Forget the racial biases of Twain's perennially troubled Huckleberry Finn or the profane utterances of Salinger's cynical Holden Caulfield—the new target of censors does not spew racial invectives or obscenity-filled diatribes against society's hypocrisies. He is an orphan who misses his parents, loves his friends, and tries to be a good student.
But he does practice magic.
"By far, the Harry Potter books are the ones challenged most often," says Beverly Becker, associate director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association (ALA). According to 2000 and 2001 press releases published by the ALA, myriad protests, complaining about everything from "wizardry and magic" to "occult/Satanism and antifamily themes," have been filed since the first Harry Potter book was published in 1997.
Protests Increasing
Although efforts to censor books used in schools are not new, challenges have increased steadily over the past two decades, according to many librarians. Parents who say they are offended by the sexual content, profanity, violence, and antifamily themes in contemporary and classic literature regularly protest books each year. In many cases, their complaints are handled through processes that allow for compromises that respect the parents' views while still providing their children with a valuable education. In others, however, the result of the objections is that administrators hastily pull books to quell controversy, thereby bypassing or ignoring established procedures.
What should a school do when a parent complains about a particular book, and at what point does that complaint cross the line between disagreeing over the best interests of one child and threatening the freedom of choice for all students?
In many schools, established policies exist for selecting and over-seeing books; librarians select books based on teachers' needs and school lesson plans. "Librarians discuss teachers' needs and follow selection criteria that include professional reviews and journal recommendations," Becker says. The policy also outlines how to respond when parents object to a book.
However, the absence of an objection policy is not uncommon. "Many of my library science students ask librarians about their challenge policies and find that they have no challenge policy whatsoever," says Marjorie Pappas, associate professor of library science at Eastern Kentucky University. That absence, she notes, is dangerous not only because it puts librarians in an awkward position when confronted by angry parents but also because it leaves the door open for administrators to overreact and yank a book off the shelves. "Without a policy, you're going to have trouble," Pappas adds. "In that case, a principal can just say, ‘We're pulling the book.’"
Such knee-jerk reactions are surprisingly common, according to sources. "Most principals will automatically ask a librarian to pull a book if they get a complaint," says Kathy Geronzin, district librarian for Northeast Community Schools in Goose Lake, Iowa. "It doesn't matter whether there's a [challenge] policy in place or not; their gut reaction is to ask that the material be removed."
Requests by principals to pull books put librarians in an uncomfortable position: they can either acquiesce to the censorship or they can take up a fight that could ultimately prove costly. "If a principal pulls a book, it falls to the librarian to advise him that that may violate the policy of how challenges are handled," Pappas says. "But in those cases, people may fold just to keep their jobs."
Grace Under Pressure
Although many schools do offer alternative books if a parent complains about a specific one, some parents may still seek to have the offending book removed from the school library. In such instances, most schools follow a step-by-step approach designed to allow the offended parents to express their grievances and give school officials a chance to review the merits of the book before making a final decision.
"In our school, the parent fills out a form and we follow a time line," says Carolyn Giambra, instructional specialist for the Central School District in Williamsville, N.Y. "The book is reviewed at the school level first." A school review committee, usually consisting of school or district teachers, the affected school's librarian and principal, and possibly members of the local community, read the book and evaluate the parent's complaint. The committee then votes whether to uphold the parent's objections or overrule them. If the objections are upheld, the committee decides whether to restrict the book—limiting access to students of certain ages or putting it behind the desk for request-only access, for example—or to pull it from the shelves entirely.
If the committee chooses to retain a book, then usually the parent's only recourse is to appeal the decision directly to the school board. The board's decision is final unless the losing side revives the issue in the future and petitions the board to reconsider its decision.
Reconsideration is not uncommon. "Judy Blume's Forever was pulled from our shelves after our committee voted to remove it," says Joan Devine, a librarian with Eastview Middle School in Bartlett, Ill. "The novel contained some sexual passages. Although the committee voted to reinstate the book two years later, the protest got kicked up to the school board, where the reinstatement was overturned."
Devine was able to work with enough parents, teachers, and students to eventually get the board to reverse its decision, but she feels that the battle is far from over. "After two more years, the protest can come back up again for reconsideration," she says. "It is very stressful. But it is also important, because you need to consider whether one parent should be able to say what all kids should be able to read."
That question of how much influence one parent can or should have is critical, sources say, because although one individual's protest may not in itself be significant, it can mark the beginning of a community movement.
"A few years ago, a local priest succeeded in getting a teenage magazine removed from the shelves of our middle school library," says Joan Bertin, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship. "A parent whose daughter had been reading a health column in the magazine found some questions about sex and brought it to his attention. That priest got the congregation to show up at the school board meeting, and it was pretty much a done deal at that point," she says. "All you need is that one person whose sensibilities are offended and one school official who's afraid of controversy to get things started."
Community vs. Individual
Decisions by school boards to remove controversial publications should not necessarily be seen as wrong, according to some. If the views represent the community at large, they simply reflect the political process at work. "Books should be removed only if a school board chooses to remove a book," says Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values. "The community at large elects the school board, and if people don't like the decisions that a board makes about certain books, they should vote them out of office. They're the taxpayers who are paying for the library," he says.
Others disagree, however. "When people say that their taxes should not fund something, it's kind of a ‘heads I win and tails you lose’ argument. If schools can't purchase books with taxpayer money, they can't purchase them at all," Bertin contends. "The taxpayer argument presumes a notion of majority control, and the First Amendment exists to prevent tyranny of the majority."
Consequences
Perhaps the biggest question facing those who would remove books from library shelves is not whether certain books with controversial themes should or should not be funded with taxpayer money but whether efforts to restrict or remove the publications are worth the effort. Most librarians feel that such moves usually prove counterproductive.
"People who want to ban books forget that the best way to publicize a book is to try restricting it," says Devine. Her perspective is not unique. "I suspect that the number of home subscriptions to the teenage magazine increased dramatically in the community after it was pulled," Bertin adds. "Besides, if we take into account all the ways that something might offend someone somewhere, we'd lack many valuable resources on our shelves."
Above all, sources say, communities need to trust their school librarians. "Librarians have been professionally trained to select materials for a school," says Geronzin. "They should not be undermined or have their authority usurped—they should be able to purchase materials for schools based on the materials' strengths, not their weaknesses." She pauses. "And a school would be remiss not to get the fifth Harry Potter book when it comes out—there are poor children who can't afford the books, and they're among the most widely read books in schools."
