarity is not an “idea.” School children may and should be exposed to many different “ideas” but pervasive vulgarity is not an “idea” and the US Supreme Court allows such books to be removed forthwith.  NCAC is attempting to equate “ideas” with pervasive vulgarity.  

Indeed, NCAC has openly called for an end to the prohibition against pornography in public libraries: "There is no justification for the wholesale exclusion of books with sexually explicit content, whether called 'erotica' or 'pornography’”: http://ncac.org/NCAC-FREE-SPEECH-GROUPS-CRITICIZE-M.D.-LIBRARYS-PORN-BAN-  Notice how NCAC does this in another letter substantially similar to the one it sent you, also cosigned by a number of other organizations.

Look at the Judith Platt signature in both letters.  It is the exact same signature.  Identical.  NCAC basically sends out form letters, reshaped for individual communities, all intended to mislead communities into doing what NCAC wants if it only had the power to impose its way.  But it doesn’t have that power so it needs to mislead people into thinking for themselves that judicial decisions, common sense, and existing book selection policy should all be ignored.

I said above it was misleading for NCAC to imply that if you remove the book, it will have been “a simple concession to the views of several parents.”  The NCAC letter cites a case saying “no parent has the right ‘to tell a public school what his or her child will and will not be taught.’”  That is correct but that is not the issue when a parent brings a concern to the school and the school acts on that concern; it is not the parent acting.  NCAC cites another case to say schools should not “cater” to parents.  True, but again, a school making a decision based on a school policy is not “catering” to a parent.  If a school bends or changes policy to accommodate a parent, that might be “catering,” but that is not the case in this RFH matter.  So again NCAC is being misleading, this time by addressing nonexistent issues and ignoring real ones.

So the entire NCAC letter is misleading for the reasons stated above and never addresses substantive issues.  Nowhere does it discuss useful information to help you make a decision.  And it omits material it knows would guide you to make the right decision, instead of the one it wants you to make.

The NCAC letter then implies parents have absolutely no say in what happens in public schools, and, in the event you are not swayed by NCAC, you must still make the sexually inappropriate material available to everyone but the few who complain:  “Parents, of course, have a right to stay informed of what material is being taught; if they have deep objections to a work their child has been assigned, the school has the option of offering an alternate assignment if that is pedagogically feasible.”

So parents may be told of what sexually inappropriate material has been assigned in public school but may do little else, according to NCAC.  In the event a parent does have "deep objections" and persuades a school that a book does not meet the school’s book selection policy, only that parent’s child gets a different book and the other children continue to read the original one, according to the NCAC.

In schools that assign different books for children whose parents challenge a book, 1) the student is ostracized by the students and sometimes teachers, 2) the student is left out of the teaching revolved around the challenged book, 3) the school may be violating state law that requires a fair and equal education.  

One New Jersey example would be the West Essex Regional School District regarding "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Díaz.  If I recall correctly, when the class discussed the Díaz book, the boy was told to sit in the back corner facing the wall reading the book his mother allowed.  Even his coach laughed at him.  The mother was told she was "hovering and overprotecting my son," as well as "squashing his sexual being."  The boy even spoke at a board of education meeting regarding the book choice, and at that meeting the head of the English Department “was rolling her eyes at him and implied that I wrote his speech.”  Exactly where is the fair and equal education in that?  

I visited this school. There were anti-bullying signs throughout the school.  But it is just for show.  Such bullying polices obviously do not apply to students and teachers and department heads bullying children who do not want to read sexually inappropriate material assigned by the school.  And NCAC is right there encouraged you to set up your own students for bullying.

A New York example left a girl in tears after hearing how her parents were mocked by the English teacher and students were then made to write letters to oppose her parents: "School Bullies Girl to Promote Political Push for Perks By Displaying In Class Video of Girl's Parents; School Board Misleads Parents Opposing School Book So Only Book Supporters Attend Public Meeting; Media Touts Total Victory And Leaves Out Bullying and Political Trickery; Guest Writer Aldo DeVivo Speaks Out": http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2011/05/school-bullies-girl-to-promote.html  When I wrote to that school about the bullying, I received an autoresponse that touted the school's anti-bullying policy. 

So no, it is not acceptable to assign a different book to read for the few whose parents are willing to speak up despite the bullying.  NCAC’s fallback position is the NCAC’s position, not the correct or legal one.  Assigning a different book is the politically expedient thing to do but it is not the right thing to do, it exposes children and their families to bullying, and it violates the laws requiring a fair and equal education and opposing bullying.

By contrast and as an example of accurate information NCAC could have provided but did not, I provided you with useful information and reliable sources.  In summary:
  1. The American Library Association allows for the removal of school books that do not meet school book selection policy.  Notice the American Library Association did not sign the NCAC letter compared with past NCAC letters.  
  2. Book rating services are flawed; one is intentionally hidden since it rates sexual inappropriateness, the very rating the others lack.  
  3. The US Supreme Court allows for the removal of “pervasively vulgar” books forthwith.  
  4. Books may be removed immediately without waiting for a book reconsideration process to complete. 
  5. Multiple Harris Polls show the vast majority oppose sexually explicit books in public schools.  
  6. School curriculum is set by the school, not by individual teachers.  
  7. The issue is neither left nor right; all sides oppose sexually inappropriate materials in public schools.
I am hoping this information helps you make a fully informed decision on your own, not a selectively informed and misinformed one the NCAC wants you to make.  Your students depend on your decision.  Do it right.

Sincerely,

Dan Kleinman, Library Watchdog
SafeLibraries
641 Shunpike Rd #123
Chatham, NJ 07921
973-610-8296

BCC:  RFH Principal, Mayor and Council of Fair Haven and Rumson, and media


URL of this page:

On Twitter:  
@ALALibrary @NCACensorship @OIF @RFHRegHS @TwoRiverTimes

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Location: Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School, 74 Ridge Rd, Rumson, NJ 07760, USA

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Massive Censorship as Common Core Kills the Mockingbird; Expect Silence from the American Library Association

Common Core censors out
To Kill a Mockingbird
Common Core.  The supposed nationwide standard for what children will learn in public school.  With respect to reading material, Common Core standardizes sexually inappropriate material.  Organizations like the American Library Association [ALA] need not work so hard to ensure children retain access to sexually inappropriate material.  Common Core will do that for them now:



Indeed, ALA supports the proliferation of Common Core:



But worse, way worse than standardizing sexualized books, is the massive censorship at the heart of Common Core.  To Kill a Mockingbird?  Gone.  The Great Gatsby?  Not so great.  "Squeezed off the syllabus."  From all schools.  Nationwide:


In Chris Kirchner's freshman English classes at Coral Reef Senior High School, novels like "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "The Great Gatsby" have been squeezed off the syllabus to make room for nonfiction texts including "The Glass Castle" and "How to Re-Imagine the World."  For the first time, students will read only excerpts of classics like "The Odyssey" and "The House on Mango Street" instead of the entire book.


Under Common Core, classics such as "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" are of no more academic value than the pages of the Federal Register or the Federal Reserve archives -- or a pro-Obamacare opinion essay in The New Yorker.  Audio and video transcripts, along with "alternative literacies" that are more "relevant" to today's students (pop song lyrics, for example), are on par with Shakespeare.

English professor Mary Grabar describes Common Core training exercises that tell teachers "to read Lincoln's Gettysburg Address without emotion and without providing any historical context.  Common Core reduces all 'texts' to one level:  the Gettysburg Address to the EPA's Recommended Levels of Insulation."  Indeed, in my own research, I found one Common Core "exemplar" on teaching the Gettysburg Address that instructs educators to "refrain from giving background context or substantial instructional guidance at the outset."

Another exercise devised by Common Core promoters features the Gettysburg Address as a word cloud.  Yes, a word cloud.  Teachers use the jumble of letters, devoid of historical context and truths, to help students chart, decode and "deconstruct" Lincoln's speech.
In contrast, ALA opposes the "censorship" of To Kill a Mockingbird.  Here are just a few examples:



Think about this.  ALA supports Common Core but ostensibly opposes censorship, something Common Core now does on a massive scale.  So ALA rightly supports To Kill a Mockingbird while Common Core wrongly "squeezes it off the syllabus."

Will ALA now drop its support for Common Core?

I predict it will not, given its promotion of sexually inappropriate material for children is real and its opposition to censorship is only for show.  Here is just the latest example of ALA censorship and even blacklisting:



Hat tip to Diane Ravitch for making me aware of this massive Common Core censorship.  "Education reformer Diane Ravitch says that the standards have been adopted 'without any field test ... imposed on the children of this nation despite the fact that no one has any idea how they will affect students, teachers, or schools.'"

NOTE ADDED 17 OCTOBER 2013:

Updated a link to the correct link for the Sarah Carr story.

This just in, as another example of another national group addressing that odd case where a school "bans" reading material. And again I predict silence about Common Core's censorship of the very same book nationwide, this time from the NCAC:




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Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Humberto Fontova, the Media's "Book Banning" Claims, and the ALA's Opposition to the "Right to Apply Accuracy" in Public Schools

Humberto Fontova becomes another person exposing false claims of "book banning" and "censorship." (Thomas Sowell and "National Hogwash Week" comes to mind.)

Most of America, for instance, applauds "parental involvement" in their children's education. But a recent New York Times editorial decries it. "Banning Books in Miami," blares their editorial headline from February 10th. "The Miami-Dade School Board's decision is not only unconstitutional, it is counterproductive. If the (local school) board wants to oppose the totalitarianism of the Castro regime, banning books is an odd way to go about it."

....

Last week a federal appeals panel in Atlanta ruled that the Miami-Dade School Board has 'the right to apply accuracy as a criteria for educational purposes.' The appeals court noted that the book indeed 'contained factual errors that distorts what life is like in that dictatorship.'

Source: "The New York Times and 'Book Banning,'" by Humberto Fontova, Human Events, 16 February 2009, emphasis added.


Please read "The New York Times and 'Book Banning.'" I'm especially intrigued by the "right to apply accuracy" in public schools and why it appears perceived violations of this obvious right are labeled "banning" and "censorship" by the media, the ACLU, and the American Library Association [ALA].

The ALA? Mr. Fontova did not discuss this in his article, but the ALA agrees wholeheartedly with the ACLU:


Deborah Caldwell-Stone, deputy director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, told American Libraries, “Naturally we are disappointed with this decision. The book ban is unconstitutional, and we will continue to support the ACLU’s efforts to return the books to the shelves of the Miami-Dade school libraries.” ALA’s Freedom to Read Foundation had filed an amicus curiae brief (PDF file) for the plaintiffs in ACLU of Florida v. Miami-Dade School Board, along with Reforma and other groups.

Source: "Appeals Court: Miami-Dade Book Ban Isn't Censorship," by ALA, American Libraries, 11 February 2009.
Apparently, the ALA opposes the "right to apply accuracy" in public schools and local control of public libraries, in this case "parental involvement" in public school libraries. More fuel for "National Hogwash Week." More reasons the ALA should no longer be considered authoritative by community members supporting local libraries; the ALA actively works against their interests, even in the face of relevant legal decisions.


NOTE ADDED 14 NOVEMBER 2011:

Note that the right to apply accuracy is so important that a national park refused to sell a book that was factually inaccurate:


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Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Thomas Sowell on Banned Books Week - BBW is "Shameless Propaganda ... Now Institutionalized With a Week of Its Own"

(UPDATED REGULARLY)
Thomas Sowell wrote about the American Library Association's "Banned Books Week" calling it "National Hogwash Week." As the media rebroadcast ALA propaganda uncritically, let us remember "Banned Books Week" is total propaganda. No book has been banned in the USA for many decades; what with the Internet, it is nearly impossible now. See "Hogwash is Happening," by Thomas Sowell, Washington Times, 3 October 1994.
Even a former ALA Councilor said, emphasis mine:
It also highlights the thing we know about Banned Books Week that we don't talk about much--the bulk of these books are challenged by parents for being age-inappropriate for children. While I think this is still a formidable thing for librarians to deal with, it's totally different from people trying to block a book from being sold at all.
Here are choice quotes from Thomas Sowell, emphasis mine:
  • "The kind of shameless propaganda that has become commonplace in false charges of 'censorship' or 'book banning' has apparently now been institutionalized with a week of its own."
  • "False charges of banning or censorship are so common that they are seldom challenged for evidence or even for a definition."
  • "To call a book 'banned' because someone decided that it was unsuitable for their particular students or clientele would be to make at least 99 percent of all books 'banned.'"
  • "If the criterion of censorship is that the objection comes from the general public, rather than from people who run schools and libraries, then that is saying the parents and taxpayers have no right to a say about what is done with their own children or their own money."
  • "[O]ther books in the display were pure propaganda for avante-garde notions that are being foisted onto vulnerable and unsuspecting children in the name of 'education.'"
  • "No one calls it censorship if the collected works of Rush Limbaugh are not put into libraries and schools in every town, hamlet and middlesex village. It is only when the books approved by the elite intelligentsia are objected to by others that is it called censorship. Apparently we are not to talk back to our betters."
  • "Those who are spreading hysteria about book banning and censorship know that they are in a war, but too many of those who thoughtlessly repeat their rhetoric do not."
See also:
    The ALA response to parental complaints was the creation a few years ago of a national event they call "Banned Books Week" in which outrageous charges are made about parents supposedly attempting to ban classics like "Huckleberry Finn" and "Of Mice and Men." It's an ingenious tactic considering the ALA seems intent on phasing out the classics. However, parent researchers and bloggers have found many of these allegations to be false or grossly exaggerated; for example, the ALA counts as censorship incidents in which a parent simply requests that the school or library be more age selective when assigning books or amend a teacher's mandatory reading list to include other books not so offensive.
        For making the modest demand that schools not flood their children's minds with filth until, for example, the 8th grade, the ALA, PTA, various state Department of Educations and some loony anti-Christian groups have responded by publishing outlandish strategy manuals on how to deal with "extremists," the code word for any parent with a religious-based value system.
            But the ALA will not compromise on such common-sense requests by parents. Banned Books Week was clearly designed by the ALA to direct attention away from the onslaught of violent, obscene literature in America’s schools. And it’s not just books; it's the Internet as well. When I co-sponsored a bill to have filters placed on library computers so as to block pornographic and racist web sites, the ALA went ballistic. They flew in their big guns and in front of a hearing room full of shocked parents, argued that "the First Amendment is more important than parental concerns about content" and made clear they were totally against any effort to block content of any kind from children no matter what age. Indeed, the ALA web site arrogantly states, "Librarians do not serve in loco parentis."
                The idea that our Founding Fathers wrote the First Amendment to allow children to view obscene literature is preposterous but the ALA is on a crusade to persuade all libraries to treat children as adults. It’s a bizarre crusade, because, legally and morally, school children are minors and school boards and librarians have been entrusted by parents to protect them from such literature. Indeed, when a library Internet filter bill was introduced in Congress, the ALA went all out to fight it. It passed but ended up in the courts where again, the ALA spent a fortune fighting it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. They lost. Thank God.
                • "Marking 25 Years of Banned Books Week," by Judith Krug, Creator of Banned Books Week, Curriculum Review, 46:1 September 2006, emphasis mine:
                  On rare occasion, we have situations where a piece of material is not what it appears to be on the surface and the material is totally inappropriate for a school library.  In that case, yes, it is appropriate to remove materials. If it doesn't fit your material selection policy, get it out of there.
                • "American Library Association Shamed," by Nat Hentoff, Laurel-Leader Call, 2 March 2007.
                So bizarre is the ALA leadership, along with a cadre of Castro admirers on the Governing Council — in its abandonment of their fellow librarians — it refuses to post on its “Book Burning in the 21st Century” Web site the extensive, documented court transcripts of the “trials” that sent the librarians to prison. Those judges ordered the “incineration” of the prisoners’ libraries, including works by Martin Luther King Jr. and George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.”
                ....
                A key ALA official, Judith Krug, heads its office of Intellectual Freedom. In my many years of reporting on the ALA’s sterling record of protecting American librarians from censorship, I often quoted her in admiration. But now, she said at an ALA meeting about supporters of the caged librarians, “I’ve dug in my heels ... I refuse to be governed by people with an agenda.” The Cuba issue, she continued, “wouldn’t die,” though she’d like to “drown it.”
                Kleinman accuses the ALA of hyperbole in celebrating Banned Books Week. "The whole purpose of Banned Books Week is to provide this kind of misinformation," he said. "The ALA misleads people into thinking that if you keep an inappropriate book from a child that is considered censorship. It is not."
                In the common-law tradition, censorship refers specifically to the government's prior restraint on publication. None of the sponsors claim this has happened; the acts they have in mind are perpetrated by private citizens. Yet the cases on the map almost all involve ordinary people lodging complaints with school and library authorities. Before Banned Books Week began in 1982, such behavior was known as petitioning the government for a redress of grievances.
                ....
                There's something odd about a national organization with a $54 million budget and 67,000 members reacting so zealously against a few unorganized, law-abiding parents whose efforts, by any sensible standard, are hopelessly ineffective. The ALA's members have immeasurably more power than the "censors" they denounce to decide what books are available in our communities, but this power is so familiar it's invisible. Why do parents' public petitions constitute censorship, while librarians' hidden verdicts do not? A spokesman for the ALA once tackled this question in the Boston Globe: "The selection criteria that librarians use may not always be what everybody wants. I don't see that it's a real problem." Move along, folks, nothing to see here.
                • "Chicago Tribune's Julia Keller Endorses ALA's Banned Books Week," by Laurie Higgins, Illinois Family Institute, 28 September 2009.
                • "Celebrate 'Banned' Books Week!," by Annoyed Librarian, Library Journal, 30 September 2009, emphasis added:
                The ALA's definition of censorship has no relationship whatsoever to what everyone else in the entire world understands by the word.  It's incoherent and self-serving.
                Calls from Foxnews.com to Caldwell-Stone were directed to American Library Association Media Relations Manager Macey Morales, who asked for more information about PFOX's allegations and then failed to return follow-up e-mails and phone calls.
                The American Library Association refused to do anything about the book banning. This is actually predictable behavior for them – they are a left-wing advocacy group.
                A few weeks ago, the American Library Association announced with much fanfare that it was celebrating the ridiculous event called "Banned Books Week." This announcement accused Americans of being "zealots and bigots who live in fear of discourse" and of being "screamers and book banners and book burners." This Association arranged events and set up displays at libraries all over the country to pretend we have a problem with censorship.
                It's always been clear to me that the ALA OIF likes to dress up book challenges as "censorship" to draw attention to themselves and to pretend there is some sort of threat to "intellectual freedom" in the intellectually freest country in the world. It's hard to get worked up about some book challenge when the book is freely available in libraries and bookstores all over the country. But when it's censorship, then by God we're going to get upset by it! 
                Banned books are a sign of an oppressive regime. That said, forcing age-inappropriate reading materials on youngsters not ready to deal with the material -- and doing so just for the sake of a bigger principle -- is just as oppressive. Enter the American Library Association. .... Can't we trust the ALA to look out for the kids? The short answer is a resounding "no." .... Unless you are willing to sacrifice your child at the altar of political correctness, it may be wise to question the age-appropriateness of some books.
                Banned Book Week is a farce and an insult to the intelligence and goodwill of the taxpayers who pay for local public libraries and staff salaries.  Neither the American Library Association [ALA] nor the local community library is a "governmental" agency.  It is the taxpayers who own their community library and should have the freedom to determine the policies that regulate this community service institution.  The ALA, a private, non-governmental group of associated librarians, has incrementally usurped the freedoms of clients - especially parents - to determine which books should be selected for their library shelves.

                If anyone bans books, it is the radical American Library Association, which has run rough shod over our libraries for too many years and now solely determines which books are or are NOT ordered for display.

                It has been proven that books that have been banned from library shelves are those that the ALA "selection process" does not allow.
                Although I’ve written a lot about "banned" books, my primary objections to OIF shenanigans can be condensed to two.

                1) By its own extremist logic, the OIF is incapable of arguing against making hard core pornography or excessively violent books or films available for young children. Everything is merely "information," and everyone regardless of age somehow has a right to all that information. In the case of Internet pornography, they apparently have a duty to view the information if they happen to be passing by. Not only can they offer no argument against it, but if any concerned parents ask that such material be removed from the children's section of a library, the OIF condemns them as censors.

                Despite the high-minded rhetoric, practical instances of challenges almost always involve what is appropriate or inappropriate for children. Any group that is incapable of nuanced ethical argument distinguishing the needs of children from adults deserves not only to be ignored, but morally condemned.

                2) The OIF uses deceptive language in their claims about "censorship." I expect such dissembling rhetoric from politicians, but I prefer not to have it from my professional association. A library removing or not buying a book isn't government censorship. Government censorship is very clear when it happens – just look to China or North Korea – but it is extremely rare in the United States. The OIF changes the meaning of "censorship" because it's a strong word, and it makes their crusade against almost non-existent government censorship sound stronger.

                Government censorship prevents the publication of information. Period. That's what it means, and everyone but the ALA knows it. If a book were really censored, a library wouldn't be able to buy it in the first place, much less remove it. Recently, the Pentagon bought all 10,000 copies of the first edition of a spy memoir and destroyed them, claiming that they contained information that could be damaging to national security. This is the best attempt at government censorship I've seen in the United States since the Nixon era. Had they not bungled the affair by clearing the book and then later un-clearing it, it would be tempting to give the Pentagon the benefit of the doubt, because there are secrets of national security that protect American lives. It would still be censorship, but sometimes censorship is justified, and the right to free speech isn't absolute. If the OIF really knew anything about the First Amendment, they would know this.

                Because of these two flaws in OIF thinking, it's difficult to take them seriously. By using such extremist logic and sloppy language, they manage to turn what should be a serious debate about intellectual freedom and tolerance into a farce. A defense of intellectual freedom is admirable, but it can be defended without resort to irrational extremism or deceptive language.
                • "ALA's Ironic 'Banned Books Week,'" by Laurie Higgins, Illinois Family Institute, 19 October 2010:
                In a 1995 interview with Beverly Goldberg, the highly respected Judith F. Krug, decades-long president of the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom, had this to say about the importance of intellectual diversity in library book collections:

                We have to serve the information needs of all the community and for so long "the community" that we served was the visible community.... And so, if we didn't see those people, then we didn't have to include them in our service arena. The truth is, we do have to.
                ...
                We never served the gay community.  Now, we didn't serve the gay community because there weren't materials to serve them.  You can't buy materials if they're not there.  But part of our responsibility is to identify what we need and then to begin to ask for it.  Another thing we have to be real careful about is that even though the materials that come out initially aren't wonderful, it's still incumbent upon us to have that voice represented in the collection.  This was exactly what happened in the early days of the women's movement, and as the black community became more visible and began to demand more materials that fulfilled their particular information needs.  We can't sit back and say, "Well, they're not the high-quality materials I'm used to buying."  They're probably not, but if they are the only thing available, then I believe we have to get them into the library. [emphasis added]

                According to Krug, intellectual diversity is of such paramount importance that it trumps even quality of material.  And if resources are scarce, Krug believes it is the obligation of librarians to ask for them.

                In light of Krug's comments, consider the topic on which libraries have virtually no books. Community and public high school libraries carry dozens of books, both fiction and non-fiction, on the topic of homosexuality and "transgenderism," almost every one of which espouses or embodies liberal assumptions about the nature and morality of homosexuality.  There can be found nary a one that espouses or embodies conservative assumptions about homosexuality.
                  To its credit, the OIF, in a letter to the school board, didn’t actually call the move “censorship,” but I’m sure someone there was thinking it. Instead, there’s a string of dubious arguments and an insistence that the real problem was that the board didn’t follow the written procedures for removing a book from the reading list.
                    That last argument basically boils down to “librarians know better than you,” so it’s probably not going to persuade the school board.
                      They’re probably also not going to be persuaded by this one: “We strongly encourage you to follow the guidance provided by the U.S. Supreme Court, which has held that public school officials may not remove books from school library shelves simply because of their disagreement with the views or ideas expressed in the books.”
                        Unless a “reading list” is the same thing as “library shelves,” that entire paragraph doesn’t make any sense in context. Probably a form letter.
                        The hypocrisy is breathtaking.  Just as school reconvenes, here comes "Banned Books Week," Sept. 21 to 27, the contrived observance by the far-left American Library Association which has the essential theme that nothing, nothing in media, hurts children, unless it's a book critical of homosexuality, abortion or upholding the truth of Scripture. Or possibly advocating the right of Israel to defend itself. 
                        Otherwise, any image, idea or scenario produced by adults motivated by perversion/greed/notoriety/atheism/anarchism should be available to inquiring young minds, because there's never an ill effect on children.  This is an odd position that would seem to nullify the value of books in general.  But then there's also the strong possibility that perversion/atheism, etc. are qualities some adults want children to develop.
                        CHICAGO — A far cry from the stereotypical homely, conservative librarian many of us remember from childhood, the American Library Association of today is behaving more and more like the corner drug dealer or child predator — “Psst…hey kid, I’ve got something for you…”
                        The general gist of the criticism is that while librarians talk a good game about intellectual freedom and are against “censorship” and “banning books,” in fact their entire collection development process effectively bans books that librarians disagree with politically.
                        Libraries use Collection Development Policies (CDP’s) to determine which books they will purchase with their limited budgets. CDP’s hold that librarians should purchase only books that have been positively reviewed by two “professionally recognized” review journals. Guess what folks, the “professionally recognized” review journals are dominated by ideological “progressives.”
                        That’s pretty hard to argue with, because she’s right and we all know it. It doesn’t even mention that a lot of times it’s other librarians reviewing the books anyway, thus guaranteeing that the choices will be kept within the profession and that books librarians don’t like won’t be reviewed and thus won’t be purchased.
                        Now admittedly, not all librarians are loony leftists.  In fact, some are speaking out here and there against the fascist, anti-knowledge approach of BBW.  They admit the goal is all about exaggeration and intimidation.  In other words, "Banned Books Week" is essentially a pro-bullying strategy, with parents, the community, even thoughtful teachers the victims.

                            .... Every right-thinking person agreed: This was an outrage. 
                            .... But in feeding off of conflicts like Sims vs. the school board, Banned Books Week also traffics in fear-mongering over censorship, when in fact the truth is much sunnier: There is basically no such thing as a "banned book" in the United States in 2015. 
                            The statistics certainly sound alarming. Since Banned Books Week was instituted in 1982, the event’s website informs us, 11,300 books have been challenged. In 2014 alone, 311 books were banned or challenged in schools and libraries in the United States, with many more cases unreported. It would be easy to assume that the literal banning of books is still a routine occurrence in the United States. 
                            But take a closer look, and there's much less for freedom-loving readers to be concerned with. The modifier "banned or challenged" contains a lot of wiggle room, for one. A "challenge," in the ALA's definition, is a "formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness." By that definition, Sims' one-woman freak-out in Tennessee qualifies as a "challenge," despite the fact that it posed no real threat to Skloot's book, let alone the "freedom to read."

                            .... 
                            Much of the rhetoric around Banned Books Week elides not just the difference between the past and the present but some other important distinctions: the difference between "bans" from public libraries and from school libraries, and between inclusion in school curricula and general availability in a library. A parent merely questioning the presence of a book on a required reading list is the same, to the organizations that run Banned Books Week, as the book being removed from circulation at the local public library. But the former, I would argue, is part of a reasonable local conversation about public education (even if the particular parental preferences are unreasonable). The latter comes closer to a "book ban." 
                            .... 
                            Some, or even all, of these challenges may be misguided, silly, or narrow-minded. But even if you're firmly opposed to "banning books"—and I am!—it's hard to argue that parents should have no right to weigh in on what their children read at school. There's an enormous difference between parents saying a book shouldn't appear on their kid's required reading list and a citizen demanding that adults should have no access to a book at a public library. And it should shock no one that in a country of 300 million people, there are a few hundred cases each year in which someone objects to a particular book’s availability, especially to children.
                            ....
                            This Banned Books Week, instead of hand-wringing about a nonexistent wave of censorship, let's celebrate the obvious: The books won.
                            .... 
                            Upon closer inspection, and a little bit of Googling, it turns out many of these banned books were merely "challenged" — which means one or two ignorant and/or censorious parents filed a complaint with their local school or library about some innocent tome. 
                            .... 
                            Claiming a book has been banned, or willfully misunderstanding the difference between a challenge and a ban, is no doubt good for business in a world that despises censorship. It certainly worked on this book buyer. 
                            But if you indulge in that sort of thing, not only are you making yourself less trustworthy (sorry, local bookstore), you're also flooding the market with fake stories — and reducing the amount of attention paid to real book censorship problems when they come along. 
                            .... 
                            So, nutty overprotective mom doesn't understand basic medicine. Big whoop. The challenge went nowhere — except the websites of the BBC, Salon, the Guardian, and dozens of other outlets. Skloot let her indignation be known on her Facebook page, and no doubt sold a few extra books. Imagine the furor if the Knoxville school district had actually agreed with the mom. 
                            As a Salon columnist noted, books simply aren't banned in the U.S. any more, calling the whole basis of Banned Books Week into question. (The most recent ban in any U.S. school, according to the ALA's own material, was in 1994.) 
                            Or rather, it begs this question: Why aren't we paying this much attention to parts of the world, including free-speech-friendly countries, where forms of book censorship are still in effect? Why aren't we paying this much attention to parts of the world, including free-speech-friendly countries, where forms of book censorship are still in effect? Why wasn't it news around the world when a book was burned by religious extremists in India, and the intimidated author gave up writing and asked his publishers for the book to be withdrawn? 
                            .... 
                            But we can't begin to discuss the real problems of censorship if our awareness is dulled by a focus on cranks who think they see a nipple in Where's Waldo. That's what got the famous kids' book briefly banned from a few pubic [sic, unless intended] schools in Michigan and one in New York in 1989 and 1993, respectively. 
                            I'm not trying to minimize the dangers of cranks, or say that there's no chance the overzealous and prudish could see their way clear to banning a book in the future. But by and large, those days are over. America, a few ill-informed attention-seeking parents notwithstanding, has learned its lesson. Let's stop fighting old battles, because there's a new global frontier where we could effect some change. 
                            In the war against book banning, it's high time we turned the page.
                            As we wrap up 2015’s Banned Book Week (September 27 – October 3), Ruth Graham at Slate rightly takes the American Library Association (ALA) to task for trafficking “in fear-mongering over censorship, when in fact the truth is much sunnier: There is basically no such thing as a ‘banned book’ in the United States in 2015.”
                            That’s true, but Graham understates the problem with the ALA’s campaign of disinformation. 
                            She points out that to maintain the semblance of relevance in an era of ever-freer access to books of all kinds, the ALA has begun to conflate the categories of banned books and challenged books. “The modifier ‘banned or challenged’ contains a lot of wiggle room,” says Graham. 
                            .... 
                            The ALA presents itself as championing freedom, but what the organization is really doing is waging a campaign of “fear-mongering over censorship” to make us feel grateful to them as guardians of our rights, when they are, in fact, the guardians of tax-funded librarians. 
                            ....


                            This week is Banned Books Week, and in libraries all over the country, librarians are making displays of books on fire to illustrate the great danger we all face of Amazon setting its warehouse aflame, or something. Not really. There is no possible way for any book to be censored by any stretch of the imagination. Books are not censored. Period. Should one school library remove a book from its shelves because of parental concern or otherwise, that book is still readily available, well, everywhere. 
                            Libraries themselves take part in the censorship of books, except they say they "select" them. This is the process where they choose which books to make available to the public and which books to throw in the trash. It’s a joke of colossal proportion that librarians don’t censor. Here is a discussion I found on the American Library Association (ALA) Think Tank’s Facebook page during Banned Books Week, addressing this very issue.



                            Notice the calls for these books about controversial topics to be thrown in the dumpster. These are the same people who wax sanctimonious about all the bad parents out there who want to "ban" books because they complained about violent sexual content in a reading assignment (a growing problem in public schools). This is a far cry from "banning" a book which would make it unavailable to the general public. A complaint is not a "ban." 
                            Modern librarians put themselves on pedestals, claiming to be champions of intellectual freedom and the First Amendment. They make no judgements (they claim) and fight against parents who would prefer that some judgements be made about the content that is given to their kids. 
                            In case you think it's extreme to suggest that librarians are fighting against parents, consider this. Titled Censorship and Intellectual Freedom, ALA acolyte and assistant director of the Office of Intellectual Freedom Kristin Pekoll laments the involvement of parents in book selection, among a litany of other complaints (because only librarians are allowed to throw books in the dumpster). 
                            Do I stand strong against the onslaught of vocal parents demanding cleaner libraries? 
                            If there was ever any doubt that ALA was concerned with the welfare of children, this should end that debate. The ALA prides itself on encouraging librarians to stand against parents, to put books that are rife with sexual violence, drugs, alcohol, abortion and other adult topics into the hands of your children without your permission or consent. 
                            Here is my favorite find on the ALA's website. This infographic shows you exactly what they are actively pushing on your kids during Banned Books Week.


                            Don't be fooled by Banned Books Week; it's just more trumped-up fakery to push cultural rot on your kids.
                            Banned Books Week, the American Library Association's annual self-advertisement, has now ended for this year. Bookstores will disassemble their earnest displays of "banned books," public libraries will return to the semblance of normality in public libraries. And we will be left with the sobering thought that, in 21st-century America, there remain people who would ban the works of Harper Lee or J.D. Salinger or Judy Blume, to give some favorite examples.  
                            Except that this year, I'm happy to report, a tiny crack appeared in the ALA's great Banned Books Week edifice. Slate, a publication not known for its skepticism toward liberal pieties, ran an essay with the intoxicating title "Banned Books Week Is a Crock." I was, and remain, astonished, and yet encouraged, that it should have been published—and not banned!—by the right-thinking editors at Slate.  
                            .... 
                            Yet what intrigues me about Banned Books Week publicity, and the likely political agenda over at ALA headquarters, is not what it features but what it excludes. For there is, in fact, an ongoing effort to ban books in America in 2015—that is, to exclude them from classroom reading lists, if not prevent their publication and sale – but it is taking place not on school boards in our nation's rural communities but on college campuses in some of the most progressive and sophisticated communities in the United States. At Columbia University in Manhattan, for example, Ovid's Metamorpheses has been excluded from the syllabus because of objections about sexual violence and replaced with—irony alert!—Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. Rutgers is considering the attachment of required "trigger warnings" for The Great Gatsby and Huckleberry Finn, and based on individual complaints, innumerable other colleges and universities are pondering the future of such works as Mrs. Dalloway or The Merchant of Venice on student reading lists. 
                            ....
                            Those bannings, while rare, did happen.  These days though, there aren't books being banned in America.  Those saying otherwise are repeating comforting lies.  Leftists, led by the weirdly extremist American Library Association, tell themselves these things so they can feel superior to others. 
                            The lack of a banned book problem is so striking though, Dan Kleinman points out that press outlets are starting to notice, who otherwise would just parrot the "banned and challenged books line."  That's the trick wording: The American Library Association is trying to get you to equate 'banned books' (which are a thing that mostly happens in the Islamic world) with 'challenged books.'


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