Without even being told to, the school authorities arbitrarily decided to censor titles like Twilight and 1984
~ Andrew J Boyer ~
It has been revealed that a school in Greater Manchester had several books permanently removed from its library last November, in a disturbing case of Britain’s escalating cultural censorship.
Initially sparked by Laura Bates’ Men Who Hate Women, other titles deemed inappropriate included Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race and a graphic novel version of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The librarian (who wishes to remain anonymous) shouldered most of the blame as school authorities deemed her a “safeguarding risk” for permitting so many supposedly inappropriate titles with disturbing content. She faced threats of disciplinary action, causing her to eventually resign.
Several titles removed were LGBTQ+ themed. As the librarian states, “We have the exact same group of children who come in every single day, and a lot of them are LGBTQ+, a lot of them are neurodivergent, and they come into the library because it’s their safe place”.
In a previous incident, a mother complained that she “didn’t want her son exposed to gender bending.” The school initially sided with the librarian’s decision. However, it all turned around rather quickly: “The school defended me and defended those books and their right to be in there, and then two years later, completely forgot about it and changed their mind and said they’re inappropriate”.
There’s currently no law or regulation on what school libraries can or cannot offer on their shelves. In this case, there was not even a school policy in place leading to over 130 books being purged. It was an act of self-censorship, which indicates the pervasive conservatism that spreads through the veins of local community when left unchallenged.
In American states like Texas, book banning in schools to shield students from undesirable material has long been normalised. The next frontier has become curriculum changing; ultimately leading to talk of ‘patriotic education‘ – indoctrinating students in ideas such as American exceptionalism.
Similarly to England, Texas’s library policies vary from school to school. This ultimately leaves decision-making up to authority figures who cyclically reinforce the dominant culture.
Many schools assert that their mission is to teach students to think for themselves. This is actually a very anarchist sentiment. Unfortunately, the reality of the school system rarely matches these liberatory aspirations.
Most education plans prepare students for employment, and to conform to the dominant lifestyle of the day. When we observe the situation from the viewpoint of a student, schools become mini-states, teachers become cops and certain books become contraband.
Seen this way, fighting for autonomy in the mainstream school system is a lot like trying to cram a square peg into a round hole. The limitations of what the institution was designed for will always (in some form or another) take precedence over the needs of the students. Through layers and layers of bureaucracy, common sense will be chipped away in favour of safe conformity.
Building alternatives to authoritarian education, where censorship is all too easily permitted, is therefore crucial to strengthening freedom of thought — be it through free schools, free libraries, study groups, teach-ins, zines and periodicals.
Image: Kennedy Library on Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0
