ONE WAY TO COOL THE BOOK WARS: MORE BOOKS
Let’s get this out of the way: There’s no simple, objective, value-neutral solution to the culture war being waged over libraries. Someone must choose the books and that means judging which books to include and which to exclude.
Some think that libraries can make a value-free decision by keeping books based on how frequently patrons choose them. But that’s not value-neutral: It affirms the original decision to add the book and says that popularity is the only value by which to judge books — that no book has enduring value on its own.
Some make the maximally liberal argument that no book should be excluded based on content alone. But that is also a value judgment. It says that there is nothing in any book that is harmful to everyone, or to the community as a whole.
This makes libraries the perfect culture war battleground, including a dustup in Pine-Richland settled (more or less) just this week. Choices about which books to include — and, crucially, which books to feature — will always express values. The question is, whose will they be?
Raised stakes
This has always been the case, but it becomes more visible in times of rapid cultural change. Today, many people are genuinely unsettled because they thought the community values that guide their local institutions had been broadly in accord with their own, and they’ve suddenly realized they’re not. And there’s no way to settle the differences without some people winning and others losing.
This anxiety is considered a rightwing phenomenon at the moment, but it’s not intrinsically right-wing. A rapid culture shift to the right, whether locally or nationally, would make people on the left feel unsettled and abandoned by their institutions, just as many conservatives feel today.
There’s another reason libraries — and especially school libraries — have become such a cultural flashpoint: There aren’t enough books in Americans families’ homes.
This makes capturing the only places where children can truly explore literature, history, culture, ideas and the breadth of the human experience even more important. The fight over these public institutions has reached a fever pitch in part because too many parents expect them to do the value-formation work that should, and must, begin at home.
Do it yourself
A YouGov survey last September concluded that nearly half of American households contain 25 or fewer books. Only one in four have more than 100 books. And one in ten claim to have — thisseems impossible — no books at all.
Meanwhile, a 2018 international study showed that access to books in the home leads to literacy levels that can compensate for many years of formal education. High school dropouts with large home libraries achieve similar literacy to university graduates who grew up with few books.
The first place children enjoy the serendipity of finding a new good book should be in the living room. Public and school libraries serve a tremendous purpose: They hold many more books than any (reasonably sized) home and allow access to those books for free.
But in making them the primary place where children’s intellectual curiosity can be satisfied, we’ve heightened their political importance beyond what they can safely bear.
The lesson conservative parents are learning (and should have learned a long time ago) is that you can’t trust the wider culture, even in valued local institutions like schools and libraries, much less the internet, to entirely support your values and your parenting goals. This goes for parents on the left as well, who also find bourgeois liberalism doesn’texpress their values completely.
In fact, it goes for all parents. There’s no value-neutral way to raise kids. If you don’t have an intentional valuesbased family culture, kids will soak up values elsewhere — places you can’t control and, in the case of public institutions shared with people with diverse values, shouldn’t control.
There’s hardly a better way to set the guide rails of a family culture than having a diverse, curated collection of books for your children to explore. You can exclude what your values would have you exclude, and feature what your values would have you feature.
But, one important caveat: There should be enough diversity — of genre, of age, of ideas — that children can explore the world and themselves, and get that irreplaceable feeling of discovery, right at home.
Not a luxury
Unsurprisingly, there’s a significant correlation between wealth and home libraries. But that can be short-circuited.
Programs like Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, thankfully reinstituted in Pittsburgh and now proposed to be extended statewide, deliver free children’s books to families.
And it’s not too hard to find cheap books. Pittsburgh could use more used book stores, but don’t forget about thrift shops and library book sales, as well as online used booksellers like ThriftBooks, AbeBooksand Better World Books.
Getting more books in homes won’t end the acrimony over public libraries, but it would lower the temperature. And it would lead to more literate, more confident young people ready to move through a diverse culture without fear.