Banning Books Wrongheaded and Dangerous

“Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and always will be the last resort of the boob and the bigot.” ―Eugene O’Neill 

“Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.” ―Mark Twain

By Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer

Over the past year a record number of books have been banned from schools and libraries, with nearly 2,532 titles being banned across the country in 2022. The extremists behind this anti-American campaign claim they are protecting children.

They are not.  Instead, they are acting out of fear their child might be exposed to ideas counter to what they are taught at home, that their influence might be challenged or supplanted,

Fear is a poor breeding ground in America, and some of our most notorious historical periods have been marked by irrational fears (i.e. the Ku Klux Klan, the internment of American citizens of Japanese in concentration camps during World War II).

One glaring example of how silly the book banning proponents have become, the second most banned book is the “Captain Underpants” series by Dave Pilkey. If you are not familiar with this series, it is the cartoon adventures of a superhero created by a pair of fourth graders, George Beard and Harold Hutchins, living in Piqua, Ohio. Captain Underpants, an aptly named superhero from one of the boys' homemade comic books, accidentally becomes real when George and Harold hypnotize their cruel, bossy, and ill-tempered principal, Mr. Krupp.

Those who fear the content of these books, are hopefully miscast for the role of education and their evaluation skills are both stunted and uniformed.

Books are conduits to an endless universe of knowledge, perhaps the greatest example of democracy. Censoring ideas does not work, it instead creates a vacuum of ideas and knowledge.

I learned to read at four, my parents bought me books by the box, never restricting what I read.

This was in addition to trips to the library, which meant a short walk to downtown, one I was allowed to do as early as first grade. It was there I grew up helping my public librarian unbox and shelve books. 

Our mutual love for books easily spanned the years between us as we marveled at the new arrivals and chatted about who might like each of the books we were adding to the shelves. 

There was no talk of bad or good books, no shows of righteous indignation about a book’s title or content. Good thing, too, because even when I was a child the barns of righteous indignation were full.

Some of the books were interesting to me and not her and the reverse was also true. She never criticized my choices or tastes, she was happy to be in the company of another reader, and so was I.

My grammar school librarian also fanned the flames of my love of books, and was the first person to encourage my writing, submitting a story I wrote to a national magazine which published it and sent me a check. She was equally thrilled at my love of reading and curiosity about pretty much everything, and encouraged me to read challenging books. She would often ask me what I was reading, and I returner her question (which was always met with an enthusiastic reply and big smile) 

I imagine it was easier to be a book lover in my school days, since reading was a priority and we read multiple books every year in every grade. Add to that the scholastic book orders, and library books and you have a delicious stew of availability and content. 

When I started college, I discovered kids who had been raised under strict rules and prohibitions, including what they could read (and watch on television), most often in the name of religion (although in fact a heretical approach to parenting, one certainly not outlined in any informed reading of scripture). Some of these relaxed and gained a new enlightenment in college, others, faced with freedom of choice for the first time overcompensated by sowing fields of wild oats. But some doubled down, becoming, to quote one who knows such things, “twice the sons of Hell” as those who set their paths.

This last group now has kids of their own, and now seek to not only parent their own children, but to bully everyone else’s children, their schools and public libraries into submission to their draconian views.

Parents who are so afraid their children might read a book that includes something which is not in step with their religiopolical viewpoints need to simply monitor what their children are reading. And trust they have modeled and taught in a compelling way the benefits of their beliefs. They might also consider creating a forbidden fruit reading list that might not have the result they desire.

One study says sales of print copies of banned books increased sales for many of the popular titles, some by as much as 5000 percent. 

This group should also leave other parents the same prerogative on availability of books.

With reading of books at an all-time low among those ages six to 35, it’s clearly a red herring for those attempting to frame dialogue in education to fit their own narrative. That is not education, it’s indoctrination.

Public schools are already struggling to replace retiring teachers, hold onto the ones currently leading classrooms, fund education while the state moves to siphon tax dollars for use in private (mostly religious) schools, all while spending more and more time dealing with Blackhawk Helicopter parents.

It’s going to take a supportive and informed public to help keep the book-banners at bay. I hope we are up to the task.

The next school board meeting includes an angry parent (or more often a citizen with no children in public schools) reading selective passages from a book or books they find offensive, take a copy of the Bible and read a few passages that you won’t hear in Sunday School (email  me if you need suggestions). 

In the meantime, perhaps we should start a GoFundMe to create a free library of banned books, and make them easily available. As Isaac Asimov wrote: “Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.”