Orwell, Twain and Angelou: all victims of a disturbing trend rearing its head once again in American education. It’s happening in school boards, libraries, and in legislatures: books are on the chopping block. Political censors claim to have good reasons for these book restrictions— whether it be profanity, obscene content, or, my personal favorite, “divisive concepts.” While they masquerade behind these labels, it doesn’t take some meddling kids to pull away the mask and reveal what book banning truly is: authoritarianism.
Texas and Florida have become ground zero for a radical new sect of politicians hell-bent on trampling upon the First Amendment and restricting access to literary content in public libraries and schools. Between the two states, they have banned 795 books, and they aren’t planning on letting up. In 2022, Florida’s “Parents Bill of Rights” Act passed, making petitions for the removal of content in libraries and schools easier. With the bill in place, the number of challenges to books has skyrocketed. The “Parents Bill of Rights” idea has infected Georgia, with Governor Kemp signing a number of laws aimed at “Parents Rights” in April of 2022.
In 2023, Cobb County dismissed an elementary teacher after she read My Shadow Is Purple, a book that challenges gender stereotypes. How did the county justify this firing? Georgia law prohibits teachers from addressing “divisive concepts,” which some school boards have taken as a blank check to censor content and dismiss staff. Nothing encapsulates the new book banning trend as vividly as images from the dumpsters of New College of Florida, overflowing with books on LGBTQ issues, women’s rights, and race. You would think after being caught so vociferously one would possess some sense of remorse, if not shame?
New College President Richard Corcoran called the optics “far from ideal.” No Mr. Corcoran — what is far from ideal is the discriminant purging of thousands of books from a supposed institution of higher learning. While the college attempted to backpedal the optics, a member of its board of trustees Gov. Desantis appointee Christopher Rufo doubled down, saying “We abolished the gender studies program. Now we’re throwing out the trash.”
What is truly contemptible about this movement is how unapologetically its zealots promote it. How they disproportionally target books with LGBTQ and race-related content. Not only do they want their children to not learn about a whole community of people, but they also want to deny others the right to learn. It is a rejection of knowledge, a disturbing movement brewing in society. Suddenly, we are living in an America where states present you with a menu of educational offerings: “I’ll have the biology but leave off the evolution,” or “Yes to U.S. history, but keep the Civil Rights movement on the side.” When politicians use American education and academia as political fodder, they degrade public trust in these systems. Peer-reviewed journals have been subverted by quick Google searches, and an accurate portrayal of history is now “woke” and not to be trusted. Figures like Governor Ron DeSantis, a graduate of Yale and Harvard, decry liberal education — a sad appeal to populists to score political points. To me, it begs the question: is it the job of the government to appeal to the lowest common denominator or to raise it? I believe it is the latter, which is why it is so essential for us to reject the rejection of knowledge and buttress our libraries and educators as they continue their fight to teach America’s students.
Some proponents of restricting titles in libraries cite the need to ensure age appropriate content in schools, a seemingly reasonable argument. I admit that we need to ensure that students are accessing age appropriate content — however I vehemently disagree with the use of subjective bans as the mechanism to achieve this. Banning books spits in the face of classical liberalism. The fact that government bureaucracy can censor content it disagrees with brings to mind images from the worlds of Bradbury and Orwell — futures America should not seek to align itself with. If content is inappropriate for certain ages, keep the books and allow parents and educators to determine whether or not a child is mature enough for material.
While school boards may attempt to justify the censorship, this is simply a red herring– inappropriate content is not what is being targeted. According to the American Library Association titles such as “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee and “1984” by George Orwell are among the top hundred books banned in the last decade. Book banning proponents say these stories make students uncomfortable — growth often is. The irony of the school boards attempting to convince the public that they are not banning books, when in fact they are, is reminiscent of a dystopian novel. It was Orwell who said “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” I implore you not to reject the evidence.
Perhaps more dangerous than the ones doing the banning are those standing idly by watching as state governments have restricted, restrained or revoked over four thousand titles. We must use the tools at our disposal — our voice and our vote — to steer our legislatures and school boards toward preserving books. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that not only are we fighting tooth and nail to ensure that these titles remain available, but we ensure that children are reading these books. Rejecting knowledge has somehow become a popular trend in American culture and we mustn’t be fooled out of recognizing exactly how dangerous it is. We must constantly challenge the assertion that knowledge is bad or not for the common man. I think Joseph Brodsky said it best: “There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”