Under the Orwellian title New Zwicker Bill Seeks To Protect NJ Libraries, School From Book Bans, Sarah Salvadore reports for Patch that two NJ state legislators have taken a page from Florida Governor Ron DeSantos’s book: They want to get the state involved in dictating local public school educational policy.
Ok, Salvadore doesn’t actually mention DeSantos. But she might as well. Salvadore reports
South Brunswick resident and Senator from NJ-16, Andrew Zwicker, introduced legislation that seeks to protect public libraries and schools from book bans.
The legislation was introduced along with Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Ruiz.
The bill, S-3907, would authorize the State Librarian to direct State Treasury officials to withhold funding from any public school or library that fails to comply, and would deter school boards from banning or restricting access to books or other resource materials in their libraries.
Couched in propaganda terms like “book ban” and “censorship,” the bill would essentially circumvent the current debates over age-appropriate material for school age children in public schools. Censorship and book bans are political terms that apply to governments. No one is advocating the legal banning of books or of government censorship.
At least, not until S-3907.
This bill would essentially get the state in the position of dictating education policy. Let’s examine.
[The bill] would deter school boards from banning or restricting access to books or other resource materials in their libraries.
The word “deter” is vague. It means libraries and school boards will not have a clear idea of what is permissible, and what is not. The result--fear. As we will see, the language of the bill supports this conclusion.
The bill aims to prevent censorship of any book for “partisan or doctrinal” reasons . . .
Who defines “partisan” and “doctrinal?” This puts the state squarely in the business of deciding what viewpoints are acceptable and which aren’t. This, in a bill that purports to be against censorship!
“This is about preventing censorship and keeping intolerance and hatred from being infused into public libraries in New Jersey,” Zwicker said in a statement.
This bill has intolerance at its core. If anyone challenges material that she believes children are not cognitively or experientially equipped to handle, they are opposing the material for doctrinal reasons. After all, education is guided by philosophical doctrine. Any parent or school board that advocates elimination of any book or material from the curriculum would by definition be violating the law, if this bill passes.
And hate? What can be more subjective than that. The word is very often hurled around mindlessly to demonize others for differing opinions. Imagine the power of censorship the stature would wield if it can silence people based on “hate.”
Furthermore, the bill is targeted not just at “banning” but at “restricting access to books or other resource materials” as well. This is an attack on flexibility. One compromise regarding sexually explicit material that some have proposed is to allow the books in school libraries, but to require parental consent for children below a certain grade level to take out the book. Such a reasonable compromise would obviously be a “restriction,” and thus banned by this bill. And then the Swicker/Luiz bill purports to be against intolerance! Give me a break. Tellingly, a Republican-sponsored bill to require parental approval for sexually explicit, child pornagraphic material in school libraries was rejected by the Democrat majority on a state senate committee. Yet, the Swicker/Ruiz bill purports to ban “partisan reasons” in the school battles! Give me another break.
“The fact that we are in 2023 and debating whether or not we should be banning books and ideas is just outrageous. Ideas and information are meant to be discussed and debated in a society that respects the right of free expression and values the pursuit of knowledge.”
This is also very telling. The local government public school battles over educational materials happening at school board meetings is all about free expression and values in pursuit of knowledge. Yet this bill would ban and restrict certain viewpoint expressions and values to only those the state approves of.
I oppose government-run or -administered schools. They are inherently political. All schools should be privatized, with education tax dollars following the student, at the very least. But as long as we have them, the state should stay out of curriculum decision-making. Public schools are local and heavily restricted, by definition and design. Generally, only those children living in the district are eligible to attend the district school. These local monopolies are bad enough. But leaving education decision-making at the local level will at least mitigate the damage. Parents can directly confront school boards and other parents to debate, inform, and, yes, argue continuously over books and other educational issues.
To take that power away from local residents and shift that authority to the rigid dictates of the far-away state government—or worse, the federal government—would be to further entrench partisan and doctrinal viewpoints and factions. Parental rights to control the course of their children’s education, already violated by the government school near-monopoly, would be further violated by increasing state involvement. It would effectively silence parents, and stifle dissent and debate. In the current system and environment, the most civil, equitable, tolerant, and moral course of action to take is to abandon this bill and others like it, and leave the debates and authority to local school districts, residents, and school boards to sort out.
And stop using the term “book banning.” This controversy is about something common to all libraries—content curation. Librarians do that all the time. It’s especially important in school libraries, given their very limited space. According to the loose and irresponsible way that “book ban” is thrown around, any book not carried or subject to restricted access due to age in a school library is to be considered banned. By that definition, every school librarian is guilty of book banning on a massive scale.
Related Reading:
Book-Banning vs. Age-Appropriate Educational Material
What the Parents’ Rights Movement is Really Really About
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