New State Laws are Forcing Schools to Remove Certain Books from their Libraries
Credit to Sadie Cotton
A group of books being banned from FHN’s library due to explicit graphics are shown. The law went into effect on Aug. 28 causing titles such as Flamer, This Book is Gay, and some Attack on Titan volumes to be removed from school libraries.
In the age of information, the balance between what should be withheld and what should be upheld becomes shakier everyday. Even now, there is still debate over how a bill passed in August should be enacted. Missouri Senate bill 775 makes it illegal for a school to distribute sexually explicit material, causing for many books to be removed from school libraries.
“The law is very specific, it’s not about written words. It’s about pictures and images and videos,” David Brothers, the Director of Curriculum for the Francis Howell School District said. “You would have noticed that all those books were pulled from the shelves towards the start of the school year, and we had to go through each one and make sure that it was okay by the law.”
Finding which books need to be removed has been a challenge for schools. Many removed books have been the center of controversy, such as This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson, a humorous book about LGBTQ+ sexualities that talks about details of queer sex often left out of school textbooks, and was consequently removed from school libraries for its crude drawings.
“I just find it very convenient that the books that are banned are LGBTQ books, and I think that’s ridiculous,” Emily Winham, a parent in the Francis Howell School District said.
Another thing people find ridiculous is how this bill punishes violators. Rather than attacking the schools for holding the books, the bill charges the librarians or employees who distribute them. So if a school has a sexually explicit book and an employee loans it out to someone, they would have committed a Class A misdemeanor and could be charged with up to a year in jail or a $2,000 dollar fine.
“I don’t think that they should be fining librarians when it’s the school’s job to supply the books, the librarian’s just there to work, help out with the books,” Carter Houdeshell, a sophomore at FHN said. “They distribute it, but the school is the one with the greater power to define what books go into what libraries. The librarian shouldn’t be punished for that.”
On the other side of the coin, many people agree that sexually explicit material is not for kids, and this bill mostly effects people of young ages. Based on that, people believe that school libraries shouldn’t have sexually explicit material available for kids of all ages. Many people believe that schools should not be places for sexually explicit content, and that the choice of what a child should read needs to be with the parents, not the school.
“I would be very careful with what my 14-year-old daughter watches in movies, so I think I would be careful with what schools would present to my children,” Daniel Lamb, a US History and American Government teacher said.
Another thing that school districts need to be careful about is how they don’t always follow their own regulations perfectly. This bill makes schools review their libraries to ensure that every book follows the proper regulations for their school, which will help remove some of the gray area for what is and isn’t allowed.
“I believe it’s an overreaction to some loud voices in our community. But what was good about it is it does allow us to go through and review and make sure there really truly wasn’t anything that we would find objectionable,” Brothers said. “Our librarians, as amazing as they are, they order hundreds of books each year. And it’s not always possible to go through every single page. Often, they’re putting titles in based on recommendations and reviews and awards, and sometimes those titles have some inappropriate contact content. It was a good review for us.”
If there is one thing that is certain about this bill, it’s that there are many sides to it. A lot of uncertainty has arisen from everyone and the ways the bill is being enacted vary from place to place. There are valid arguments both for and against the bill.
“There is a very delicate balance between censorship and stopping the flow of information,” Lamb said.
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Nightstalker • Sep 26, 2023 at 11:30 am
I am leaving this anonymously because of the fact that some of what I am about to say may infuriate the masses.
First, when did banning anything ever solve anything? Second, book banning, if it’s something Hitler did, you may want to rethink your strategy.
As a parent, I would rather my children see that in a controlled environment, even if it is outside the home, where they have teachers, nurses, and counselors present to answer questions that they have and find too difficult to ask me or their mom.
The whole notion of anything containing sexually explicit being dangerous takes me back to the interview Dr. James Dobson did with Ted Bundy. Bundy literally sat in that interview and claimed ‘porn made me do it!’
If you want to ban sexually explicit material, we need throw out the entire collection of Sigmund Freud because according to his theories, everything is related to sexuality.
Our children are going to read these books if they really want to. They are going to learn these things if they are truly interested in it.
As a professional, I work in a field that is evolving and changing daily. Our world, country, state, county, city, and school do not exist in vacuum, The only constant in life is change. We can either embrace it or get run over by it. Our administrators, librarians, teachers, and counselors can either help prepare the next generation to be apart of the world, or they better prepare them to get run over by it.
And finally, I would hope that FHSD would spend the political capital on this issue like they did when they defended their policies on teaching Critical Race Theory.
Randy Cook Jr. • Nov 16, 2022 at 5:32 pm
This is a tough topic, indeed–I applaud you for taking it on and reporting the two sides of this. I would like to offer one small, but important, clarification in response to a quote offered in the piece. It is not “the school” that selects what books make their way onto the shelves. There is no committee of teachers/parents/administrators/students/etc. that get together and decide these things every month/year. On the contrary, it is the librarian(s) within each school–and only the librarian(s), to the best of my knowledge–that pick what books are on the shelves of their particular school; therefore, I must object to the notion that the librarians are “just there to work,” as suggested; librarians hold a very important role in each school and have broad discretion to make selections they feel are appropriate for students. In one sense, they act on behalf of “the school,” but I thought I would offer that clarification for anyone interested to know more about how books are selected. The mystery of who selects the books that are on the school library shelf is shared by many in our community. In fact, I didn’t know until just a few months ago when I thought to ask that very question. Of course, from time-to-time books are donated to the library, so that is one obvious exception but, by and large, it is librarians who make the purchase decisions. I will close with one fun fact: In the 21-22 school year, FHN spent approximately $6,500 on stocking the shelves with new library books. The Francis Howell District spent about $104,600 during the 21-22 school year. The libraries buy A LOT of books; it is unreasonable to expect anyone to know what is between the covers of each book purchased over the year, let alone the whole library. That said, I am confident the librarians are doing their very best to comply with this new state statute. I hope you decide to stick with journalism–I like your style! Keep up the good work!!!