Anyone complaining about “book banning” in relation to government school libraries just doesn’t know what he is talking about. This includes the media.
The real complaint should be the lack of action by the school administration.
Only one library book has been challenged since 2022 under a state law seeking to protect children.
The school administration has dragged its feet on responding.
This is despite the fact that School Board members apologized for allowing parents to read excerpts from the book at a public meeting.
This is a clear admission that the book is too obscene for adults to hear – yet is in school libraries where it can be read by children. (This particular book, titled “Identical,” only employs the “F” word 36 times, so it may be approved.)
When the School Board membership changed and became more receptive to parental involvement, the administration revived the somnolent review committee, but it still has not ruled on the one library book challenge.
Whatever it decides must be approved or rejected by the board.
Still, liberals who support pornography for school children accuse active organizations such as Moms for Liberty of book banning because they encourage parents to get involved in monitoring what their children read.
When books that are not suitable for children are removed from school libraries, that is correcting a mistake. Nothing is banned. Liberal parents still can obtain pornography and make it available to children if they wish. It isn’t up to the taxpayers to provide the material.
When a book is banned, that means it is not available to the public and that can be done only by the government.
The question people should be asking is: how did this junk get into school libraries?
The administration purchases books but in the past also accepted books donated by parents or teachers to the school libraries.
Schools always should have had a process to review books before making them available to children. Instead, they apparently took any kind of garbage.
Even before the current fervor began with a 2022 law requiring attention to the problem, the school district examined books when parents objected to them. From 1980 to 2022, 523 books were reviewed, according to the district’s website.
Of those, 271 were deemed accessible only with parental permission – 144 of them for dealing with the occult. Another 34 contained sexual situations, and 16 with profanity or drugs.
Only 182 were removed from libraries, 36 because they were “offensive to teachers,” 37 for violence and 70 for dealing with the occult.
Obviously, the district has a problem with the supernatural, and with teacher sensitivity.
Whoever reviewed the books found 57 should be “unrestricted.”
The school district says 13 books have been listed as “not approved,” including one titled “Doing It.” Reasons are not listed.
Moms for Liberty is asking people to apply for the school district’s book review committee. They will help read books and flag those that might be objectionable.
“We applaud and stand with citizens who take an active role in protecting Duval students from obscene content,” Moms for Liberty said in a press release.
One man is monitoring books in Clay County on his own volition and is doing a herculean job. He has issued 1,000 challenges, which hints at how bad the problem might be.
Unfortunately, the legislature has made it more difficult for parents to protect children by limiting people to one challenge per month.
Children in government schools are getting a layer of protection they should have had all along. The school administration should speed up the process and the liberal media should quit bleating about imaginary book bans.
