The Palmer, Alaska school board voted to ban* a number of books, classic books, wonderful books, and as everyone knows, book banning is bad.
A list of books deemed too controversial to be taught in electives including poetry, journalism, creative writing and American literature was presented at a Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District board meeting on April 22. The list cited “sexually explicit material” and “‘anti-white’ messaging” in “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Maya Angelou’s seminal memoir, and raised concerns about language and sexual references in “The Great Gatsby,” the landmark 1925 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The other books on the list — “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller and “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien — were judged to be inappropriate because they contained mentions of rape, incest, racial slurs, profanity and misogyny.
Classic works, without a doubt, and yet banned for a plethora of reasons that reflect many of the current concerns about what terrible things students’ eyes should never be forced to see, students’ minds never be forced to consider.
Sarah Welton, the board’s clerk, said at the meeting that she noticed a lot of her students lacked critical thinking skills and that removing the books could be a “disservice” to them.
“To me, the need for controversial subjects is part of education,” Ms. Welton said in a statement on Wednesday. “The societal issues brought forth in all of the books reflect the continued need for people to learn about experiences other than their own. Protecting students by hiding the issues or ignoring the issues does not help or prepare students for the world they inherit.”
This would seem to most to be a compelling argument, as if any argument was needed to prevent the school board from banning books. But then, there was the argument mounted in favor of the ban.
“If I were to read this right now, the board would have perfect license to admonish me,” Mr. Hart said in the meeting. “If I were to read this in a professional environment, at my office, I would be dragged to the equal opportunity office.”
“When you have books you could not read publicly without going to E.O., that’s probably a pretty good litmus test,” he said.
He’s got a point. The argument reflects yet another of the inane conflicts inherent in the current social justice regime of what constitutes a hostile work environment, what constitutes permissible pedagogy, what constitutes “hate speech” and what does not. While some would argue that these are classic novels, great novels, and removing such significant works from the curriculum deprives students of a critical learning opportunity, Hart’s point that the exact same words, read aloud from these books, would very likely result in a finding that he created a hostile work environment.
You can’t have it both ways.
The American Library Association sent a letter to Monica Goyette, the district’s superintendent, and the board on Wednesday expressing concerns over the board’s vote.
The irony of the ALA’s “concerns” is palpable. This is the same organization that removed Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name from its book award because her “Little House on the Prairie” books “included many stereotypical and reductive depictions of Native Americans and people of color.”
A division of the American Library Association voted unanimously Saturday to strip Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name from a major children’s literature award over concerns about how the author referred to Native Americans and blacks.
This clearly falls short of the bold support for classic literature, except when it’s some other entity doing the banning.
The response to the otherwise valid point made by Board Vice President Jim Hart isn’t that classic books should be removed from the curriculum, but that the efforts to police campus and work environment to eradicate the vast array of words and ideas that offend the woke sensibilities is irrational. Of course these books should be part of the curriculum, and of course the reading of these books, the words, concepts and ideas expressed in them, should not give rise to liability or culpability anywhere else.
We’ve created an absurd and untenable situation by leaving it to the most easily or imaginatively offended to dictate what others may or may not say because someone might, substantively or performatively, claim offense. If it’s too offensive for the workplace or the dorm room, then it’s too offensive for a public school curriculum. You can’t have it both ways.
*Ban isn’t the best description of what happened, as the books were removed from the curriculum, but not the library. They can still be read, but no student will be required to read them for a course.
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