A Short Reflection on Challenging Books in the Name of Parental Rights
It has become increasingly more common over the past two years for parents to challenge books in school districts in the name of parental rights. These parents are deeply concerned about how certain, complex topics such as race, gender, and sexuality should be addressed in the classroom. They would like to restrict their children from reading books and receiving classroom instruction that provides diverse perspectives on complex topics they would like their children to have a clear understanding of.
By restricting LGBT and BIPOC perspectives in the books their children read, they believe they are maintaining the integrity of their community, and by challenging books in school districts, they believe they are protecting their children from becoming misled on several controversial topics such as race, gender, and sexuality.
They don’t believe they are engaging in acts of censorship. In their eyes, that is what totalitarian regimes do. They believe they are providing the guidance their children need to learn conservative values despite being students in a public school system that indoctrinates children with a left-wing ideological agenda.
Yet more than anything, a parent who challenges books in school districts is making a futile attempt to ensure that her children end up making the same choices and choosing the same beliefs as her.
Maybe this kind of censorship–the restriction of reading certain books in the household at the very least–works in the short run. Maybe children and teenagers will continue to grow up Christian and believe that homosexuality is a sin. But eventually, after being denied information and perspectives that, under a teacher’s expertise, are considered developmentally appropriate, those children may lash out at the beliefs and values their parents tried to instill in them.
More and more parents have begun in the name of parental rights to prevent their children from reading books with diverse perspectives. Unfortunately, doing this can affect a child’s ability to make sense of very complex matters like race, gender, and sexuality. Teachers do not believe these children should wait until they are adults to discuss these topics because by then so many opportunities to learn will have been lost. Parents who shelter their children from diverse perspectives allow them to grow up narrow-minded. It then becomes easier for these children to believe that anyone who thinks differently from them must be stupid or misinformed. When their beliefs finally are challenged, they may struggle to imagine a different perspective on a controversial topic since none had been introduced to them in the classroom.
Words on a page–little black markings on paper–do not hurt children. If a child becomes upset over something she reads, then she has been given the invaluable opportunity to learn more about how her perspective is different from the perspectives of others. Reading books with a diverse range of perspectives allows children to see more of the world from the advantage of a safe environment. When they see more of the world, they can form more educated ideas on the beliefs and values they’d like to have and choose to create new identities for themselves.
Let us consider that a blessing. The world is too vast and wonderful for us not to explore it through the lens of one perspective that never changes. Life is too long for people to maintain all of the beliefs and values they had as children.
