Within the last week or so, eighteen school districts in Texas received a letter from State Representative, Matt Krause, chair of the Texas House Committee on General Investigating. He wanted to know how many copies of the 850 books on a booklist their schools owned, as well as how much money the districts spent on these titles.
Here are two articles appearing in newspapers last week that summarize what has happened.
Texas GOP lawmaker launches investigation of books on race and sexuality used in school districts. https://wapo.st/3mtNhag from Washington Post, October 27, 2021
Texas House committee to investigate school districts’ books on race and sexuality. https://bit.ly/3Cx46XF from Texas Tribune, October 26, 2021
As a former school librarian who supports a student's right to check out and read any book in the library, I am upset that any state legislator assumes the right to start an investigation of this nature. In my opinion, it's the parents' responsibility to guide their child's reading choices, and it's the library/librarian's responsibility to provide quality titles on subjects that are appropriate for campus students.
Here are some facts with a few personal opinions added:
1. To my knowledge, in a public school no child is ever required to read a specific library book. Sometimes, a teacher will require students to read within a range of Lexile levels and/or may require a certain genre such as fiction, non-fiction, biography, biology, mythology, etc. But NOT a specific title. There is always a choice.
2. Every school district has a board-approved Recommendation for Consideration policy with a detailed procedure for investigation and decision-making The process is designed to handle one resource at a time.
3. The list of 850 books is 15 pages long, and 11 of those pages list titles were published between 1991-2018. Good heavens! Books published in 1991 are 30 years old and shouldn't even still be on the shelves anyway unless they are considered classics. Most school libraries in Texas follow the weeding guidelines found in the CREW Method: Expanded Guidelines for Collection and Weeding, first published in 1976 by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission and updated periodically. As a general rule, the books on Krause's list published before 2018 would have been evaluated and removed from the library based on these guidelines and local criteria.
4. The amount of time required for any librarian to check Krause's request is counterproductive. A librarian is a teacher and who uses professional skills to evaluate and purchase materials that are appropriate to the needs and demographics of the campus. Besides all school library catalogs have public access, and anyone who is concerned about the books in a library can look for themselves. Public tax dollars shouldn't be spent to satisfy the whims of one individual or a small group of individuals.
4. A big question is where was the list originated. Do you suppose Krause has read all these books and personally evaluated them based on some criteria that seem reasonable to him? Is there some group, either in-state or out-of-state, that is providing Krause fuel for this attention-getting activity?
5. Apparently Krause did not have consensus among General Investigating committee members to generate this information-gathering quest.
6. During the summer of 2021, I was asked by the Texas State Library (TSLAC) to work with a group of professional Texas school librarians to evaluate the contents of two educationally-appropriate online databases available to secondary students. While the databases are prepared by a company with many years of experience providing vetted resources, TSLAC wanted to make sure the resources were suited for student research. We looked at over 27,000 resources and recommended certain journals and other documents to be deleted from the databases. Specifically, we looked for salacious, pornographic, and graphically inappropriate content. After hundreds of hours of work using a complex search process, less than 1% was deleted, and some of that was because the information was out-of-date or inaccurate. What's significant, I think, is that the questionable contents were not found easily; a casual or inexperienced database user would really have to know what they were looking for and exactly how to search.
7. I support sheltering children from inappropriate content, but what's inappropriate for one might be the most appropriate for another. It depends on the reader and his parents.
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Update: On November 4, 2021 Governor Abbot added his endorsement to Krause's investigation. Texas governor calls books 'pornography' in latest effort to remove LGBTQ titles from school libraries. https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/04/us/texas-lgbtq-books-schools/index/html
As a result of my personal experience of working with hundreds of Texas school librarians and future Texas school librarians, I can safely say that no one has put a pornographic book in any school library. They do select appropriate books that are sensitive to social emotional issues of today's readers.
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