Banned Books Week - question

[davewitley]

Heidi:

> David, I respectfully disagree that these are the only key 
> questions, as you imply

Sorry - didn't mean to imply they are the only key questions, just 
that it's not clear which of the *next* key questions to ask until 
we have answers to those ones.

 - challenges aren't a formal process, nor 
> are they sanctioned by law, but what sort of difference does that 
> make? If the end result of the challenge process is to have books 
> removed from being accessable by hundreds or thousands, or even 
> dozens, of students, does it really need a court order to back it 
> up? 

OK, this is why I think this issue is helpful to resolve.  It goes 
to the point of my earlier question: what is the desired outcome 
here.

My point is that if there is some sort of law that lends weight to 
the banners - e.g. something that says that librarians have to 
comply or state their reasons for refusing a request or something of 
that sort, then the ALA can reasonably ask to have the law altered 
so that the balance is more in favour of freedom of speech - eg that 
the complainant has to provide some kind of evidence of actual harm 
or some such.

If on the other hand it's just that libraries have a process for 
dealing with written requests by the public, by which librarians 
dutifully consider them and then make a decision, well, what exactly 
do you or the ALA want to change?  You won't stop some people 
complaining and trying to ban books they don't like.  What is a 
tolerable number of challenges per year?  How does the kind of 
campaigning the ALA does reduce this number? 

> Your second question covers two things - in the ALA's language, it 
> refers to both complete removal from shelves, and from moving 
things 
> from kids' sections to adult sections, depending on the 
> circumstances. My city's policy is to allow any child with a 
library 
> card the ability to check out books from the whole library, but a 
> child under 16 needs parental permission to get the card in the 
> first place. But in other libraries, kids cannot check out books 
> from the adult section, no matter what - and, as I said in my last 
> post, there's a question of what age do you define a "child" as. 
If 
> it's 13 or 14, that's very different from a definition that stops 
at 
> ten. 

Thank you - this is the kind of information that perhaps is obvious 
to US citizens, but the rest of us don't necessarily understand.  I 
take your point, that to force a 13-14yo to ask their parent(s) 
permission to read books of their choice is not the same as doing 
the same for a 6yo or removing a book from adult access (which of 
course may be locally complete if the book is out of print or very 
expensive).  In a sense that's my point: I'd rather see a reasoned 
analysis of different specific cases leading to concrete proposals 
for improvement, rather than blanket "restriction of free speech is 
terrible, what awful people" statements.
> 
> The third question is something nobody knows - and it also seems 
to 
> ignore one of the most insidious things, which I mentioned in my 
TLC 
> article - sometimes, a complaint isn't made about a specific book, 
> but rather, about a type of book, or about a series, because of 
> restrictions that are incorporated in an acquisitions policy. A 
book 
> is banned before it's even purchased if it isn't "allowed" because 
> of the policy.

I think this 'third' question was the one about how many challenges 
are successful.  (There's also the related question of how long for: 
in the comments on TLC one person mentioned that a book was quietly 
reinstated a year after being banned.)  I do agree that any ban, 
however short, is serious and destructive of childrens education - 
and adults too - but I still think it helpful, to say the least, to 
have some feel for the real scale of the problem.

I understand your point about 

I think it very odd that, as you say 'nobody knows' - why not?  If 
the ALA collect statistics on challenges, why not on their outcomes?

 There's a chilling effect that occurs in a school or 
> a town that's gone through the bookbanning process.

Why is it chilling?  Why, exactly, do challenges sometimes succeed?  
What is to prevent librarians (are librarians automatically ALA 
members?  Do librarians ever share the mindset of those who want to 
ban some books?) from simply turning down challenges?

 I read an 
> amazing set of presentations by teens who were arguing against the 
> banning of certain books from their schools, and I'm going to try 
> and find it tonight - we're not talking here about 8 year olds not 
> being allowed to read The Color Purple; we're talking about 15 and 
> 16 year olds not being allowed to read To Kill A Mockingbird and 
> Catcher in the Rye. They're not being given a chance to explore 
and 
> learn and grow, and *that* is a big problem.

Yes - that is a big problem, but (apart from the TLC reference to 
a 'midwestern school librarian') this is the first time I have seen 
some evidence that the banners get what they want.  But I'd still 
like to know whether such cases are common, or exceptional.

I'm still having trouble shaking the feeling of a storm in a teacup 
here.  Individuals with a variety of agendas - but still, 
approximately, about a thousandth of one percent of your population 
in a year - write to their library or school asking for a book or 
books to be banned.  Librarians, in the main, refuse these 
challenges.  Yes, it would be nice if this *never* happened, but in 
the overall scale of the things that threaten the education of young 
Americans, where does this rank?  To what extent are the ALA merely 
dignifying the views of nutcase Waldo-banners by collating their 
laughable efforts and presenting them to the world as an infection 
at the root of democratic culture?

There is, of course, the argument that all things start small, and 
that these challenges could be the beginning of an ever-increasing 
invasion of the lives of ordinary people (but by whom? Not, in this 
case, it seems, the state) and suppression of freedom of thought.  
However, this seems very unconvincing to me: the ALA have been doing 
this for years.  It feels less like the seeds of a new Orwellianism 
than the rehashing of an old stalemate.

So, to re-put my original question: what is the desired outcome here 
and how is it to be achieved?

David