From the Teacher's Desk
The Contradiction of Control: Battling Over Books while the Elephant in the Room Eats the Books
For many years it was considered best teaching practice to have a classroom library of at least 1,000 titles available to students in a reading classroom. Research indicated it increased reading opportunities and outcomes. Following this, I spent the past five years growing a class library that I hoped would be engaging and well-rounded for my students. I evaluated and acquired a variety of books that I felt were high-quality fiction and non-fiction titles within a range of reading levels. I grew my total number of titles from about 250 to about 750 through Donors Choose campaigns, book and magazine donations, yard sales, and the occasional Facebook Marketplace ad. Friends, family, and students’ parents donated to my campaigns each year. I am still not quite at the 1,000-book goal, but I was making real progress until new legislation this year put it to a stop. Books and reading are now a threat, even though very few students actually read the books on my shelves.
According to a new state law, Texas Senate Bill 13, school districts are now required to oversee and approve a teacher’s classroom library. And because of Senate Bill 412, which removed the legal protection for an ‘educational purpose,’ educators like me face the threat of criminal charges for making available any unapproved book.
To comply with these new laws, I am also required to create a publicly available list of the books in my class library available for parents to see. I am in favor of this part because it promotes full disclosure and transparency to parents, who I view as my partners and believe should have a say in what their children are exposed to in their local school. Plus, I have nothing to hide anyway, so why not?
I spent a few days of non-contract time this summer before our school year began scanning and sorting my classroom library to create this list. I removed outdated materials and took a much closer examination of each title to be sure I could stand behind its existence in my classroom. My point is, I have spent a lot of time and attention on my classroom library.
”We have also witnessed this school year the decimation of classroom libraries in the wake of Senate Bill (SB) 13. Between a new “required” list of reading materials and a reduction in other available materials, it is difficult to imagine achieving the literacy goals state leaders say they want.” 1
In complying, I can simply remove the “offending” titles or I can apply to my district to get these books onto the district-approved list. Okay, sounds easy enough, right? The strange part is that on the list of the 250 books that did not match the district’s approved list were innocuous books about reptiles, Amelia Bedelia, and children’s classics like Danny the Meadow Mouse. I really have no reason to believe that any of my books would be denied approval, but it’s the principle of the thing. If I simply remove the books that were don’t match my district list, under the current mandate, my class library shrinks by a third. What surprised me is how many teachers were considering just removing their libraries entirely and not pushing back against this at all. By professional standards, that reduction by a third would directly counter best practices and would seem to counter the state’s goals of improving literacy as well. But the bottom line is, it is well known that teens spend less than 15 minutes a day reading books on average. Contrast that with the average of 5 hours a day spent on social media.2 When I think about what that means, I realize this whole book banning thing is a fool’s errand.
Does anyone else find it frustrating that as a society we do not regulate the tech companies who now control much more our children’s time? (and I would argue their minds as well.) Why should the tech lords have unfettered access to manipulate our children through social media? It would be like sitting your 3 year old down in front of the TV to watch nothing but toy commercials all day. The internet provides easy and free access to porn and exposes them to predators. So why are we working so hard over a few books in a certified teacher’s classroom library in a public building, that anyone can come and inspect anytime? It is an unfortunate misdirection of energy that strikes me as absurd.
In other countries like Australia, Denmark, Norway, Spain, and France lawmakers are drafting laws that would restrict children’s access to social media, thereby providing protection that parents and schools seem totally unequipped to provide. Read my previous post on the Australian Social Media ban.
Oh, and another thing, Texas will also be introducing required reading for each grade level too. 3 So teachers don’t have to think for themselves on that either. Say bye, bye to the ability to adapt curriculum for changing literary trends or tailoring instruction for specific student populations.
These are my multiple-choice options as I see it.
a.) Ignore it all and wait for the firemen to show up. Fahrenheit 451, anyone?
b.) Stand for Teacher Autonomy: Use this moment to speak out against the misdirected resources and overreach into what should lie in the professional judgement of a teacher. Unfortunately, what I observe locally is that teachers in nearby districts are no longer protected by First Amendment in practice. Even posting this to my tiny Substack audience could unexpectedly shorten my teaching career.
c.) Self-Censor Shortcut: Quietly box up nearly a third of my classroom library (which has largely been donated by the community itself), save myself the additional hours of red tape, but shrink my students’ potential exposure to books. I’m very tempted to do this option because it’s less work and my students won’t likely even notice that these books are gone. But something about that makes me so mad that I can’t. Maybe it is all of the time and attention I have dedicated to growing the class library.
d.) Bury Principle in Bureaucracy: Spend time I don’t have cutting through the red tape to get these few dozen titles approved by my district, which validates this system but keeps me in compliance. In the end, I will work through the red tape, but I still resent the whole thing, and writing this is my way of speaking up about the erosion of teacher autonomy and the fruitlessness of all of this book banning.
Now add to this the Ten Commandments Law, which I will save for an in-person rant, so I can stand fully on my soapbox.
Book banning never seems to leave the headlines. In fact, the American Library Association reports that there were a record-breaking number of attempts to ban books in 2023—up 65 percent from the previous year, which was itself a record-breaking year. 4
Texas leads the nation in book bans, with a whopping 713 bans between July 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022, alone nearly double that of other states, according to the same source above. It’s sad.
In the end, the real threat isn’t coming from the ideas in the unapproved books; it’s the eventual lack of freedom to have books at all, or only the ones the state deems “worthy.” The climate of censorship starves teachers of professional autonomy to meet students’ diverse interests. It also thereby starves children of the ability to read diverse material and learn how to think for themselves amidst the sea of ideas and viewpoints that exist in modern life. If an idea is truly bad, I want to trust that in time people would debate, discuss, and abandon that idea. Enemies of free speech simply don’t want the young to think for themselves. Books are a precious resource in a digital age that the “powers that be” could decide one day to simply erase, edit or remove at the click of a mouse. I imagine breaking it gently to my students, “Sorry kids, this isn’t a free country anymore. Say goodbye to your books now.”
Threatening teachers about the books on their shelves that kids have precious little interest in anyway seems really fruitless though. Shouldn’t we make more laws that hold the tech companies more accountable for the content online? Remember, 5 hours a day versus 15 minutes a day. We would do children a better service to reduce the uglier threats like online sex trafficking, gun violence, and prevent or prosecute online predators.
Instead of gutting classrooms of books, we should also invest in protecting children by preventing online access to porn. At the same time, we teachers can push back by filling our classroom bookshelves to overflowing with even more high quality books, books that make students laugh, cry, and expand their perspective, and books that help them understand our complex world from a multitude of viewpoints. Meanwhile, teachers can help keep our communities stay informed about how the battle over books is impacting us.
It’s a tough job being a teacher, but there has never been a better time to be your child’s most important teacher and get involved in your child’s education by reading to them and with them, monitoring them while they are online, or even to homeschool. I hate to say it, but if you want something done right, as always, you may just have to do it yourself.
Teens Today Spend More Time on Digital Media, Less Time Reading
https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2018/08/teenagers-read-book
https://news.gallup.com/poll/512576/teens-spend-average-hours-social-media-per-day.aspx
The History of Book Bans in the United States
Other Sources Used
Impact of a Diverse Classroom Library
NCTE - National Council of Teachers of English Position Statement on Classroom Libraries