Why 'Banned Books Week' Really Needs a Revise

The organizers' stand that any parent who challenges a book taught in schools is a threat to the First Amendment smacks of cultural elitism. The American Library Association in late September will crank up the publicity machine for what it calls the most banned/challenged books of the past year. The ALA has published the list since 1982 and in recent years the release has turned into quite the happening: Banned Books Week comes complete with sponsors such as the American Booksellers Association, merchandise, and celebrity videos like this one from the great children's and Young Adult Lit author Judy Blume.

Denizens of my old profession–journalism–and my new one–teaching English–love Banned Books Week. And why not. Censorship is scary, and the chance to do battle against it appeals to scribes, librarians and teachers. The ALA list generates tons of favorable press, and libraries and schools hold lectures and other events on the dangers of restricting speech. The effort is a noble one, and if it's a tad self-congratulatory–after all, what thinking person doesn't want to stand up to the troglodyte who wants to ban To Kill A Mockingbird – it gets people talking about, and no doubt buying, books. Good things. So what's the problem? Actually, there are two big ones.

What's Wrong with the Data

First, as David Goldenberg points out in this piece for Five-Thirty-Eight, the ALA data behind the list are sketchy at best. The ALA's record of "challenges"–meaning someone or some group has objected to a book's presence in a curriculum or on library shelves–come from a combination of self-reporting from librarians as well as media reports. The ALA recorded 311 challenges to books in 2014 and consistently says the actual number of challenges is four to five times that but offers no back up for that claim. Take the organization at its word, though, and you get a challenge ratio of one for every 32,000 public school students in the country.

Moreover, the few in-depth reporting projects done on book challenges call into question whether the ALA's list really means anything. Students at the journalism schools of the University of Missouri and University of Alabama, and staff at the Texas American Civil Liberties Union, have used their states' Freedom of Information laws to gain access to the challenge records of schools in their states (the Texas ACLU has been doing this for 18 years).

While the ALA Top 10 list is dominated by celebrity authors' best-sellers of Young Adult Literature, the books that crop up in the reported research show a wide variety of texts. You'll rarely find a book that gets more than a single challenge over several years in a state (and Texas and Missouri are big states, population wise). That variety suggests the ALA's "most challenged" label stands on some really thin statistical legs if the universe of challenges it looks at numbers just 300. The ALA, in a statement to Goldenberg, acknowledged its database isn't up to the standards of academic research but wouldn't comment further or provide its data, and the group hasn't gotten back to me.

What's Wrong with the Rhetoric

Second, and perhaps more important, is the rhetoric that the ALA employs when it talks about "banning books." Actually, there are two issues here. For starters, few books are outright banned in schools and almost never in public libraries, so "Banned Book Week" is a misnomer. But "Challenged Book Week" doesn't exactly set off the same adrenalin rush (and is subject to misinterpretation that authors may not like).

Next, while Mockingbird and works by Toni Morrison pop up on the Top 10 in some years, you're more likely to find books like The Perks of Being a Wallflower and ttyl (written entirely in text messaging format) that have their share of F-bombs, sex, and drugs and are clearly aimed at tweens and early teens.

The trouble, to use different examples than Goldenberg does but to borrow his point, is that the ALA's list makes no distinction between a middle-school parent questioning the propriety of ttyl for 11-year-olds and an organized attempt by an outside group to get Mockingbird or Beloved tossed from a school district.

To be fair, the banned books website offers an interactive map (it's a tad outdated but makes the point) that lets you dig into that distinction. To be fair to my argument, though, the ALA paints all challenges with the same broad rhetorical brush. The organization is militant on the issue in a way that doesn't help its commendable cause. This is from the ALA's website:

Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others. As such, they are a threat to freedom of speech and choice. (Emphasis added.)

That would be true if the challenges involved removing books from the public library, but very few are, per the ALA's own map and the state reported data. Minors, though, don't enjoy absolute freedom in any realm of their lives, especially school. And the available data from the states say that most challenges are based on whether a certain book is appropriate for middle- and elementary-schoolers.

Moreover the argument, voiced by the ALA and others, that a challenger is substituting his or her standards for the community's is hogwash. Parents don't make affirmative choices to include a book in the curriculum. School administrators, teachers, and librarians do.

So while there will come a day when my teaching judgment is challenged, I'll try to remember that's not necessarily the same as a challenge to the First Amendment. As educators, we can't bemoan lack of parental involvement with education on one hand and cry "censorship" on the other any time a parent, or other taxpayer for that matter, raises a concern about a text, even if the guy is a troglodyte.

And it's worth noting that school districts have processes in place when challenges are made. A curriculum committee typically reviews the challenge and more often than not, according to both the ALA data and the state reported data, rejects it outright or moves a book like ttyl off the middle school shelves and over to the high school where it will sit ignored since it's about 10th graders who, of course, want to read about seniors.

Here's Some Real Censorship for You

None of this is to suggest that threats don't exist to the First Amendment or to representation of diverse viewpoints in school. It's disturbing that authors of color occupy several places on the ALA list every year, but that's due in part to educators' attempts to make sure diversity is part of the curriculum. Whether a complaint about Beloved is based on prejudice, concerns about the book's sexual and violent content, or both, isn't knowable for the most part, but sex and violence are the top reasons for challenges across the board, according to the available data.

Rather than branding parents who question librarians' judgment as Neanderthals, the ALA might push harder on real issues of censorship, like in South Carolina, where legislators voted to defund two university libraries because books featuring gay protagonists were assigned to freshmen. Or in Oklahoma, where legislators tried to ban Advanced Placement U.S. history for being un-American. Or in Arizona, where the state shut down the Chicano studies curriculum in Tucson schools.

The censors didn't win much there. As The Atlantic reported, that action has led to a blossoming of ethnic studies curricula throughout the West.

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