Legal Commentary

Many thanks to commentators on my last post about education and education-related policy. The points made are not necessarily antithetical; it?s true that most employers won?t inquire, in an interview, as to one?s knowledge of various works if that knowledge isn?t central to the carrying out of the position sought. I don?t believe that fact means the knowledge is less useful, though, or less important (even if the trend that I lament in the States is just as strong elsewhere; the popularity of something indicates neither its correctness nor its wisdom, as we well know (I will refrain from giving examples from the fashion world here)). For one thing, knowledge empowers?just ask these guys. For another, as pointed out, learning civics, studying the classics, understanding developmental arcs in various contexts are all as important in and of themselves as they are key to teaching one how to think. And having access to information is the best means of broadening one?s mind?which brings me to the point of this post: book banning.

In a small resort town across the Idaho border from where I live, the upcoming December school board meeting will address an ongoing debate about whether Aldous Huxley?s Brave New World should be banned from the area high school. At present, the vote to ban is split 2-2, and the fifth board member is to cast the deciding vote at the meeting. My own (admittedly quick) research indicates that in addition to Huxley?s work, books by Maya Angelou, David Guterson, Toni Morrison and Walter Dean Myers have all been challenged as improper material for pupils in that school district. In fact, according to a teacher at the school, the district has banned 78 books from the high school and 39 from the middle school (I?ve contacted the teacher but have yet to verify these numbers).

Even if the professed motivations of the school board (what they are, I don?t know) could pass constitutional muster (per Pico), I?m concerned with the willingness of parents to actively prevent their children from being exposed to Brave New World and other challenged works. Regardless of whether these parents can, via the school board, ban these works from their kids? curricula, why would they want to? In an age in which violence is broadcast unrelentingly in media that is aimed at both children and adults, I find it hard to believe that banning these works is a protective act. Rather, it seems to me to be another means of quashing knowledge and exposure?another means of creating an under-educated class.