I am not convinced the library is the right pressure point.
I will give an example: in junior high, my group of friends feverishly passed around a single copy of the trashy 80s novel Scruples. It was full of material that was totally inappropriate for girls of our age and we hid it from our parents. Someone had bought it but it was available at the public library along with lots of other pulpy adult novels.
It probably did us a bit of harm, but two things protected us: we knew it was inappropriate and it was not marketed to us. We knew it was out of line for young teens ( part of its appeal).
The problem with the books you list here is that they are presented to children and teens as fine for them, in fact as designed for them. Mere access is not the real problem. The real problem is the meta - message: this is totally something a child of your age SHOULD be consuming rather than something you have finagled a way to consume as a daring gambit.
The pressure point there is publishers and authors: what the actual eff are you doing? What is the matter with you? I would not involve governments (which is censorship , the real thing) but intense campaigns of public shaming and stigma for publishers and authors of these texts seem to me completely legit. I guess that means there is a kind of cancel culture I like…. So be it.
Us, the war is with publishers, but the battle is with libraries. Libraries, not publishers, purchase these books and make them available. Unwary parents think since the library had them, they must be fine. There is no doubt this is a hydra-headed beast. We must decapitate them where we find them.
Good for you Mark to voice the fact that the South Carolina State Library Board press release from the director does not represent the views of the board and was not even run by the entire board. What a shameful act the director did. Perhaps she is still a recovering ex-ALA pundit. I appreciate how you formulate the argument for more oversight of materials in children’s collections given the radicalization of the librarians (and let’s not forget the publishers). This is what happens when there is an extremely low diversity of thought within a profession. It has no awareness of its failures and feverishly defends its actions.
Just as we shouldn't take at face value claims from woke librarians about "implicit bias", "microaggression" (and other fashionable and empirically dubious sjw explanans) -- see below for links -- I don't think we should accept at face value the causal claims made by anti-woke librarians. (The bookslooks web site -- created by "concerned parents" -- as far as I can tell, doesn't feature a shred of empirical evidence.)
Epistemologically, I see little difference between the anti-woke causal claims being made here about reading materials (or about what qualifies as "prurient interest"), and the stereotypical woke causal claims made about "implicit biases" or "microaggressions" (or what qualifies as either) that are rampant among crusaders within librarianship. Assertions and assumptions made on behalf of their respective agendas about human psychology by woke and anti-woke librarian factions alike should be regarded with extreme skepticism. imho.
One of my few dalliances in student activism as an undergrad long ago at Furman, in Greenville, SC, was participating in a protest during a campus appearance by Tipper Gore -- not, of course, in opposition to her speaking, but to the PMRC crusade.
Sadly, I've discovered since moving away from the South and Appalachia that conservatives don't have a monopoly on the trifecta of anti-intellectualism, sanctimoniousness and censoriousness which all too frequently characterizes wokerati:
(See below for a sample of the kind of information I tried to make available that colleagues attempted to suppress. This was in June 2018.)
But here we are again with conservatives going at it:
“I’m more worried about soft censorship, like when librarians would be so afraid to purchase books with any kind of sexual content or Black kids on the cover because that makes them a target"
Bleske-Rechek, A., Bernstein, M. H., & Deaner, R. O. (2024). Behavioral Science Needs to Return to the Basics. Skeptic, 29(2), 28–37.
"Our criticism of microaggressions spans concerns related to both weak measurement and an undue reliance on lived experience... Despite its immense influence, the IAT is a flawed measure... As for the IAT’s validity, nobody has convincingly shown that patterns of reaction times actually reflect 'unconscious bias' (or 'implicit prejudice') as opposed to cultural stereotypes."
Implicit Bias: What Is It and How Does It Matter for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion?
"While claims such as 'everyone has implicit biases' are common among practitioners, there is no evidence to date on the presumed pervasiveness of unconscious bias... the IAT and other indirect measures should be avoided when explaining unconscious bias"
"a concept [microaggression] that cannot be objectively verified by outside observers is a poor candidate for scientific scrutiny... the evidence doesn't even come close to proving that most of us walk around with unacknowledged and unconscious biases in our heads"
Stretching the Limits of Science: Was the Implicit-Racism Debate a Bridge Too Far for Social Psychology?
Apparently you didn’t read and of the reviews. The site only rates the books according to the rubric I mentioned in the text. The “shred” you missed is blatantly ubiquitous in all the books rated threes, fours, and fives. Western intellectuals told us there was no threat from Marxist-cim-Leninist ideology. Lenin laughingly called them “useful idiots” for minimizing the threat for him while he slaughter thousands and his successor Stalin slaughtered millions. Science brings to the facts the philosophy it claims to have derived from them
I did glance at some of the material. By "shred of evidence" I don't mean passages of the books ranked by the web site's rubric. I mean: where's the evidence that kids are harmed by exposure to such book contents? And where's the evidence that the rating rubric is a valid and reliable measurement tool?
I picked one title at random -- This Book Is Gay -- and see that the "concerned parents" site gives it a 4, yet on Amazon it has 4.5 across over 1500 customer reviews.
I guess I just don't get the concern. What exactly is supposed to happen if a kid reads that book? Although I've always been obdurately heterosexual, I almost certainly would've found the book an intriguing curiosity as a kid, and it might have been useful in giving me an earlier start in expanding my awareness, tolerance and appreciation of human diversity. Same for probably most all of the other books branded on that site with condemnatory ratings. I'd much rather crowd-source from French or Scandinavian parents than Americans, given how moralistic and prudish about sex the latter can be, especially in Red States.
It’s fine if you want to give your child that book but not Simone else’s child. Unless you think reading is meaningless (and Im sure you don’t)then these books will have an impact. Ideas have consequences, and these books have consequences, some good, others bad. If you care about the quality of life, you’ll not treat children like miniature adults. The empirical evidence (science brings to the facts the philosophy it claims to have derived from them) is in the fact that what we read matters. “If we are forced to, at every hour, to watch or listen to horrible events, this constant stream of ghastly impressions will deprive even the most delicate among us of all respect for humanity.”
I tend to agree with Rob, that censorship is wrong whatever the motive, and I’m uncomfortable with the “harm” rubric cutting both ways. But that’s not to say these bills and pressure groups aren’t raising real concerns. The problem is that libraries are subjugating good selection criteria to their own politics, and thereby promoting woke propaganda. Does anyone seriously think that the board book for babies What Are Your Pronouns would have been purchased by libraries if it weren’t for their own woke bias?
You say you are retired so you, like me, have had a long reading life. What do you remember? I remember the books that used to be the canon. I have read a lot of genre literature --once quite enjoyed spy novels--but they aren't recollected. By giving up on good books in favor of any books we take away a lifetime of thoughtfulness.
Yes! Thoughtfulness, determination, attitude, strength…when I was a young adult, I read one such book, “The Story of my Life” by Helen Keller. One quote, “if you keep your face to the sunshine, you cannot see the shadow”. Books inspire and become part of us.
"We have lost our collective minds" is precisely what has happened. School libraries are having to deal with this now because the schools hire from a pool of teachers who have been trained in colleges that lost their collective minds sometime ago. IT goes back at least thirty years. Remember Alan Bloom's book, "The Closing of the American Mind"? That wasn't exactly his topic but in it he described the mechanism which is primarily what got us where we are today. It permeates virtually every aspect of our lives now.
I agree with the Herring's concern about the "radicalization of librarianship." That's why I read this blog (delayed in this case due to my vacation). However, my primary concern about the consequences of radicalization seems to differ from Herring's. My worry is that the desire to promote "woke" values leads librarians to censor alternative points of view (through biased selection, promotion, recommendation, and sometimes by explicit banning of disfavored viewpoints). Thus, I think that we ought to respond to radicalization by reinforcing librarians' commitment to free expression and the 1st amendment rather than by weakening or limiting it. I completely disagree with Kristol's endorsement of censorship, and think that South Carolina's law is wrong-headed and counterproductive.
In some ways, the South Carolina's lawmakers seem to agree with the radical librarians about the purpose of a public library -- both believe libraries should promote their own understanding of public morality. The only question is whose version morality will the library promote (the radical librarians' or the conservative legislature's).
Frankly, if the legislature doesn't trust its librarians and thinks that it is has to micromanage them by passing specific laws telling librarians what to do, it's already lost the war. Would you hire teachers you don't trust and then expect that you can force them to provide a good education to your children by micromanaging what they can and cannot say?
For me, from the perspective of a librarian, one of the problems with the recent insistence that librarianship is inherently political is that it encourages lawmakers to get into our business. South Carolina has its library laws ... I live in CA, which is considering its own library laws based on a very different ideal of public morality than they have back in Columbia. Librarians are just begging to become political footballs, and we're going to get kicked around in different directions by politicians in different states eager to score points against their ideological enemies unless we revive a different understanding of the purpose of public libraries.
I am not convinced the library is the right pressure point.
I will give an example: in junior high, my group of friends feverishly passed around a single copy of the trashy 80s novel Scruples. It was full of material that was totally inappropriate for girls of our age and we hid it from our parents. Someone had bought it but it was available at the public library along with lots of other pulpy adult novels.
It probably did us a bit of harm, but two things protected us: we knew it was inappropriate and it was not marketed to us. We knew it was out of line for young teens ( part of its appeal).
The problem with the books you list here is that they are presented to children and teens as fine for them, in fact as designed for them. Mere access is not the real problem. The real problem is the meta - message: this is totally something a child of your age SHOULD be consuming rather than something you have finagled a way to consume as a daring gambit.
The pressure point there is publishers and authors: what the actual eff are you doing? What is the matter with you? I would not involve governments (which is censorship , the real thing) but intense campaigns of public shaming and stigma for publishers and authors of these texts seem to me completely legit. I guess that means there is a kind of cancel culture I like…. So be it.
Us, the war is with publishers, but the battle is with libraries. Libraries, not publishers, purchase these books and make them available. Unwary parents think since the library had them, they must be fine. There is no doubt this is a hydra-headed beast. We must decapitate them where we find them.
Good for you Mark to voice the fact that the South Carolina State Library Board press release from the director does not represent the views of the board and was not even run by the entire board. What a shameful act the director did. Perhaps she is still a recovering ex-ALA pundit. I appreciate how you formulate the argument for more oversight of materials in children’s collections given the radicalization of the librarians (and let’s not forget the publishers). This is what happens when there is an extremely low diversity of thought within a profession. It has no awareness of its failures and feverishly defends its actions.
Thanks, Sam!
Just as we shouldn't take at face value claims from woke librarians about "implicit bias", "microaggression" (and other fashionable and empirically dubious sjw explanans) -- see below for links -- I don't think we should accept at face value the causal claims made by anti-woke librarians. (The bookslooks web site -- created by "concerned parents" -- as far as I can tell, doesn't feature a shred of empirical evidence.)
Epistemologically, I see little difference between the anti-woke causal claims being made here about reading materials (or about what qualifies as "prurient interest"), and the stereotypical woke causal claims made about "implicit biases" or "microaggressions" (or what qualifies as either) that are rampant among crusaders within librarianship. Assertions and assumptions made on behalf of their respective agendas about human psychology by woke and anti-woke librarian factions alike should be regarded with extreme skepticism. imho.
One of my few dalliances in student activism as an undergrad long ago at Furman, in Greenville, SC, was participating in a protest during a campus appearance by Tipper Gore -- not, of course, in opposition to her speaking, but to the PMRC crusade.
Sadly, I've discovered since moving away from the South and Appalachia that conservatives don't have a monopoly on the trifecta of anti-intellectualism, sanctimoniousness and censoriousness which all too frequently characterizes wokerati:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4uUMnIuF5s&t=179s
(See below for a sample of the kind of information I tried to make available that colleagues attempted to suppress. This was in June 2018.)
But here we are again with conservatives going at it:
“I’m more worried about soft censorship, like when librarians would be so afraid to purchase books with any kind of sexual content or Black kids on the cover because that makes them a target"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/30/south-carolina-public-school-book-ban?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
* * * * *
Bleske-Rechek, A., Bernstein, M. H., & Deaner, R. O. (2024). Behavioral Science Needs to Return to the Basics. Skeptic, 29(2), 28–37.
"Our criticism of microaggressions spans concerns related to both weak measurement and an undue reliance on lived experience... Despite its immense influence, the IAT is a flawed measure... As for the IAT’s validity, nobody has convincingly shown that patterns of reaction times actually reflect 'unconscious bias' (or 'implicit prejudice') as opposed to cultural stereotypes."
Implicit Bias: What Is It and How Does It Matter for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379189928_Implicit_Bias_What_Is_It_and_How_Does_It_Matter_for_Diversity_Equity_and_Inclusion
"While claims such as 'everyone has implicit biases' are common among practitioners, there is no evidence to date on the presumed pervasiveness of unconscious bias... the IAT and other indirect measures should be avoided when explaining unconscious bias"
Rethinking Unconscious Bias
https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5625/chapter/4283491/Rethinking-Unconscious-Bias
"a concept [microaggression] that cannot be objectively verified by outside observers is a poor candidate for scientific scrutiny... the evidence doesn't even come close to proving that most of us walk around with unacknowledged and unconscious biases in our heads"
Stretching the Limits of Science: Was the Implicit-Racism Debate a Bridge Too Far for Social Psychology?
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/xau4njotisg15tbovpg0c/2024-MITCHELL-AND-TETLOCK-Chapter5_AuthorReviewed.pdf?rlkey=3mzftxbms25btic61tpm719ji&e=1&dl=0
Apparently you didn’t read and of the reviews. The site only rates the books according to the rubric I mentioned in the text. The “shred” you missed is blatantly ubiquitous in all the books rated threes, fours, and fives. Western intellectuals told us there was no threat from Marxist-cim-Leninist ideology. Lenin laughingly called them “useful idiots” for minimizing the threat for him while he slaughter thousands and his successor Stalin slaughtered millions. Science brings to the facts the philosophy it claims to have derived from them
Hi Mark,
I did glance at some of the material. By "shred of evidence" I don't mean passages of the books ranked by the web site's rubric. I mean: where's the evidence that kids are harmed by exposure to such book contents? And where's the evidence that the rating rubric is a valid and reliable measurement tool?
I picked one title at random -- This Book Is Gay -- and see that the "concerned parents" site gives it a 4, yet on Amazon it has 4.5 across over 1500 customer reviews.
I guess I just don't get the concern. What exactly is supposed to happen if a kid reads that book? Although I've always been obdurately heterosexual, I almost certainly would've found the book an intriguing curiosity as a kid, and it might have been useful in giving me an earlier start in expanding my awareness, tolerance and appreciation of human diversity. Same for probably most all of the other books branded on that site with condemnatory ratings. I'd much rather crowd-source from French or Scandinavian parents than Americans, given how moralistic and prudish about sex the latter can be, especially in Red States.
Rob:
It’s fine if you want to give your child that book but not Simone else’s child. Unless you think reading is meaningless (and Im sure you don’t)then these books will have an impact. Ideas have consequences, and these books have consequences, some good, others bad. If you care about the quality of life, you’ll not treat children like miniature adults. The empirical evidence (science brings to the facts the philosophy it claims to have derived from them) is in the fact that what we read matters. “If we are forced to, at every hour, to watch or listen to horrible events, this constant stream of ghastly impressions will deprive even the most delicate among us of all respect for humanity.”
I tend to agree with Rob, that censorship is wrong whatever the motive, and I’m uncomfortable with the “harm” rubric cutting both ways. But that’s not to say these bills and pressure groups aren’t raising real concerns. The problem is that libraries are subjugating good selection criteria to their own politics, and thereby promoting woke propaganda. Does anyone seriously think that the board book for babies What Are Your Pronouns would have been purchased by libraries if it weren’t for their own woke bias?
You say you are retired so you, like me, have had a long reading life. What do you remember? I remember the books that used to be the canon. I have read a lot of genre literature --once quite enjoyed spy novels--but they aren't recollected. By giving up on good books in favor of any books we take away a lifetime of thoughtfulness.
Amen to that!
Yes! Thoughtfulness, determination, attitude, strength…when I was a young adult, I read one such book, “The Story of my Life” by Helen Keller. One quote, “if you keep your face to the sunshine, you cannot see the shadow”. Books inspire and become part of us.
"We have lost our collective minds" is precisely what has happened. School libraries are having to deal with this now because the schools hire from a pool of teachers who have been trained in colleges that lost their collective minds sometime ago. IT goes back at least thirty years. Remember Alan Bloom's book, "The Closing of the American Mind"? That wasn't exactly his topic but in it he described the mechanism which is primarily what got us where we are today. It permeates virtually every aspect of our lives now.
I agree with the Herring's concern about the "radicalization of librarianship." That's why I read this blog (delayed in this case due to my vacation). However, my primary concern about the consequences of radicalization seems to differ from Herring's. My worry is that the desire to promote "woke" values leads librarians to censor alternative points of view (through biased selection, promotion, recommendation, and sometimes by explicit banning of disfavored viewpoints). Thus, I think that we ought to respond to radicalization by reinforcing librarians' commitment to free expression and the 1st amendment rather than by weakening or limiting it. I completely disagree with Kristol's endorsement of censorship, and think that South Carolina's law is wrong-headed and counterproductive.
In some ways, the South Carolina's lawmakers seem to agree with the radical librarians about the purpose of a public library -- both believe libraries should promote their own understanding of public morality. The only question is whose version morality will the library promote (the radical librarians' or the conservative legislature's).
Frankly, if the legislature doesn't trust its librarians and thinks that it is has to micromanage them by passing specific laws telling librarians what to do, it's already lost the war. Would you hire teachers you don't trust and then expect that you can force them to provide a good education to your children by micromanaging what they can and cannot say?
For me, from the perspective of a librarian, one of the problems with the recent insistence that librarianship is inherently political is that it encourages lawmakers to get into our business. South Carolina has its library laws ... I live in CA, which is considering its own library laws based on a very different ideal of public morality than they have back in Columbia. Librarians are just begging to become political footballs, and we're going to get kicked around in different directions by politicians in different states eager to score points against their ideological enemies unless we revive a different understanding of the purpose of public libraries.