The book report I wrote, back in the mid-60s, pertained to “Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger, a novel about a young person disaffected by every institution he encountered – church, school, business and several other categories of endeavor. It was a controversial and eye-opening book for its time, and I suspect a modern young person could get the same amount of disillusionment, if not a similar amount of foul language, by watching a few minutes of partisan television news.
What I remember was the book’s red cover and its paperback format. Paperback because I could not find it in any library, school or public, so I went out and purchased it with pocket change, which means either capitalism triumphed over traditional manners, or its corollary, that everything in this country is for sale if you know where to look.
My book report contained exactly what any teacher would expect from a teenager reading this book – yeah, I know how Holden Caulfield, the protagonist, feels, and any teen is suspicious of what adults encourage him or her to think – and while “Catcher in the Rye” may not have inspired cynicism in young adults, it definitely encouraged it.
I thought of all of that while learning of the concerted effort, and I mean concerted – with money and everything – to persuade school boards to keep certain books from school library shelves. One school board in suburban Dallas, I am informed, removed books from its school libraries on the topic of “gender fluidity,” a personal choice of flexible gender identity, so I am told. The book ban came after three new and conservative-leaning members came to the local school board after an election in which funding from Patriot Mobile, which identifies itself on its website as “America’s Only Christian Conservative Wireless Provider” played a large part.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, the New England Patriots will be changing its name before any team that mentions Indians, but I digress.
Okay, so if a student wants information on gender fluidity or any number of topics charitably regarded as not in the traditional mainstream of thinking, he or she will have to go elsewhere. Somehow, that’s fine with me; as someone who has prowled libraries for years, I have long known that school libraries are not the place to seek certain views of modern issues. Keeping controversial books out of school libraries merely means more traffic in bookstores and similar places with a more open exchange of ideas, while the reputation of school libraries is diminished. A student could probably overdose, these days, on comments about gender fluidity by simply lighting up Google on a cellphone.
Gender fluidity is something rarely on my mind, and if elected conservatives run school libraries by their own rules, that’s fine with me as well. People will get want they want there, or they will seek it elsewhere.
I am reminded of a Catholic high school I once attended, in which surprisingly scholarly study hall and after-school debate included opinions taken from left-wing magazines as well as Playboy, and it was an awakening to observe the best debaters employing evidence not supplied by the church, the school and likely not the family. You do not need me to tell you that those elements of society are important, but there are other places, other ways, to learn things applicable to understanding life.
Playboy, incidentally, stopped publishing years ago – another victim of the Internet – but thinking about its left-wing writers reminded me of a drug store adjacent to the bus stop where I left the bus bringing me home from school. The store would not sell Playboy to a 16-year old. Not long after I attended a public high school and the newsstand where I caught the bus home did not care about the age of its customers. These days it is easy to deride that magazine for numerous offenses against any number of groups with power, but back then it provided a balance to what those other institutions offered.
So ban certain books from school library bookshelves. Go on, do it. Twas ever thus, anyway, and these days a kid cannot claim he was unable to access information; “I didn’t know” is likely less and less valuable an excuse these days, and gaps in education likely will continue to fuel misunderstanding, disrupt careers and generally work to the detriment of the unknowing.
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education,” is attributed to Mark Twain. Personally, I have had plenty of schooling, but I know where to find what the schools aren’t teaching me. I suspect modern high school students do as well.
Contact Ed Adamczyk at EdinKenmore@gmail.com.