By Jo Yurcaba
More than 1,600 books were banned from more than 5,000 schools in the last US school year, according to a new report.
Most were titles related to the LGBTQ community or race and racism.
PEN America, a nonprofit group that defends free speech in literature, released a report Monday, at the start of Banned Books Week, showing the wide scope of efforts to ban certain books during the year. school year 2021-22.
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The report reveals that there were 2,532 individual book ban cases, affecting 1,648 titles, meaning that the same titles were subject to multiple attacks in different districts and states.
According to the report, books were banned at 5,049 schools with a combined enrollment of nearly four million students in 32 states.
Because PEN America limited itself to documented cases of bans, which included reports from parents and school staff members and news about book bans, the report notes that its data likely underestimates the true number of bans.
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Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America, said recent efforts to ban books are a new phenomenon that have been led primarily by a small number of conservative activist groups who believe parents don't have enough control over what their children are reading. learning.
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“We all agree that parents deserve and have a right to have a say in their children's education,” Nossel said at a press conference organized by PEN America on Monday.
“That is absolutely essential.
But, fundamentally, that is not the point when parents mobilize in an orchestrated campaign to intimidate teachers and librarians into dictating that certain books be removed from shelves before they have even been read or reviewed.
This goes beyond the reasonable and legitimate right of a parent to have an exchange with the school, something that is enshrined in parent-teacher conferences and parent-teacher associations.”
Preliminary data released Friday by the American Library Association (ALA) revealed that the number of attempts to ban or restrict library resources in schools, universities and public libraries is on track to exceed 2021 record counts.
From January 1 through August 31, the ALA documented 681 attempts to ban or restrict library resources, targeting 1,651 library titles, compared to 729 attempts for all of last year, targeting 1,597 books. objective.
The PEN America report notes that almost all book bans - 96% - were carried out without schools or districts following the best practice guidelines for impeaching books outlined by the ALA and the National Coalition Against Censorship.
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Before the wave of book bans, parents sometimes raised concerns with their children's schools or teachers about the books their children brought home, according to Jonathan Friedman, director of free speech and education programs at PEN America. .
But now, conservative groups and parents Google books that have any LGBTQ content, and then a conservative group adds it to a list of inappropriate books.
"They complain about books on the internet, the books go on a list, which takes on a sense of legitimacy, and then being on the list leads a school district to react to that list and take it seriously," Friedman explained. , adding that in almost all cases, the cycle occurs without respecting process or policy.
An exhibition of banned or censored books at Books Inc independent bookstore in Alameda, Calif., on Oct. 16, 2021. Smith Collection/Gado / Getty Images
Friedman pointed to a case in Walton County, Florida, where a popular children's book called
Everywhere Babies
landed on a banned book list last spring.
Some of the illustrations include what could be interpreted as same-sex couples, but they are never identified as such in the text.
The Florida Citizens Alliance, a conservative nonprofit group focused on education, included it in its
2021
Porn in Schools Report .
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According to the study, of the 1,648 titles banned last year, 41% explicitly address LGBTQ themes or have leading or prominent supporting characters who are LGBTQ, and 40% include leading or supporting characters of color.
More than a fifth (21%) directly address issues of race and racism, and 22% include sexual content of various kinds, such as soap operas with some level of depiction of adolescent sexual experiences;
stories about teenage pregnancies, sexual assaults, and abortions;
and informational books on puberty, sex or relationships.
The report estimates that at least 40% of the bans listed in PEN America's Index of Bans on Books in Schools are related to proposed or enacted legislation or political pressure from elected officials to restrict the teaching of certain books. concepts.
PEN America also found at least 50 groups involved in lobbying for book bans, 73% of which have been formed since last year.
One of the largest is Moms for Liberty, a parenting rights group with more than 200 local chapters on its website.
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Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, believes that teachers should value parents' input.
"There are no two sides to this issue," Justice said in an interview on CBS Saturday Morning.
“There are mothers who love their children, who don't want porn in school, and then there are people who do want porn in school.
I think the subject of the books has been used to try to marginalize and vilify parents.
And the truth is, there is no place for pornography in public schools,” she opined.
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The 50 groups identified by the report have been implicated in at least half of the book bans enacted in the past year, and at least 20% of the bans may be directly related to the groups' actions, according to the report.
The most banned books were
Gender Queer: A Memoir
by Maia Kobabe, followed by
All Boys Aren't Blue
by George M. Johnson and
Out of Darkness
by Ashley Hope Pérez, according to the report.
Perez said what's surprising about his book being banned in 24 school districts is that it was published in 2015 and wasn't challenged until last year.
He said some right-wing groups have used words like "pornographic," "inappropriate," "controversial" and "divisive" to describe banned books and that the books they describe are more often by or about non-white people and other minorities. .
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“Books are a pretext.
It is a proxy war against students who share the marginal identities of the authors and characters of the targeted books,” he stated at Monday's press conference.
“It is a political strategy.
The goal is to elicit political engagement from the right by drawing even brighter lines around targeted identities,” she stated.
He said the book ban harms students in several ways.
When a student shares a sexual or gender identity with a character in a book and that book is banned, "it sends the message that stories about people like them are not fit for school."
By giving in to their demands, the schools give conservative groups undeserved legitimacy.
"When school leaders give in to these pressures, they elevate the questionable judgment of a handful of parents above the professional discretion and training of librarians and educators, and above all, above the needs of students," he said.