The authoritarianism of Indian River school administrators sets a dangerous precedent
Remove books? IRC school inspector and chair of Moms for Liberty speak
Indian River County Schools Superintendent David Moore and local Moms for Liberty leader Jennifer Pippin speak at the board meeting on March 14, 2022.
Wochit
The Indian River County School Board recently made national (and even international) headlines for banning a book titled “Ban This Book.”
Late-night talk show comedians will likely find this decision amusing, and it is laced with delicious irony.
It would actually be funny if the board’s action did not set such a dangerous precedent.
Let’s talk about this irony. Jennifer Pippin, president of the local chapter of Moms for Liberty, called for a ban on the book because of sexual content.
However, the pages of “Ban This Book” do not contain any sexual content.
The children’s novel follows a fictional fourth-grader who builds a secret library of forbidden books after her school administrators remove a variety of titles from the shelves. Eventually, the story’s renegade librarian is caught and acknowledges her mistake.
Pippin found the book offensive because it references other books that discuss sexual behavior, including a book called “It’s Perfectly Normal,” which contains passages describing masturbation. Pippin read an excerpt at the May 20 school board meeting in case members needed a refresher course on the subject.
Three of the five board members said they found the references to other Books are problematic, even though schools in Indian River County do not allow these books in their libraries.
Kevin McDonald, who was recently appointed to a vacancy on the school board, argued that once students knew about these other books, they would be able to find them in places other than the school library.
He is absolutely right. It is unbelievable that some school board members in Indian River County and elsewhere are so fixated on the books that are in the school library and that they rarely check out anyway, when most students have access to far more visual material and other evils of the Internet through their smartphones or other devices.
McDonald and two of his colleagues had other problems with “Ban This Book.” McDonald said the story encouraged rebellion against authority — particularly the authority exercised by school boards.
“At nine years old, I needed to know what was right,” McDonald said. “I didn’t need school to teach me what was wrong.”
Questioning authority, like adults telling you that Santa Claus is real, is wrong? If the government bans a book because someone in it questions authority, that’s pretty close to the textbook definition of authoritarianism, which is wrong – and it’s in our Constitution.
Board member Gene Posca dismissed the entire book as “mere liberal Marxist propaganda.”
Even if that is true, books should not be banned just because the government does not like the political messages they contain. This is a far cry from policing pornography and other “inappropriate” content.
At the end of the discussion, Posca and McDonald joined board member Jacqueline Rosario in voting 3-2 to remove “Ban This Book” from school library shelves.
This, too, was ironic, because just minutes earlier, McDonald had argued that the board should honor the wishes of two school board members who had voted to remove the book at an earlier meeting, rather than the majority of the board, which had voted to keep it.
Apparently, McDonald was less concerned about the objections of his two board colleagues who had voted against the ban, since he himself was on the winning side.
This too must be made clear: Although some of the board members who voted for the ban preferred the term “curating” to “banning,” the book was banned from Indian River County school libraries. No euphemisms can hide that.
If book ban advocates find the term that aptly describes their approach too harsh, or if it makes them feel guilty or uncomfortable, it may be time for them to rethink their approach.
When McCarthyism took hold of the country in the 1950s, people’s careers and lives were destroyed by making vague or no connections between them and communism.
This part of our country’s history – which, by the way, is recorded in books – reached a turning point when lawyer Joseph Welch confronted U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy during a Senate hearing with the famous phrase: “Have you no sense of decency?”
We may have reached a similar point with the book ban.
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