Hello! Here is an article that recently ran in my high school paper about banned books by me! Enjoy!
In 1982, Banned Books Week was launched in response to a surge in challenged books in school districts, libraries, and bookstores. Another wave of book banning is taking place now - 40 years later.
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: these are just a few of the numerous titles that are banned and challenged classics, according to the American Library Association (ALA). Although HH's curriculum continues to include these books, in a lot of high schools around the country, books like these and other classics are being contested, as they have been many times in America’s history.
In 1982, District V. Pico, a Supreme Court case that ruled school officials cannot ban books in libraries for their content, sparked what we know today as the Banned Books Movement. That same year, the American Booksellers Association (ABA) BookExpo America trade show showcased books deemed dangerous in large, metal cages.
After the success of ABA’s exhibition, Judith Krug, Director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom, and the ABA teamed up to start a new initiative: Banned Books Week - an annual event celebrating the freedom to read.
Though Banned Books Week is not until the end of September, January and February of this year were months filled with book burnings and bannings. According to the New York Times, a county prosecutor’s office in Wyoming considered charges against library employees for stocking questionable titles. A suggested bill in Oklahoma prohibited public school libraries from buying books that focus on sexual activity and gender identity.
Such issues are not limited to Oklahoma and Wyoming, as books in Tennessee have already been targeted by school boards and churches in 2022. The McMinn County Board of Education voted to remove Art Spieglman’s Pulitzer-Prize winning graphic novel Maus from their eighth-grade curriculum on the Holocaust for its nudity and curse words.
At a Facebook live-streamed service, controversial pastor Greg Locke led a book burning at a Mt. Juliet church in early February. According to The Guardian, Locke’s event drew a large crowd that hurled copies of books from popular series like Harry Potter and Twilight into the fire.
“I ain’t messing with witches no more, I ain’t messing with witchcraft…I ain’t messing with demons…I’ll call all of them out in the name of Jesus Christ,” Locke said in a sermon immediately prior to the burning, as attendees cheered and clapped at his statements.
While most members of the congregation actively and readily participated in the burning, a photographer at the bonfire said there was one counter-protester, holding up copies of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and throwing a book of their own into the fire: the Bible.
A national issue, the American Library Association has seen a recent and unprecedented uptick in challenges to books. The ALA reported that 330 books were called into question for objectionable material in the fall of 2021 compared to the 156 in all of 2020.
“In my twenty years with ALA, I can’t recall a time when we had multiple challenges coming in on a daily basis,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the Director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.
Books have been challenged throughout America’s history, but the recent surge in book-questioning leaves professionals and the ALA searching for a difference this year. As books are being called into question, educators and librarians are being held most accountable by emboldened parents and even politicians.
“The politicization of the topic is what's different than what I’ve seen in the past. It’s being driven by legislation, it’s being driven by politicians aligning with one side or the other. And in the end, the librarian, teacher or educator is getting caught in the middle,” Britten Follett, the chief executive of content at Follett School Solutions, one of the country’s largest providers of books to K-12 schools including Harpeth Hall said to the New York Times.
Harpeth Hall has a number of challenged books included in curricula for various grades. Upper School English Teacher and member of the Education Advisory Board at CATO, Joe Croker believes in “freedom of thought.”
“My basic impulse is to resist attempts, but at the same time, there may be instances in which we may not have selected age-appropriate texts. That would be cause for reassessment,” Croker said, believing in a ‘Goldilocks’ approach.
Croker said that Harpeth Hall receives push-back against the curriculum on a case-by-case basis. If a student or parent has a particular problem with a title, the teacher of the course seeks guidance from their Department Chair, who has oversight over the entire curriculum that is revisited every year.
“We need to be on top of our game to provide a curriculum for our students that will most enrich their lives. That’s the goal,” Croker said.
Comments
Post a Comment