This Rural Virginia County Is A ‘Testing Ground’ For Book Banning

Charlotte Wooden is the librarian for the lone highschool in Madison County, Virginia. She has been the librarian ― and thus controlling entry to library books ― since August.

However final month, the varsity board unilaterally eliminated 21 books from the highschool’s library. The books eliminated embrace “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, “The Handmaid’s Story” by Margaret Atwood, and “It” by Stephen King.

The board claimed the books are sexually express and thus inappropriate for highschool kids. However merely mentioning intercourse or sexual assault, as most of the eliminated books do, is a far cry from pornography.

“Not one single guardian has ever reached out to me about considerations about titles, or to request that their youngster be restricted to sure books at checkout,” Wooden instructed a college board assembly this week, the place she confirmed as much as voice her disapproval over the board actions.

The transfer has been unpopular with a number of college students and fogeys, a lot of whom spoke out towards the e-book ban. However supporters of the varsity board imagine they’re fulfilling a higher mission.

“I’m not saying make Madison County a Christian faculty,” Pastor Russell Biber mentioned when it was his flip to talk. “However let’s get again to the muse of our schooling system, the concern of our lord God.”

The February board assembly was only one iteration of a scene that’s been taking place across the nation. Conservatives deem a e-book “inappropriate” for youngsters, typically citing disingenuous claims about sexually express content material, and a tiny minority of fogeys band collectively to problem the textual content. The message is implicit: Voices and narratives that heart individuals who aren’t straight, white, Christian and cisgender ought to be censored.

“We’re a canary in a coal mine,” Devlyn D’Alfonzo, a resident and guardian of two kids within the faculty district, instructed HuffPost. “These tiny communities the place these insurance policies can cross and not using a query? We’re the testing floor.”

Madison County is closely rural and Republican. With a inhabitants of roughly 14,000 individuals, there are solely 4 colleges within the district. The fake ethical panic about sexual content material in books within the small county can be being fueled by coverage choices on the state stage.

Final 12 months, the Virginia legislature permitted a coverage that might require the state Division of Training to make it necessary that colleges notify dad and mom about “sexually express” supplies being utilized in school rooms. The tips, which turned official in July, require faculty officers to assessment supplies for such content material after which notify dad and mom to allow them to choose their kids out in the event that they select.

It’s unclear what makes a e-book “sexually express,” however in any case, the rules solely apply to educational supplies within the classroom, not the library. The rules additionally clearly state that the coverage doesn’t permit for the elimination or censoring of books within the faculty library.

However the Madison County Faculty Board took the brand new coverage one step additional. Christopher Wingate, one of many newly elected members of the board, drafted a countywide coverage that particularly offers with library books. Beneath the board’s extra restrictive coverage, dad and mom and residents might request that the board take away a library e-book if it allegedly comprises sexually express materials. The board will then determine the e-book’s destiny.

The coverage was permitted unanimously in December. Then, the board moved to take away almost two dozen books, all of which supposedly include sexual content material that’s inappropriate for highschool college students.

What many dad and mom and educators discover irritating is that folks have already got the power to stop their kids from studying books they don’t approve of, by informing the librarian. However the faculty board determined to create its personal coverage with the intention to take away books solely. (The board didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark for this story.)

“The coverage is obscure sufficient and expansive sufficient that it permits the board to take away books that the board thinks is inappropriate,” D’Alfonzo mentioned. “It offers them a whole lot of energy.”

It’s additionally straightforward to make the elimination of books sound agreeable to oldsters by framing it as a optimistic step meant to maintain kids protected.

“They’ll phrase it as ‘they’re simply making an attempt to guard children and maintain on to American values,’” D’Alfonzo mentioned. “They’re utilizing friendlier speech that sounds nice ― in case you don’t look too onerous.”

If the battle over which books children can learn sounds acquainted, that’s as a result of it’s.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has championed racist and homophobic legal guidelines that focus on educators throughout the state. The so-called “Don’t Say Homosexual” invoice bans educators from speaking about sexual orientation and gender identification, and the Cease WOKE Act prohibits lecturers from speaking about crucial race concept ― a college-level idea that conservatives now invoke to explain basically any occasion the place the existence of racism is acknowledged in a classroom.

Due to these insurance policies, faculty districts in Florida have eliminated books, schools have been pressured to chop variety initiatives, and lecturers have been harassed for his or her sexual orientation.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), who received in 2021 after operating on a so-called “parental rights” platform, seems to be making an attempt to observe in DeSantis’ footsteps.

The Virginia Division of Training’s tips that might ban transgender college students from utilizing the toilet that greatest matches their gender identification stay in limbo, and Virginia’s legislation about “sexually express” books doesn’t go so far as Florida’s. However the state of affairs in Madison County exhibits that there are locations in Virginia the place these right-wing concepts are very engaging.

“They’re gaining footholds in these little counties. They’re making these little inroads in smaller communities earlier than they will make a transfer on the large scale,” D’Alfonzo mentioned.

Final week, the Virginia EducatIon Affiliation launched a Black Lives Matter toolkit for lecturers, together with pattern historical past classes that educators might use throughout Black Historical past Month. The Youngkin administration criticized the toolkit.

“The Administration is not going to help a lecturers union’s makes an attempt to prop up a politically pushed curriculum toolkit which comprises tenets that transcend instructing historical past, lesson plans, and operates as a political guide for the following era of Virginia’s college students,” a Youngkin spokesperson instructed the Richmond Instances-Dispatch. “Virginia’s colleges will proceed to show all historical past — the great and the dangerous.”

The place DeSantis might have derided the lesson plans as “woke” or “indoctrination,” the criticism from the Youngkin administration is milder, at the very least on the floor.

“It’s just like the watered-down model of DeSantis, the marginally extra palatable model,” D’Alfonzo mentioned. “So the insurance policies find yourself being extra prone to cross ― however simply as dangerous.”