I'm not going to get into what constitutes "explicit content" or pornography, that's a notoriously subjective debate. The Mori et al. was used as context-setting, I never intended it to support any kind of empirical claim about the specific library books being challenged. In fact, the whole point of the essay wasn't to make claims about the books themselves, but rather to argue that as a profession we are ill-prepared the political firestorm surrounding challenged books at least in part because our policies and professional rhetoric have effectively positioned minor children as "miniature adults" and that more robust guidance was called for.
OK - lots to unpack in that. First of all, I didn't cite the article in support of arguments regarding gender theory, I used Bill Maher for that. Second, I didn't say *I* found those books objectionable or that they are pornographic; I'm citing them as examples of the books that are being objected to, and the content being cited by those making objections. That's just a political reality. My own suspicion is that a lot of the objections (if you were to drill down) are concerned with sexual explicitness, not the presence of LGBTQ+ characters per se. Third, a lot can fall under the rubric of "comprehensive sexual education" which is itself oriented to age-appropriateness, ie., directed differently across the age ranges between children and youth, so we shouldn't conflate such education with the specific content cited, and certainly not the novels. Fourth, the context of the essay concerns young children, not youth. Finally, the focus of the essay is on policy guidance and rhetoric, so that our profession can engage in more fruitful and constructive dialogue with our communities, and not just be levelling accusations against each other.
Just a reminder from our editorial policies - While articles published on Heterodoxy in the Stacks are not peer- or editorially-reviewed, all posts and comments must model the HxA Way (https://heterodoxacademy.org/resources/the-hxa-way/). Notably, "Generally target ideas rather than people. Do not attribute negative motives to people you disagree with as an attempt at dismissing or discrediting their views. Avoid hyperbole when describing perceived problems or (especially) one’s adversaries..."
Good summary of the current situation. In Florida the State library staff can no longer attend ALA or even our state library association by law--because the state chapter is deemed part of ALA. Many counties of millions of people (like Hillsborough/Tampa 1.4 million) where I teach have made similar decisions so staff who attend conferences must attend at their own cost and as vacation, not professional leave. During COVID I raised $$$ to pay students' ALA/FLA memberships. At present the US of librarianship is riven by this. I'm still trying to figure out what to do in my teaching. Will share this essay.
"Such a schism between the national and state library associations is not unprecedented..." Yes! I'm seizing the opportunity to promote my recent essay elaborating on this point: https://hxlibraries.substack.com/p/dissociative-states
The study you mention at the beginning of this indicates the sexual content as online pornography or live sexual content which is markedly different from a YA book that discusses sex or has depictions of sexual behavior. Since YA books are shelved separate from children's books, it doesn't seem problematic to me. Even according to this study: "Certain sexually exploratory behaviors may increase in adolescence (13 to 17 years), and sexual behaviors such as masturbation and consensual sexual relationships with developmentally similar peers are normative (Hackett, 2014; Tolman & McClelland, 2011). Sexual behaviors become problematic when they are abusive, exploitative, aggressive, and non-consensual, or involve much younger children (Hackett, 2014). " So according to this, these YA books are within the normative behavior as any references to sex are consensual and between peers. If a young adult chooses a book over porn to learn about sex, Hallelujah! Now I can understand where some religious folks may not like that and that's okay. They can monitor what content their children take in; however, it is not for them to decide what is appropriate for everyone. In the same vein, it is not for the left to decide what books cause harm either.
Agreed. The problem is largely showing up in school libraries, where it's difficult to make a practical difference in terms of distinguishing between shelving locations, so young children have access to YA materials.
I'm one of the few people I know to attend a school that was K-12. I live in an rural area and graduated with 23 people. Even in a one room library, there was a clear divide between the children's section and the YA or adult, and we were never allowed past a certain point without the librarian's permission. Of course this is just anecdotal and not evidence, but it seems to me that most schools are now separated based on the grades and would have a library for those age ranges, so this really wouldn't be an issue. It seems to me that full K-12 schools are pretty rare. I can't seem to find any numbers to confirm this though.
I am at present reading a book by Neil Postman, "The Disappearance of Childhood". I think this situation in libraries could be viewed as part of a larger societal trend toward eliding the distinctions that Postman believes are important between children and adults. The part in the essay where it is mentioned that, on the one hand, librarians (and others) are claiming that it is important to remove items from the _adult_ section because they may cause "harm" to persons who voluntarily read them or perhaps just glance at the title but at the same time these very same people justify deliberately placing possibly age-inappropriate books in the children's section because of childrens' "right" to be exposed to these books, however distressing the books may be to them, or however strongly their parents may feel that they are inappropriate for children of their age would be an example of this trend.
Postman argues, not entirely convincingly, that the concept of childhood was "invented" because of the introduction of the printed book, with its sequential structure. So, childhood began to be understood as a sequence, and the very notion of "age-appropriate" was resuscitated. (He believes that the concept had, just, begun to emerge among the ancient Romans.) He argues that the concept of childhood is being elided by the other media, which constantly push images and so forth that can be easily grasped by quite young children, unlike with books, where subjects inappropriate to small children would be likely to be addressed only in adult words, in adult books, consisting mostly of text, and not with vivid, immediate, and unmediated images.
I think reasonable people can argue about how to decide what is age-appropriate, but getting rid of the idea of age-appropriateness altogether seems to me to be a bad line to cross.
I've also noticed that some of the so-called library-friendly measures don't seem to all librarians or trustees to be library-friendly. Massachusetts introduced a bill to punish libraries that engaged in censorship, defining it somehow indirectly via the ALA, by withholding state funds. That seems to me not much different to the so-called library-hostile measures that seems to be being advanced by other states. A librarian who was simply being responsible about age-appropriateness might find that, according to the law enforcers' definition of censorship, or the ALA's, they had been inadvertently responsible for getting their library dropped from state funding and all inter-library loan privileges. Grim. Here's the bill: https://malegislature.gov/Bills/193/S2447 . I can not comprehend the legalese, or even figure out the status of the bill, but maybe someone else can.
Although I disagree with this post, I agree that it is important to discuss this topic and clarify our thoughts about it. I'd like to write a response column to expression my objections in a more thorough way, but I don't know if I will get around to it.
A couple of brief comments here:
1.The claim the LBOR is inconsistent with 1st amendment jurisprudence is overstated. I recommend Strossen's "Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know" (https://www.amazon.com/Free-Speech-Everyone-Needs-Know/dp/0197699650) for a good intro to 1st Amendment law. Per Strossen, minors do have 1st Amendment rights. Currently, minors' 1st A rights are limited only by obscenity (explicit sexual content) although that is a controversial limitation. Also, SCOTUS argues that restrictions on the rights of minors should be imposed in a way that is the least intrusive on the rights of others. Instead of having ISPs censor obscene content, for example, parents should be able to monitor and control the online content available to their children. The tendency of 1st amendment law is to give parents the ability monitor what their children consume rather than to impose that parental responsibility and authority on others (ISPs or libraries).
2. More importantly, the solution proposed in the essay wouldn't resolve the conflict addressed by the essay. Pornography has been easily available in the US since the LBOR was adopted in 1939, but in the 50 years that I've used public libraries, I've never seen children browsing explicit pornography (say Hustler or Penthouse) in them. Somehow, pornography was kept out of the children's hands in libraries despite what the LBOR says. The key was a general cultural and social agreement about what children should have access to, not detailed instructions in the LBOR.
The problem now is not that librarians have suddenly decided to put Hustler on their shelves, it is social and ideological disagreement about what is appropriate for young people to read. I haven't read any of the specific titles that Dudley cites as potentially problematic, but I looked them all up on Amazon. They are all well-reviewed by Amazon users (over 4 stars). Many of the public reviewers believe that these are good books for young adults to read as does the School Library Journal. I assume that these Amazon reviewers are sincere, and I also assume that those who object to these titles are sincere. If the LBOR is changed as Dudley proposes, many librarians will continue to add these books to their collections in the sincere belief that they are age-appropriate, and many in the public will continue to object to them in the sincere belief that they are harmful to children. And both sides will believe that the revised LBOR w/ its paternalistic concerns about harm supports their position.
Thus, the solution proposed by the essay won't solve our culture war problem that concerns Dudley, but the elaborately revised LBOR that he proposes will give those inclined to limit the reading of others based on their own ideological preferences many more hooks that they can grab onto to limit what goes on library shelves.
Thank you John for the thoughtful response. I agree that a revised LBOR wouldn't necessarily result in any practical consequences in terms of the presence (or not) of particular titles in school libraries. But I think it might help us as professionals to inform and shape our public rhetoric so we can engage more ethically with our constituencies in terms of discussing their objections.
I'm not going to get into what constitutes "explicit content" or pornography, that's a notoriously subjective debate. The Mori et al. was used as context-setting, I never intended it to support any kind of empirical claim about the specific library books being challenged. In fact, the whole point of the essay wasn't to make claims about the books themselves, but rather to argue that as a profession we are ill-prepared the political firestorm surrounding challenged books at least in part because our policies and professional rhetoric have effectively positioned minor children as "miniature adults" and that more robust guidance was called for.
OK - lots to unpack in that. First of all, I didn't cite the article in support of arguments regarding gender theory, I used Bill Maher for that. Second, I didn't say *I* found those books objectionable or that they are pornographic; I'm citing them as examples of the books that are being objected to, and the content being cited by those making objections. That's just a political reality. My own suspicion is that a lot of the objections (if you were to drill down) are concerned with sexual explicitness, not the presence of LGBTQ+ characters per se. Third, a lot can fall under the rubric of "comprehensive sexual education" which is itself oriented to age-appropriateness, ie., directed differently across the age ranges between children and youth, so we shouldn't conflate such education with the specific content cited, and certainly not the novels. Fourth, the context of the essay concerns young children, not youth. Finally, the focus of the essay is on policy guidance and rhetoric, so that our profession can engage in more fruitful and constructive dialogue with our communities, and not just be levelling accusations against each other.
Just a reminder from our editorial policies - While articles published on Heterodoxy in the Stacks are not peer- or editorially-reviewed, all posts and comments must model the HxA Way (https://heterodoxacademy.org/resources/the-hxa-way/). Notably, "Generally target ideas rather than people. Do not attribute negative motives to people you disagree with as an attempt at dismissing or discrediting their views. Avoid hyperbole when describing perceived problems or (especially) one’s adversaries..."
Good summary of the current situation. In Florida the State library staff can no longer attend ALA or even our state library association by law--because the state chapter is deemed part of ALA. Many counties of millions of people (like Hillsborough/Tampa 1.4 million) where I teach have made similar decisions so staff who attend conferences must attend at their own cost and as vacation, not professional leave. During COVID I raised $$$ to pay students' ALA/FLA memberships. At present the US of librarianship is riven by this. I'm still trying to figure out what to do in my teaching. Will share this essay.
Thanks Kathleen! Being Canadian it's difficult for me to get a full sense of just how difficult this must be in affected states.
That is an excellent essay. Very comprehensive and sensible. Thank you.
Thank you Jeff!
Thank you for drilling down on this topic. Wonderful essay! I will need to come back and follow up on the many intriguing sources.
Thanks Amy! :-)
"Such a schism between the national and state library associations is not unprecedented..." Yes! I'm seizing the opportunity to promote my recent essay elaborating on this point: https://hxlibraries.substack.com/p/dissociative-states
Sorry! I had forgotten about your post. I'll link to it.
The study you mention at the beginning of this indicates the sexual content as online pornography or live sexual content which is markedly different from a YA book that discusses sex or has depictions of sexual behavior. Since YA books are shelved separate from children's books, it doesn't seem problematic to me. Even according to this study: "Certain sexually exploratory behaviors may increase in adolescence (13 to 17 years), and sexual behaviors such as masturbation and consensual sexual relationships with developmentally similar peers are normative (Hackett, 2014; Tolman & McClelland, 2011). Sexual behaviors become problematic when they are abusive, exploitative, aggressive, and non-consensual, or involve much younger children (Hackett, 2014). " So according to this, these YA books are within the normative behavior as any references to sex are consensual and between peers. If a young adult chooses a book over porn to learn about sex, Hallelujah! Now I can understand where some religious folks may not like that and that's okay. They can monitor what content their children take in; however, it is not for them to decide what is appropriate for everyone. In the same vein, it is not for the left to decide what books cause harm either.
Agreed. The problem is largely showing up in school libraries, where it's difficult to make a practical difference in terms of distinguishing between shelving locations, so young children have access to YA materials.
I'm one of the few people I know to attend a school that was K-12. I live in an rural area and graduated with 23 people. Even in a one room library, there was a clear divide between the children's section and the YA or adult, and we were never allowed past a certain point without the librarian's permission. Of course this is just anecdotal and not evidence, but it seems to me that most schools are now separated based on the grades and would have a library for those age ranges, so this really wouldn't be an issue. It seems to me that full K-12 schools are pretty rare. I can't seem to find any numbers to confirm this though.
I am at present reading a book by Neil Postman, "The Disappearance of Childhood". I think this situation in libraries could be viewed as part of a larger societal trend toward eliding the distinctions that Postman believes are important between children and adults. The part in the essay where it is mentioned that, on the one hand, librarians (and others) are claiming that it is important to remove items from the _adult_ section because they may cause "harm" to persons who voluntarily read them or perhaps just glance at the title but at the same time these very same people justify deliberately placing possibly age-inappropriate books in the children's section because of childrens' "right" to be exposed to these books, however distressing the books may be to them, or however strongly their parents may feel that they are inappropriate for children of their age would be an example of this trend.
Postman argues, not entirely convincingly, that the concept of childhood was "invented" because of the introduction of the printed book, with its sequential structure. So, childhood began to be understood as a sequence, and the very notion of "age-appropriate" was resuscitated. (He believes that the concept had, just, begun to emerge among the ancient Romans.) He argues that the concept of childhood is being elided by the other media, which constantly push images and so forth that can be easily grasped by quite young children, unlike with books, where subjects inappropriate to small children would be likely to be addressed only in adult words, in adult books, consisting mostly of text, and not with vivid, immediate, and unmediated images.
I think reasonable people can argue about how to decide what is age-appropriate, but getting rid of the idea of age-appropriateness altogether seems to me to be a bad line to cross.
I've also noticed that some of the so-called library-friendly measures don't seem to all librarians or trustees to be library-friendly. Massachusetts introduced a bill to punish libraries that engaged in censorship, defining it somehow indirectly via the ALA, by withholding state funds. That seems to me not much different to the so-called library-hostile measures that seems to be being advanced by other states. A librarian who was simply being responsible about age-appropriateness might find that, according to the law enforcers' definition of censorship, or the ALA's, they had been inadvertently responsible for getting their library dropped from state funding and all inter-library loan privileges. Grim. Here's the bill: https://malegislature.gov/Bills/193/S2447 . I can not comprehend the legalese, or even figure out the status of the bill, but maybe someone else can.
Although I disagree with this post, I agree that it is important to discuss this topic and clarify our thoughts about it. I'd like to write a response column to expression my objections in a more thorough way, but I don't know if I will get around to it.
A couple of brief comments here:
1.The claim the LBOR is inconsistent with 1st amendment jurisprudence is overstated. I recommend Strossen's "Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know" (https://www.amazon.com/Free-Speech-Everyone-Needs-Know/dp/0197699650) for a good intro to 1st Amendment law. Per Strossen, minors do have 1st Amendment rights. Currently, minors' 1st A rights are limited only by obscenity (explicit sexual content) although that is a controversial limitation. Also, SCOTUS argues that restrictions on the rights of minors should be imposed in a way that is the least intrusive on the rights of others. Instead of having ISPs censor obscene content, for example, parents should be able to monitor and control the online content available to their children. The tendency of 1st amendment law is to give parents the ability monitor what their children consume rather than to impose that parental responsibility and authority on others (ISPs or libraries).
2. More importantly, the solution proposed in the essay wouldn't resolve the conflict addressed by the essay. Pornography has been easily available in the US since the LBOR was adopted in 1939, but in the 50 years that I've used public libraries, I've never seen children browsing explicit pornography (say Hustler or Penthouse) in them. Somehow, pornography was kept out of the children's hands in libraries despite what the LBOR says. The key was a general cultural and social agreement about what children should have access to, not detailed instructions in the LBOR.
The problem now is not that librarians have suddenly decided to put Hustler on their shelves, it is social and ideological disagreement about what is appropriate for young people to read. I haven't read any of the specific titles that Dudley cites as potentially problematic, but I looked them all up on Amazon. They are all well-reviewed by Amazon users (over 4 stars). Many of the public reviewers believe that these are good books for young adults to read as does the School Library Journal. I assume that these Amazon reviewers are sincere, and I also assume that those who object to these titles are sincere. If the LBOR is changed as Dudley proposes, many librarians will continue to add these books to their collections in the sincere belief that they are age-appropriate, and many in the public will continue to object to them in the sincere belief that they are harmful to children. And both sides will believe that the revised LBOR w/ its paternalistic concerns about harm supports their position.
Thus, the solution proposed by the essay won't solve our culture war problem that concerns Dudley, but the elaborately revised LBOR that he proposes will give those inclined to limit the reading of others based on their own ideological preferences many more hooks that they can grab onto to limit what goes on library shelves.
Thank you John for the thoughtful response. I agree that a revised LBOR wouldn't necessarily result in any practical consequences in terms of the presence (or not) of particular titles in school libraries. But I think it might help us as professionals to inform and shape our public rhetoric so we can engage more ethically with our constituencies in terms of discussing their objections.