LITERACY DECLINE BIGGER PROBLEM THAN BOOK BANS
Communists. Satanists. Neighbors who lace Halloween candy with heroin.
Every era has its bogeyman, the cartoonish villain who parents worry will corrupt their babies. Today’s fearsome predator, apparently, is the local librarian.
States across the nation are passing laws to criminally prosecute school and library personnel for providing books deemed sexually explicit, obscene or otherwise “harmful” to children, as The Post’s Hannah Natanson reported. To be clear: Every state already has laws on the books banning distribution of obscene material to children, but most have carveouts to ensure that educators can provide accurate information about sex-ed and other critical subjects.
In the past couple of years, though, at least five states have successfully enacted legislation that further puts librarians, educators or book publishers in the cross-hairs. An additional 15 states have introduced similar bills.
This criminalization of library science dovetails with other efforts in recent years to protect students from the morally corrupting influence of woke material — as well as, at times, the morally corrupting influence of unwoke material.
Recall that just a few years ago, much of public education discourse involved debates over whether students should be exposed to depictions of Jewish ghettos in World War II, Klansmen in the United States or other disturbing historical events. Objections primarily came from progressives, who argued that such materials might upset children from historically marginalized groups.
As recently as 2020, “To Kill a Mockingbird” was one of the most frequently challenged books nationwide, largely because of its use of racial slurs, according to the American Library Association.
Today, members of the same political coalition that once mocked progressives for demanding “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” wish to shield children from the potential trauma of reading “Heather Has Two Mommies.” Those who once admonished students for being snowflakes now apparently believe children are too fragile to mount a musical with a gay character — or access reference books on puberty.
But amid debates about how children will process texts invoking racism or sexual identity, a much more basic question plagues our educational system: whether children can process texts, period.
Parents around the country generally think their children have recovered from disruptions to schooling during the pandemic, surveys show. They haven’t. As of last spring, students were on average half a year behind in math and one-third of a year behind in reading, according to research from a team at Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins and the testing company NWEA.
Not that the U.S. educational system was so impressive relative to those in our peer countries pre-COVID, either.
In Oklahoma, which ranks 49th in education nationwide, the state’s top school official is devoting energy to banning use of the word “diverse” in computer science curriculums because it is too “woke.”
It is disheartening that the culture wars have come for not just lesson plans but librarians, too. Librarians are instrumental in promoting literacy. They guide students toward texts that will absorb and engage them. They nudge kids toward books, films, periodicals and online resources that will answer burning, sometimes embarrassing questions.
Perhaps most important, they teach children how to critically evaluate the credibility of their sources — not only the tomes on library shelves but also whatever they might find in the Wild West of TikTok and Reddit, where protective parents are less able to gate-keep.
Call me old-school, but maybe we should devote less energy to limiting what kids are reading and more to whether they can read at all.