PEN America Misses the Root Problem of Book “Bans”

Neal McCluskeyIt ’sBanned Books Week, an annual event that spotlights efforts to remove books from public schools and libraries. In past years it has passed quietly as books have been challenged, but not with thenationwide impact we ’ve seen in the last year or so. A new report from the free ‐​expression watchdogPEN America documents “bans” in 138 school districts – many with connections to state actions – affecting 1,648 unique titles, between July 2021 to June 2022. These numbers are likely a floor, derived only from challenges reported in the news or directly to PEN.To what does PEN attribute the rise? Organized right ‐​wingers, including such groups asParents Defending Education andNo Left Turn in Education. PEN is largely correct about the immediate cause, with people on the right increasingly sounding alarms over “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” in public schools. But as isoften the case, the PEN report misses theroot cause:public schooling itself, which forces diverse people to pay for, and de facto use, a  single system of government schools.Perhaps the most interesting thing about the report is just one paragraph in a  sidebar that encapsulates the problem without at all recognizing it. It reduces the problem not to government control, but which government entities are in charge: elected bodies like school boards, or librarians and teachers employed by the system.Ironically, PEN calls efforts to get school boards or state l...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs