School Libraries, Age-Appropriateness and Censorship

When a school librarian removes a book from the school library, is it automatically considered to be censorship? The answer is no. See this new article by FIRE. Here's an excerpt

Like city or county public libraries, public school libraries overall enjoy significant discretion in deciding what to include on their shelves. Unlike public libraries, however, school libraries serve a specific part of the community — K-12 students. So public school libraries necessarily place greater emphasis on age appropriateness and may consider the material’s quality and how it supports the curriculum and the school’s educational goals, which are in turn subject to democratic oversight through locally elected (or appointed) school boards.

As one court observed, public libraries are “designed for freewheeling inquiry.” When weeding materials, public school libraries may consider the same factors that public libraries do, such as accuracy, currentness, and physical condition. In addition, public school libraries may consider whether the materials are relevant to the curriculum, of interest to students, or age appropriate. But the government may not order books removed from school libraries out of sheer hostility to disfavored views or ideas.

Does banning books from school libraries violate the First Amendment?

When public school libraries remove books from their collections based on partisan or ideological disapproval of the book’s contents, they violate the First Amendment. The Supreme Court addressed this issue in the landmark case of Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. Pico. A plurality of justices held that public schools have discretion to determine the content of their libraries based on factors like “educational suitability,” but “that discretion may not be exercised in a narrowly partisan or political manner.” The well-reasoned plurality opinion emphasized the importance of established and unbiased procedures for reviewing book challenges.

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Comprehensive moral instruction

We've all seen many Internet lists offering suggestions for improving one's life or state of happiness. This list, by a young man named Henrick Edberg at The Positivity Blog, caught my attention today, perhaps because it includes some of my own favorite bits of productivity reminders and folk wisdom, including the "80/20 rule" and the advice to not beat yourself up for making mistakes. His list also includes a nice twist to the golden rule: Give value to get value, not the other way around. Another item on his list reminds us to express gratitude to others in order to enrich our own lives, reminding us that expressing gratitude is socially contagious. What also intrigued me was Edberg's pre-list commentary: He laments that the nuggets of advice in his list aren't taught as part of the high school curriculum.

But I still think that taking a few hours from all those German language classes and use them for some personal development classes would have been a good idea. Perhaps for just an hour a week in high school. It would probably be useful for many students and on a larger scale quite helpful for society in general.

I think I know why there are no such classes in public schools. Teaching advice on how to navigate through the complexities of life in a positive state of mind would too often trigger discussions regarding "morality," which too often trigger discussions of specific religious teachings which, in turn, tend to anger at least some parents and students, which would then shut down the course (in public schools, anyway). I suspect that this causal chain is a big reason that so many schools tread lightly on teaching students how to navigate through life, even though there is an immense amount of information that needs to be discussed. Instead of vigorously teaching what the students need to know to be functional and virtuous, most schools ostensibly defer to families and churches (though they actually defer at least as much to pop culture, including magazines, "news" programs, television shows and movies) to fill that "moral" vacuum of students. In America, however, even "serious" teachers of morality often insist that the way to best live one's life is by obeying a standardized set of "moral" rules. Is the advice to follow any set of rules really the best approach for instructing us how to get along with each other down here on planet Earth? Is it even possible for any form of obedience to serve as the foundation for a high-functioning society? I think not. I'm going to digress at this point . . . [more . . . ]

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Whence school leadership?

At ASCD Leadership, Tom Hoerr asks a string of easy-to-understand questions, all of which lack easy answers. The topic is school leadership--how will we recruit the next generation of people to lead our schools? Here's the main problem:

Each week I read about the impending shortage of school administrators. There aren't enough people choosing to pursue administration, and the attrition rate of those playing a leadership role is too high.
Under the reasonable assumption that maintaining quality school leadership is one of the most critical jobs in the entire country (even more important than being a Wall Street Banker who earns 100 times the salary, I would maintain), why hasn't more national attention been focused on this problem of recruiting the best and the brightest to become school leaders? Perhaps it's that too many of us only give lip-service to the need for quality education. Tom is the principle of New City School in St. Louis. He is also a friend, at least in part, because he is a thoughtful person whose opinions I respect. ASCD is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that represents 175,000 educators from more than 135 countries and 58 affiliates. According to the website,

Inservice is the ASCD community blog—a place for educators to gather and share ideas. We hope it will promote the kind of exchange that happens in inservice meetings, where educators discuss how best to support their students. We want it to be a resource for everyone who cares about and serves education, learning, and teaching.

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The Right is wrong

My 10 year old daughter came home from school last week, and while she sat with me eating her after-school snack asked me; “Is President Obama a racist?” she said. “No, honey, where’d you hear that?” I said. “Well, [so and so] said that in class to me today and I just wanted to know,” she said. “Did the person tell you where they had heard such a thing, honey?” I asked. “Yeah, [their] grandpa said it,” my daughter replied. “He heard it on TV.” My daughter and I had a discussion on what is racism, its source in ignorance, and how it’s just plain wrong. We also talked about the TV and radio shows which spread intolerance and bigotry for profit and political gain. My daughter’s eyes glazed over a little, and I said; “Thanks for letting me know what’s up with you! Go play with your friends!” Well, I never thought it could happen but, there is obviously no lowest depth of putrid vile chicanery that the far right wing racists will go to block anything that President Obama is up to keep his promise of change in America. Now they’re indoctrinating racism into 10 year old school children.

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