From Publisher’s Weekly:
Freedom to Read advocates are voicing concern over a new bill in the Texas state legislature, that, if passed, would require publishers to create an “age appropriate” rating system for books sold to Texas school libraries. But most worrisome, critics say, the bill as written would not only force publishers to develop a rating system, it would appear to give Texas state officials the power to direct publishers to change ratings that state officials disagree with and to bar schools from doing business with publishers that do not acquiesce. The ratings would also have to be “affixed to the cover” of each book.
The bill is still in the early stages. Filed this week by Republican Tom Oliverson on the opening day of the filing period for the upcoming legislative session, the proposed bill, HB 338, will compete with thousands of other proposed bills for legislative action when the Texas legislature begins work in January, 2023. For context, the Texas Tribune reported that Texas legislators filed more than 800 bills in the opening hours of the filing period. While most of these bills will not advance, Tribune reporters note, the first bills of the session can often “shed light on legislators’ priorities and what battles could be shaping up in Austin next year.”
Early stages or not, Oliverson’s proposed bill has freedom to read advocates bracing for a rough 2023 legislative session in Texas, a state where conservative lawmakers—including newly re-elected governor Greg Abbott—have been among the most aggressive supporters of book bans and educational gag orders.
In 2021, Abbott demanded that the state agencies overseeing education and library funding keep “inappropriate” books out of Texas schools, and went so far as to direct agency officials to open criminal investigations over offending titles. Furthermore, Abbott’s directive followed a headline-grabbing inquiry launched in October 2021 by Texas state representative Matt Krause that singled out some 850 books for scrutiny.
In a statement, officials at PEN America called HB 338 a “dangerous escalation” in the movement to censor books in schools and libraries.
Link to the rest at Publisher’s Weekly
PG didn’t plan the juxtaposition of this item with the one he posted just before he posted this item, but the combination of the two OP’s struck him as interesting.
Let’s take the author of the Female Fear post and take her back to a time when she was 8-10 years old. PG would speculate that she might well be a sensitive girl at that time, perhaps subject to some anxieties.
How would such a sensitive child, female or male, react to a book featuring LGBTQIA+ material as are some of the books that parents and others find objectionable for an elementary school library? In past lives, PG has known more than a couple of children who would have been extremely upset about discovering this sort of book in the library. Violence isn’t the only thing that may upset a sensitive child.
PG is not suggesting that children’s librarians have to make certain the fears of the most frightened and neurotic child imaginable are not triggered, but PG suggests that they do need to put the welfare of children before any ideas that it’s important for children to learn about potentially upsetting issues during their childhood years.
But, as usual, PG might be wrong.
I never thought that some parts of my country would be working so hard to become third world dictatorships.
You’re not alone.
Lots of “experts” thought that mindset ended with MCarthy.
They’ve since reconsidered. From THE ATLANTIC:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/psychological-dimensions-left-wing-authoritarianism/620185/
Ansolutists are all over: my way or my way.
But how do they plan to attempt to save the children from reading books that might be too old for them? I eagerly await the suggestions that books should scan people faces.
I have never hear “too old” as a reason to manage books. Who says that?
The librarians had it coming. The Brigade with Aposematic Hair should have been chastened or tossed out altogether. Sowing –> reaping. Some people have to learn this law of the universe from experience, and some lessons are long overdue.
Action breed reactions.
Some folks don’t believe in letting children be chidren; they rejoice in telling 6 year olds there’s no Santa or tooth fairy. To them chidren are simply uneducated adults and its never too early to teach them the evils of the outside world and proper thinking.
Those folks also believe parents have no right to teach their culture and values to their offspring.
Because “there can be only one.”
Absolutists don’t believe in nuance, either.
(shrug)
The future will judge.
The problem is not what parents teach as culture and values to their own offspring.† The problem is giving other parents license to impose their culture and values on my offspring via implicit (or all too often explicit) substitution of their culture and values for either mine or the professional judgment of those curating collections — or just maintaining bookstore stocks. It’s not so much that “there shouldn’t be any limits” as “the wrong kind of people are proposing the wrong kinds of limits, and historically it has always been the wrong kind of people proposing the wrong kinds of limits.” I am carefully not stating my full opinion based on both personal experience and extensive research because (a) this is PG’s forum, not mine, and (b) the sarcasm would drip off the screen and ruin too many keyboards.
Bluntly: For every instance of (to slightly rephrase PG’s statement) an exceptionally neurotic/frightened child being triggered by extreme content to which one can point, there are upwards of a hundred in which enforcement of orthodox “values and cultures” resulted in harm to a child who is not exceptionally neurotic/frightened, whether through “triggering” or more deviously (such as ensuring that The Autobiography of Malcolm X is kept away from high-school students because it encourages “disrespect for authority” — and that’s from less than two decades ago, in a Big Ten college town).
† OK, it all too often is. Growing up in the 60s, I had a neighbor who definitely taught his culture and values to his offspring after shopping for his evening wear at the Lincoln’s Birthday bedlinen sales. (It was so long ago that they hadn’t merged Washington’s Birthday and Lincoln’s Birthday yet.) Let’s just say that this set of “culture and values” was challenged by the influx of refugees from Southeast Asia in the 70s…