rachel martin, host:
Attempts to ban books in schools are as old as the books themselves. but now there is a new push in the book ban driven by conservative activists targeting local school boards. kcur member station nomin ujiyediin in kansas city reports.
You are reading: There’s new pressure to ban books at schools
nomin ujiyediin, author: books on lgbtq issues and race have spurred more conservative activism against school boards in recent months. The same books, such as Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” and Ellen Hopkins’ “Crank,” are often questioned because they deal directly with issues of sex, racism, violence, and drugs. one group leading the challenges calls itself no left turn on education. publishes book lists and guides to help activists file complaints with school boards. andy wells heads up the missouri chapter. she considers that books like “the bluest eye” are pornographic and argues that they should not be in schools.
andy wells: that’s not your lane for teaching my kids about sexuality. that’s my job. that’s the parent’s job.
ujiyediin: two other books you object to are “not all boys are blue” by george m. johnson and alison bechdel’s “fun home” – both memoirs written by lgbtq authors. In the northern Kansas city, the books were removed from school libraries after a local conservative group complained at a school board meeting that they contained sex scenes. the group says its goal is to empower parents to exercise control over school boards. the district ended up putting those books back on the shelves after students protested. Sixteen-year-old Aurora Nicol spoke at a school board meeting after the books were returned.
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Aurora Nicol: Choosing to remove reality from the curriculum and our libraries will not create good citizens. we can’t feel like we belong here when our voices are silenced.
ujiyediin: The American Library Association says the number of attempts to ban school library books was 67% higher in September 2021 than in September 2020. deborah caldwell-stone directs the office of intellectual freedom of the association and sees challenges to be more organized and school boards feel greater pressure.
deborah caldwell-stone: The moral panic that we’re seeing has created an extraordinary environment to respond very quickly. many of the books being questioned these days have been sitting on library shelves for years without comment.
ujiyediin: emily knox teaches library science at the university of urban illinois-champaign. she has studied activists seeking to ban the books.
emily knox: What you see is that people aren’t sure if their values get passed down to the next generation, and maybe we can make sure they get passed down if we don’t have students read these books.
ujiyediin: Knox says that people who want to ban books often think that books should reflect moral values. but he says that libraries are not arbiters of morality. instead, they are places where people can find information, whether they agree with it or not. Holland Duggan, 17, says “Not All Boys Are Blue” has sex scenes and sexual assaults, but they help him feel less alone as a transgender boy and assault survivor.
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Holland Duggan: Those are situations that teens can face, and giving us the education and tools to deal with those situations appropriately is very important.
ujiyediin: As efforts to ban the books continue across the country, Duggan and others think it’s a mistake because so many of those books that some see as controversial reflect the realities of teens.
for npr news, i’m nomin ujiyediin in kansas city.
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