A Love Letter to Book Banners

Full transparency: this started out as a letter-to-the-editor. I contemplated sending it in to the Dallas Morning News. Then, I changed my mind. Then it was going to be an open letter to everyone who wants to ban books in schools. I have since decided to call it a love letter because it springs from the deepest well of my love for education, students, and learning. This letter is full of LOVE. I will not resort to anything less than love. So, here it is... My love letter to the book banners.

Banning books in public schools is nothing new. As long as there have been books, there have been those who have wanted to ban them. Yet, something about the current wave of book-bannings feels especially dangerous. And especially terrifying.

(Get ready, because I am about to state the obvious.) Students need access to complex, diverse text in public schools. A large body of research demonstrates that equitable access to books promotes reading achievement and motivation (Allington, 2002, 2009; Krashen, 2011; Nystrand, 2006; Wu & Samuels, 2004). Students need books that challenge them–books that lend them a window into the experiences of others. They also need to see themselves in books. Those of us in the field of literacy refer to this as “Mirrors and Windows.” It is a reference to Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop's highly regarded work on the subject. On the surface, the idea that students need access to diverse text appears to be something on which we can all agree.Yet, somehow here we are, once again debating whether or not books should be pulled from school library shelves under the guise of protecting children.

As a former AP Language and Rhetoric teacher, I can easily spot logical fallacies like cherry picking and post hoc, ergo propter hoc. These arguments seem, superficially, to be well made. They make sense. Hence their descriptor as “logical.” Unfortunately, not everyone is versed in understanding these concepts. They are unaware of how these seemingly sound positions are, in fact, intended to deceive. This ploy to protect children from pornography in schools is no different. The arguments are full of fallacious reasoning with the intent to sway and deceive. And, in their making, teachers and librarians are being painted as evil-doers who want to indoctrinate and groom children. These assertions are patently false. They are false and they are hateful. They take dangerous liberties with words like "sexually explicit" and "pornographic." They assume and insinuate the very worst about public educators--most of whom give their professional lives to teaching and caring for kids.

In my district right now, there is a group eager to pull books from shelves and change the current literacy curriculum. They throw words around like “pornography” and ‘Critical Race Theory” in hopes of riling up an already divided community. This is tribalism at its best.

What all of these arguments fail to mention is that parents already wield the right to make executive decisions about the books their children read. It is practice in every literacy classroom in my school district that, if a parent does not want their child to read a book, they can simply say so. They have always had that right. The current curriculum focuses heavily on student choice when studying fiction. In other words, students typically get to choose their books and parents get to be a part of making that choice. But, that isn’t good enough. These folks now want the right to take books out of the hands of all kids. They pick and choose a salacious line or two from a novel out of context in the hopes of painting those who make decisions about books as ill-equipped to do so–or worse–as folks with some terrible, degenerate agenda. 

Are there books in the school libraries with challenging and difficult content? You bet there are. Shall I remind the reader about how many times Catcher in the Rye was banned? Or Of Mice and Men? What about To Kill a Mockingbird? These books, now all deemed classics that everyone should read, were once called “lewd” and “explicit.” What all of these folks who are advocating pulling books from shelves are failing to do, just as those in the past failed to do, is see the big picture. Yes, some of the books mentioned have "sexual" content–but they also have complex, deeply meaningful themes that speak to core of humanity. They challenge our thinking and push us to be better people. And that is what the naysayers are really angry about. It isn’t a sex scene in a book. It is a completely unrealistic fear that teachers are intent on indoctrinating their children with some left-wing agenda. It is rooted in fear and loudly filled echo-chambers. It is part of a larger political agenda of which many may not even be aware. And it is not helping children. 

My heart breaks when I think of the fact that so many of the books being challenged in Keller ISD surround LGBTQ+ characters/themes and issues of race. In removing these books we are further harming students who are already marginalized. With suicide being the 2nd leading cause of death amongst teens and 4x higher for LGBTQ+ youth, pulling books that may help these kids feel less alone perpetuates the harm. The job of public education is to support all students. Parents have every right to decide what books their own children read. They do not and should not have the right to pull books out of the hands of other kids. 

If you have read this far (you are likely my mom or my husband), you are probably wondering...where is the love part of this love letter. Here you go...

Dear book banner, scared parent, or confused citizen:

Why do you have such little faith in the ability of our children to discern and understand? Why do you think that our kids can't hold space for hard things? Why don’t you trust our young people to think and question? Perhaps that’s the issue. Perhaps you're afraid of the questions. Perhaps you're worried you don’t have the answers. I wish you knew the truth: none of us have the answers. This is why we read books. It is why we open our hearts to the suffering of others. It is why we listen to stories that dance with pain and sadness. Because it makes us better. It keeps us connected. If we close our hearts, and if we prevent our children from understanding one another’s experiences–even when there is darkness in them, we strip away a little of their humanity. We take from them their chance at truly understanding one other. If we do this enough, we build a generation of young people who have no empathy. We build an army of emotionally stilted, empty children whose first instinct is not to stop a fight that breaks out, but to pull out a phone and film it to post on snapchat. We create a collective mindset that will always see anyone whose experience is different as “the other.” No good that comes from this. Don't you see? It is in the hard things, it is in the space of pain and difficulty, that our children find the best parts of themselves and seek to do better--to make the world better.

What about the girl who's step father abused her? Doesn't she deserve the chance to know she's not alone. Shouldn't the words on the page help her see that she, too, can overcome? And the young man who's struggling with his sexuality, shouldn't he have the opportunity to know that his experience is shared so that maybe, just maybe, he can keep going? Some of these books may have passages that make us uncomfortable, but what you aren't seeing is, that is the point. There are kids in our schools right now going through these things and worse. How can any of us support them or understand their experiences unless we have a small window into them? I know what you're going to say. You will say, "But these passages are sexually explicit!! They describe some really adult content in fairly graphic detail. How is that appropriate? It is basically porn!!" To that, I say this: the intent of porn is to arouse. No one is turning to page 73 paragraph 4 of whatever random book you are mad about for that. They have phones and computers for that. And please, save the speech about how a kid having a phone isn't a good rebuttal. It actually is. It actually really is. I am in schools daily and the majority of kids have free access to whatever they want on their phones. My son, who is 13 and attends a middle school in our district, is the ONLY one in his peer group with active parental controls on his phone. That is not hyperbole. What I am saying is, with love, please stop. Stop attacking teachers. Stop this war on books. Stop crucifying librarians. We are not the enemy. You are mad at the wrong people. Be mad at the abusers! Be mad at the people that hurt kids! Be mad at the politicians who are using you in a larger political agenda to siphon funding from public schools and give it to charter and private schools.

Teachers love your kids. Librarians love your kids. There are battles that truly need fighting. This isn't one of them.

With Love,

-Melissa

A teacher

A mom

A friend

A literacy coach

A reader