Book-Banning vs. Age-Appropriate Educational Material

A letter-to-the-editor, Beware of book-ban surge in N.J. schools, appeared in the New Jersey Star-Ledger on 1/31/22. I’ll return to that letter shortly. 

An acquaintance of mine got into an on-line discussion over what she, and I, consider child pornography having been made available to students in a Hunterdon County, NJ high school, through a book carried in its school library.* The graphic images, presented in sketch form, portrayed boy-on-boy and girl-on-girl oral sex. The images are explicit and graphic. These images were posted on the social media site, and explained that they were in a book about so-called LBGTQ gender issues that someone found in the school library.***

My acquaintance expressed the opinion that this book—not because of the written content in the book, but because of the images in the book—should not be allowed in a high school because she believed they’re not appropriate material for minor children.

She was bombarded by nasty “rebuttals,” including the repeated charge that she was urging “book-banning.” This acquaintance patiently explained that the issue is about what is education- and age-appropriate for public schools. She is not urging the book be banned from public libraries, bookstores, or anywhere other than the high school library. But, one after another, commenters replied to my wife that she is a book-banner (among many other vicious insults). Repeated denials did no good. She was not advocating legal book-banning -- censorship, which only the government can impose.** She was objecting to this graphic material being made readily available to minors, outside of the professional guidance and parental consent of a classroom.

But it did no good. They weren't listening—wouldn’t listen. No one offered a clear rebuttal or offered a clear reason why these images are appropriate to public school children or why such material is even the responsibility of public schools, as opposed to private parental responsibility. Coincidentally, the letter referenced above, Beware of book-ban surge in N.J. schools, appeared in the New Jersey Star-Ledger at the same time as my acquaintance was engaged on the topic. Apparently, the book-banning charge is a talking point for a useful-idiot mob. (My use of the term “useful-idiot mob” refers only to those who mindlessly regurgitate the book-banning mantra, not to those who disagree with the acquaintance’s narrow educational argument against.)

The letter starts by highlighting the removal of a book about the holocaust from a Tennessee school board because “it contains ‘profanity’ and one nude image.” (The image my wife was objecting to was not mere nudity. It was explicit child pornography.)

The letter writer, Laura Morowitz, then pivots to 

While we should breathe a sigh of relief that our children are not being educated in Tennessee, attempts to ban books are on the rise in our own state of New Jersey.

Last fall, in a thinly veiled attempt to pander to their right-wing constituents, state Sens. Joe Pennacchio, R-Morris, and Michael Testa, R-Cumberland, introduced legislation to ban the teaching of “critical race theory,” even though it is not, and has never been, taught in our public schools.

That last statement, that Critical Race Theory is not being taught in the schools, is a lie. Even if it is not explicitly called so, the ideas behind CRT, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), which stands for collectivism (especially racism), egalitarianism (nihilism), and an end to objective standards (i.e., an end to justice), is definitely infecting the schools.**** You can change the label, but you can’t deny the underlying facts. So Morowitz is being disingenuous.

But again, the issue is what is appropriate in America’s—in this case New Jersey’s—public schools. It’s interesting that the Left, the architects of Woke intolerance and cancel culture, are also big supporters of public schools. The most fundamental problem is the very nature of public schooling. Like any other socialist scheme, public schooling necessarily empowers some central authority to impose one-size-fits-all schemes on everyone. If you disagree, too bad. Someone has to get screwed. Someone’s values are going to be imposed on others by the legal, i.e.,gun, power of the state. But the Left uncompromisingly defends the public schools, not to mention democracy, failing to see that if all parents can “vote” with their feet and their education tax dollars, in a fully no-excuse school choice system, these conflicts would be non-existent.

But of course, the Left doesn’t want diversity in schooling, which a free market in education would provide. They don't want dissent. They don’t want real—i.e., , intellectual—diversity. They don’t want real equity, meaning fair and impartial. They want an authoritarian system, so they can fight to impose their agendas on everyone else, banning opposing opinions, values, and choice. There allegiance to authoritarianism becomes clear in Morowitz’s shocking next paragraph:

In many cases, parents and school administrators are taking it upon themselves to determine what is “appropriate” reading, despite having no qualifications or experience to judge. [my emphasis]

So parents and administrators, who pay for and administer the schools, have no recourse to challenge the “experts” who alone have the “qualifications or experience to judge?” But children apparently do have the qualifications or experience to be exposed to the material that parents and administrators object to, because some expert, who is apparently all knowing and omniscient, says they are? It’s no surprise that the same woke Leftist mob that believes blindly in “experts” is so supportive of the draconian COVID lockdowns and so dismissive and mocking of dissenters taking a pro-liberty stance against the lockdowns. That paragraph reflects the age-old mantra of totalitarianism—Plato’s claim that only elite “philosopher kings” have the capability to run everyone’s life.  

And it’s no surprise that the same Woke mob, which rejects objective truth and objective language, would so breezily mislabel an appropriate debate about what educational materials are appropriate for school-age children into the false, red herring charge of book-banning. It’s no surprise because the Leftist Progressive Education warriors believe schools should be about indoctrination, social “adjustment” (conformity), and ultimately submission to authority, rather than education. Proper education is defined as advancing children toward becoming independent thinking adults with a love of learning. Progressive educators, true to their Platonist “philosopher king” anti-Enlightenment ideological premises, want precisely a nation filled with uninformed, easily manipulated, dependent adults programmed to follow “qualified and experienced” authoritarian elites—with qualifications determined by the Ivory Tower witch doctors.

Just as CRT advocates are being disingenuous on CRT—e.g. relabeling racism as “Anti-Racism”—Morowitz and her Woke mob ilk are being disingenuous with regard to the debate over age-appropriate educational materials, relabeling it a debate over book-banning. This, for the purpose of smearing dissenting opinions about what should be in public tax-funded school libraries.

In summary, running a proper school will necessarily include discriminating between appropriate and inappropriate educational materials. Pornography as a how-to guide to sex is no more appropriate in a school than how-to courses on drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, or prostitution. Some books will necessarily be “banned”—excluded—from school libraries, whether public or private. This is not censorship. This is not “book-banning''. This is just a rational approach to education.

* [The United States Department of Justice defines child pornography as follows:

Child pornography is a form of child sexual exploitation. Federal law defines child pornography as any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving a minor (persons less than 18 years old).  Images of child pornography are also referred to as child sexual abuse images.

[NOTE: I have seen the images in question. Both visually depict explicit male and female oral sex, leaving nothing to implication or imagination. The images I saw don’t specifically mention the age of the people being depicted. But they certainly look less than 18 years old and it is certainly implied. But, at best, they are pornography, if not outright child pornography—still not appropriate for underage children. And certainly, even if you grant that the images must be assumed to be of legal adults, it is still a form of child sexual exploitation, in my view.]

** [In a sense, one can label it legal book-banning, in that public schools are government entities and the decisions of school boards carry the backing of law. But that just highlights the unjust, contradictory nature of government schools. Disallowing particular material in a public school is not the same as a general law banning all of this particular material.]

*** [The book is Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe. Here is an NBC review of the book, which includes an account of the national controversy.

[NOTE: Someone posted the explicit child oral sex pornography images on the social media site my acquaintance was involved with. I could not find these particular images online. Apparently, the news outlets, including some major ones, whether out of fear of legal reprisals or as an attempt to downplay the seriousness of the images, will not publish them in their coverage of the controversy, which is apparently nationwide. But take my word for it: by the definition of the U.S. Justice Department, these images are unequivocally child pornography.]

**** [Just ask University of Toronto tenured professor and popular intellectual Jordan Peterson, who recently resigned his position over “The appalling ideology of diversity, inclusion and equity,” which he believes “is demolishing education and business.” Read his explanation in his article published in the National Post, a major Canadian newspaper, for the depressing details. Yaron Brook explains and elaborates on Peterson's heroic protest in this video. Morowitz’s belief that this garbage has not filtered into NJ schools is delusional.]

Related Reading:

Critical Race Theory’s new disguise by Ayaan Hirsi Aly

Mandatory Schooling, Remote Learning, and Government Schools

Real vs. Pseudo-Censorship

‘Anti-Racism’, or the re-Mainstreaming of Racism

Biden’s Racist Education Trial Balloon

The Comprachicos—Ayn Rand