Seeking to ban books a fool’s errand
Book banning activist should have finished reading the book
I was impressed with how quickly the activist in your article stopped reading “Gender Queer” — after 30 pages (“Conservative parent activists want Maryland schools to ban two books. A new school board member is receptive,” Jan. 31). Had she continued to the end, she would have learned about possible causes of asexuality and gender queerness. She would have seen a very sympathetic young person trying to deal with adolescence and early adulthood. And I daresay that she’d have come across fewer objectionable images than are available in art books.
Want to ensure a bestseller? Ban the book.
What I learned at an early age has been reinforced by the recent article in The Sun regarding the banning of books in the Baltimore County School system libraries. I was middle schoolaged in the 1950s when a book called “Peyton Place” became controversial. It was a story about a fictitious New England town, and the scandalous (at that time) sexual behavior of some of its citizens. There was a hue and cry about the “scandalous,” book and it was banned for a time in Boston. I guess some people in New England took their “puritan” background seriously.
My friends and I became curious. Why did so many people actually argue about who could, or could not, read the book? When one of my friends actually got a hold of the book, we all secretly passed it around to read it. By today’s standards it was rather benign. Some years later, “Peyton Place” was actually made into a movie, with more concerns that such a scandalous book would actually be portrayed on the big screen. The movie was made, and the furor died down. Later, the movie “Peyton Place” became the basis of a TV series that lasted for several years on a major TV network.
At that time I became convinced, as I still remain today, that if I ever were to write a book, I would take steps to see that it would be “banned” by some group or another for some reason or the other. That would ensure tons of free publicity, and many people would feel the urge to read the book, just because someone else insisted that they shouldn’t. It was as true among my middle school buddies in the 1950s as it is today. Back then we just HAD to read that book, because someone said we couldn’t. Somehow we all survived the experience. When will they ever learn?
The Supreme Court has already ruled against library book banning
The Sabrina LeBoeuf and Lillian Reed piece, “Conservative
parent activists want Maryland schools to ban two books. A new school board member is receptive” (Jan. 31) did not mention this very issue has been ruled upon by the Supreme Court in 1982. During my time supervising the review of all library books for the Baltimore City Public Schools as the Curriculum Specialist in the Office of Library and Media Services, I had occasion to respond to outside pressure for the removal of library books.
Supreme Court Justice William Brennan Jr. issued an opinion 40 years ago asserting that under the First Amendment, “Local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books” (Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico).
Brennan wrote that while school boards have “‘broad discretion’ ” in managing school affairs, “‘such discretion must be exercised in a manner that comports with the transcendent imperatives of the First Amendment.’ ” Quoting from the famous Tinker v. Des Moines School District case, Brennan added that students do not “‘shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.’ ”
Textbooks and library books fall under two different categories. A student must use an assigned textbook, and the school board has jurisdiction over it as they must approve all textbooks. Library books, however, fall under a different category as a student is not compelled to read them. Students have a free choice of which library book they wish to read and an objection to a book by a parent cannot infringe on the freedom of other students’ reading.