The Republican supermajority in the Indiana General Assembly created a monster and obligated local school districts to feed it. Their monster is book banning and the process they invented to put books on trial.
Like most monsters, though, it exists to instill fear: fear that books are dangerous.
Yet this monster is not to be feared by those who understand that our greatest strength is our basic American freedom. And that is the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.
Never in history has a stronger safeguard of human liberty, freedom of expression and freedom of conscience been perfected. That is, as long as people stand up for it.
We at The Republic are fortunate to be a beneficiary and a servant of the freedoms guaranteed under the First Amendment. We regard it as supreme to any enrolled act of the Indiana Legislature, because it is. We wish those elected leaders, who each swear an oath to the Constitution, could muster the courage to honor it. Sadly, they cannot. So, we again must confront their tiresome monster.
This time, the book on trial in Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. is “Push,” a 1996 novel by Sapphire that was the basis of the 2009 film “Precious.” These are hardly new arrivals, both having had deep cultural resonance for many years.
As The Republic’s Brad Davis reported, “A description of the book on the author’s website reads, ‘Precious Jones, an illiterate 16-year-old, has up until now been invisible to the father who rapes her and the mother who batters her and to the authorities who dismiss her as just one more of Harlem’s casualties. But when Precious, pregnant with a second child by her father, meets a determined and radical teacher, we follow her on a journey of education and enlightenment as she learns not only how to write about her life, but how to make it truly her own for the first time.’”
We’re confident that when the BCSC board votes on a book challenge in September that it will keep “Precious” in the Columbus East High School library for good reasons. It is an acclaimed work that speaks to challenges, overcoming them, and the transformational value of education and personal growth. In doing so, the book uses language and concepts some find troubling. As do most notable works of literature. That is often the point.
Perhaps “Push” means nothing to you. That’s fine. But does that give you a right to insist it be withheld it from a young person whose life it might change for the better? What if a book you deemed worthy was challenged?
And as a practical matter, is anyone accounting for how many “Precious” hours and taxpayer dollars are being squandered on this book challenge and others? The law mandates that when a book is challenged, school and library staff must respond by diverting limited staff resources from actual educational activities. That carries a cost.
At a recent BCSC board meeting, more people spoke in favor of keeping “Push” on the shelf than depriving students of the opportunity to read it, if they so choose. That’s encouraging.
They trust librarians, whose education and training informs selections appropriately included in school libraries. We wish Indiana’s leaders would too, instead of forcing them to feed their ridiculous pet monster.
