#school book ban
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When I was a kid, I regularly lost reading privileges for "having an attitude" and "acting out".
It wasn't as simple as being told not to read during other activities- one of the first times it happened, I remember being six years old, watching my stepfather pull fistfuls of books off my bookshelf and throw them to the floor in a heaping mess while I cried and asked him to stop.
It was weird. Every other adult I knew described me as exceptionally well-behaved, but at home, it was the opposite, and it was blamed on "learning bad habits from that shit you're reading".
Because I couldn't read at home, I spent all my free time at school in the library, reading with my friends.
When I grew up and moved away, I realized that my family life was toxic and abusive, and the "attitudes" I was being punished for were standing up for myself, standing up for my younger siblings, and resisting actual, real-life psychological abuse. Because I'd learned from what I'd read that my family wasn't normal, not like my parents said it was, and in my stories, the heroes were the people who spoke out when it was hard to.
It is insane to me that there are students right now who can't access books. It is insane that books are being outlawed. It is perverse that we are stealing away an entire generation's ability to contextualize their lives, to learn about the world around them, to develop critical thinking skills and express themselves and feel connected to the world or escape from it, whatever and whenever and however they need.
That is not how you raise a compassionate, thoughtful, powerful society.
That's how you process cattle.
It's fucking disgusting.
#I know this is old news but Jesus#Every day I hear more about school book bans and I feels less real#Restriction of information is restriction of freedom#People need stories#Even bad stories#Even tragic or problematic ones#We need to set purity culture on fire I'm not kidding#Abuse mention#Abuse tw
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via the Arkansas Advocate
it’s official: in Arkansas, library staff may now be charged with a Class D felony for providing books to their communities that are deemed “obscene”.
in Florida, school librarians and teachers can be criminally charged for checking out books to kids that dare to touch on LGBTQ topics & gender identity, thanks to the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
book censorship in the US is at such an all-time high, book sanctuaries are popping up all over the country.
library staff aren’t physically safe, either. just over the past couple months, threats against libraries and their staff resulted in the temporary closure of “five public library systems due to bomb and shooting threats," ALA. active shooter trainings have become the new norm for me.
the censorship myself and my colleagues have been watching unfold over the last several years has felt like watching a slow-motion car crash.
but this bill? this feels like a death knell for my profession.
via Teen Vogue
when I was a confused queer kid growing up in an ultra-religious household, the library was my refuge. when I asked hard questions, librarians listened and gave me the tools I needed to answer them. in many ways, libraries saved my life. it's why I became a librarian.
I can't believe I'm living in times where future generations of kids may not have access to the same refuge I did, but it's happening.
if you live in the US and you care about protecting open, equitable access to information, please check out the American Library Association for anti-censorship resources in your state, info on contacting your representatives, etc.
you can also report censorship you see in your community and ALA will investigate (1-800-545-2433, ext. 4266; [email protected]).
I know this isn't my usual content, but libraries are standing on the edge of a horrifying precipice- one we can't escape on our own.
libraries are free society's canary in the coal mine, and all the alarms are singing. when libraries fall, nations usually aren't far behind.
this matters- and we need help.
#censorship#book banning#libraries#banned books#arkansas#florida#public libraries#school libraries#librarians#american library association#american libraries#lgbtq+#lgbtq+ history#us politics#homophobia#transphobia
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Big day for the kids who used to get in trouble for reading Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus in class
#bluebird.txt#percy jackson#I was that kid. almost got banned from taking Rick riordan books out of my middle school library bc of it lmao
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As a children's librarian, people who harass fans of Harry Potter indiscriminately really worry me.
Here's why.
1. The majority of Harry Potter fans are children.
I've had people call me disgusting and scum and an embarrassment to my disabled community. I've been suicide baited and have received death threats. All of this can be heavy enough stuff for an adult to deal with.
And then I think of how most of my 700+ elementary-aged students are huge Harry Potter fans. Because, you know, Harry Potter is a children's series. And they also have access to the internet and social media like TikTok and YouTube.
Now imagine the stuff that's been said to me being said to a kid. Because Harry Potter's main audience are KIDS.
2. This black-and-white mentality isn't healthy.
Very few things in life are cut-and-dry good vs bad. And if you employ this kind of thinking in one area of your life, odds are you'll apply it to other areas too(more on that in a moment).
And people who go out of their way to harass people who like Harry Potter don't seem to particularly care about any context beyond "If you like Harry Potter in any way whatsoever you're scum".
It hasn't mattered when I've pointed out that I absolutely and unequivocally think Rowling's TERF views are awful and scummy and wrong. It hasn't mattered that I try my best to consume the content only in ways that won't monetarily support her, (which kids typically can't do, btw). It hasn't mattered that it's literally in my job description to keep up with children's media to procure content for my patrons as well as to be able to hold conversations with them.
3. Saying "You're not allowed to read this without being harassed" is no different from saying a book should be banned.
This is ironic, seeing as the people doing the harassing are also often up in arms about queerphobic and racist book bans (as they should be) while demanding book bans of their own.
Because in their all-or-nothing way of thinking, book bans are only bad when the "bad" people do it.
No. Book bans are always bad, no exceptions.
Book bans aren't bad because they're banning the "good" books, they're bad because banning access to different ideas is always bad. Because every book has a lesson to teach us (perhaps not the lesson intended by the author, but a lesson nonetheless).
#school librarian#librarylife#libraryland#school libraries#the real life of me#libraries#elementary school#canada#harry potter fandom#harry potter#hp fandom#book banning#purity culture#kidlit#children's literature#children's librarian
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This is recent history. Ruby Bridges is 68yrs old and she is still alive.
Emily Conklin is thee definition of a racist Karen, and she is trying to whitewash the history white children learn by erasing a rated PG Disney movie that has already been shown for years in Pinellas County schools, usually as a part of Black History Month.
Two immediate thoughts that come to mind are:
“The people who threw rocks at Ruby Bridges for trying to go to school in 1960 now are upset their grandchildren might learn about them throwing rocks at Ruby Bridges for trying to go to school.”
and
“IF BLACK CHILDREN ARE OLD ENOUGH TO EXPERIENCE RACISM, WHITE CHILDREN ARE OLD ENOUGH TO LEARN ABOUT IT”
Look, Ruby Bridges was six years old when racist white parents (men and women) threw rocks and hissy fits because she was trying to get an education. A full year younger than most of the white children who are now being “protected” from learning the truth about what their grandparents did.
I guess these delicate snowflakes are so triggered by the racism of their elders that they need to get the Republican governor to whitewash away the truth.
I’m almost 40yrs old and I used to wonder how it was that in college, white kids my age genuinely believed that Martin Luther King, Jr. died of old age. But somehow, every single Black person my age knew the truth. How does that happen?? This is how it happens. This is a prime example of precisely how that happened and still happens—because to “protect” them from the truth, white kids weren’t taught that he was assassinated. It’s literally no different than raising generations of white kids to believe that 2+2=5. There’s going to be serious problems when they hit the real world. But what can I say? Conservatives like ‘em dumb and ignorant.
Anyway, this is how you get generations of fully grown white adults who truly honestly believe foolishness like “racism is over,” or “Martin Luther King basically ended racism,” or, “we don’t need affirmative action because there is no more racism; if anything it’s white people who are more discriminated against now.” (The majority of white people polled said the same thing in the 1960s too, btw).
Keeping as many white people as possible ignorant of the truth does not happen by accident. It’s very intentional. And that’s not to say that ALL white people are ignorant of the truth. Some of them, like Emily Conklin, know the truth, but just do not care.
And make no mistake: The same white people who want to keep their white children “pure” and “innocent” have ZERO problems criminalizing and sending young Black children directly to jail for even the slightest misbehavior in a classroom.
Evil, racist cowards (redundant, I know).
#politics#emily conklin#republicans#ruby bridges#whitewashing history#erasure#north shore elementary school#black history#crt#critical race theory#book banning#florida#floriduh#ron desantis
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Teachers with Pride Still Have to Hide
Gay schoolteachers wearing masks at parade, June 28, 1986
In this image, Seattle schoolteachers participating in the Gay Freedom Day parade through the Capitol Hill neighborhood hold a banner reading "Teachers with Pride Still Have to Hide," and wear masks to protest the discrimination they have felt. An estimated 10,000 people participated in the event, which is part of Seattle's annual Gay Pride Week.
[ 📷 Jennifer Werner-Jones / Seattle Post-Intelligencer ]
oh, how times have changed!
#queer history#teachers#teacher#pride month#🌈#🏳️🌈#🦄#🏳️⚧️#1980s#80s#1986#queer#school#florida#book ban#book bans#librarians#librarian#anti trans legislation#anti woke legislation#pride march#lgbt#lgbtq#lgbqti#discrimination#demonstration#protest#seattle#capitol hill#cap hill
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anyway I saw this poster in a Captain Underpants book on the same day I was starting my Banned Books talks so I was implored to recreate it and I kinda fucking love it
#a lil nervous someone else might hate it but it is a good fucking poster#captain underpants#dav pilkey#school libraries#banned books
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Here's a little post ranting about the Floridian education system and how it fucked over public school librarians this year, from the adult child of one who spent his whole summer helping his poor mom try and keep up with Desantis's ridiculous requests.
Every school year, the librarian always gets a couple weeks with a "closed" library to take inventory of the school's stock at the end. Normal stuff, y'know, if a bit tedious and boring. Scan every. Single. Thing. See what you have and figure out who last checked out what you should have, that sort of thing.
Well, Ron Desantis, in his genius, decided that concept had to be applied to all the books in the entire school to determine if they're "appropriate" (by his batshit conservative standards).
My mom didn't JUST have to do the usual inventory thing for her own library. She ALSO had to do something similar but far WORSE for her entire school's personal classroom libraries.
The objective of this SCHOOL WIDE requirement was to "approve" every book in the school as "appropriate". Every. Single. Book. In. The. School. Not the school library, no, the SCHOOL. All classrooms.
My mom's an elementary school librarian. There's around 1000 students at her school, give or take, and around 50 or so classroom libraries to sort through. And this was supposed to be done over summer, before the kids came back in the fall. Entirely unpaid.
She had to personally approve around 25,000-30,000 books school wide based on whether or not they're "appropriate for kids" (again, by Desantis standards), entirely unpaid, in about 2 months. Keep in mind these classroom libraries had been pre-existing for many years or even decades in most cases, so it's kinda useless to just now care about whether the books are "appropriate".
Mind you, you can't read that many individual books in under two months and then approve them in the system if you tried, even if most were children's books. She spent every single day of her summer, her only real time off each year, logging into the online portal and manually approving books from 8 in the morning to 8 at night, looking them up and trying to determine if they might be okay by the new standards since she couldn't possibly have the time to read them all and check, and again, entirely unpaid on her own. Teachers were scanning in their classroom's books to the system to be approved by her in real time, so she really never could get very far ahead. At most she'd knock out a few hundred a day, which I think is wildly impressive given the circumstances.
Even with all that work, she couldn't open her library for nearly a month into the new school year this August because she spent every school day finishing that approval thing for the classroom libraries for teachers. At least by that point she got paid for it. She was also way behind on getting her library ready for the school year, she really hadn't had time to prepare like normal. It was a crazy stressful time for her all around, moreso than back-to-school time normally is each year.
I helped as much as I knew how to, which mostly just meant looking books up for her or texting back and forth with my friends that work at Barnes and Noble or Books A Million asking if they could skim through certain books that might pose a threat at times, and coming up to the school with her sometimes while she worked on approving books and I worked on preparing her library for "business" again.
My mom was upset because she didn't have time for a real summer vacation, the most she got to do was occasionally visit the beach a few hours away for a day trip. (On one of the beach days, she even took her blessed laptop with her to work on it in the car ride over.) She was in the thick of it neck deep all on her own for months with hardly any time off and no pay to show for it.
It's frustrating because if she were to have approved a book that a parent later complains about, it could mean bad news for her. Again, no way in hell would she have been able to both read every single book, determine if she thought it was okay by Desantis's standards, and then approve every single book within the system. She did her best, but she's still nervous someone will complain.
All this conservative bullshit around books is hurting so many kinds of librarians and educators in so many ways, so just take a moment sometime soon to appreciate your local librarians and public school teachers putting up with this crap. They could use the love. Maybe some strong alcohol. And a big wad of cash, they do a lot of shit unpaid.
And do vote these assholes out of office that are making these poor librarians' and teachers' jobs harder with no additional support or pay.
#rant post#fuck desantis#ron desantis#florida#library#public libraries#school libraries#librarians#love your librarians#public school#public school system#education#education system#banned books#politics#be nice to teachers
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What seems more likely to be true?
That the US is full of pedophiles, and teachers and librarians all over the country are handing out porn to children?
Or that a bunch of religious conservatives and elderly politicians have an overly-broad definition of "obscene" and use fear and paranoia to convince everyone to conform to it?
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Banned books
The perennial topic, the regularly scheduled table of "banned books" at Borders and the public library.
The people who tell you that censorship is just sparkling repression unless it's done by a government tell you that a book is "banned" because one parent in Bumfuq, Kansas (population: 2436 if we count the prison) said they didn't want their 8 year old to be required to read it for a class they are legally required to attend, regardless of if this parent's objections were obeyed.
Meanwhile, what's not on the "banned books" table, because it isn't being printed (anymore), got "weeded" from the library, or otherwise isn't in the building because it don't fit the sociopolitical ideology of the people who assemble those displays?
Salman Rushdie books aside, has anything on that table ever been repressed by a government?
#censorship#banned books#read banned books#public school#education industrial complex#books & libraries#public libraries#library#publishing industry#original post
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youtube
read the full article here
help fight book censorship
#i’m sorry (not sorry)- i swear this is the last one#i’m in near tears at work & i had to#grace linn#book banning#banned books#book censorship#libraries#public libraries#school libraries#censorship#florida#martin county#us politics#world war two#auschwitz
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A handful of states are eyeing laws that would allow criminal charges against school librarians for distributing books that contain "obscene matter."
Why it matters: GOP state lawmakers have in recent years increased their efforts to ban material they deem inappropriate from schools and libraries.
That material includes books on gender identity and sexual orientation.
Critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia, said the bill "is designed to create confusion for educators about what kinds of materials can be taught or displayed."
The American Library Association said this type of legislation would allow for "advocacy groups and parents to sue or prosecute library workers" for providing books and other materials that present "accurate medical information about sex or puberty, describe sexual behavior, or reflect the experiences of LGBTQ+ persons."
The ALA noted that such legal action would be "based on the false claim that any material that includes information about sex, sexuality, gender identity, or sexual orientation is legally obscene and inappropriate for minors."
#libraries#librarians#american news#news article#library news#librarylife#libraryland#censorship#book banning#lgbt issues#right to read#school libraries#elementary school#public libraries
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Which U.S. states ban the most books?
In the fall semester of 2022, there were 1,477 instances of individual books banned, affecting 874 unique titles. Texas is the state with the most book bans by far. It’s followed by Florida and Missouri.
(via Which U.S. states ban the most books? (infographic))
#infographic#books#reading#book censorship#banned books#banned books week#reader updated#school books
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