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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm feeling better. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm good. In particular, I am good because I want to ban some shit. I'm just kidding, I don't want to ban anything. [inaudible].
N. Rodgers: Actually, I wouldn't mind banning certain things.
J. Aughenbaugh: Really?
N. Rodgers: Yeah. I will ban people at work who warm up fish in the microwave. That's it, you're done. I don't know who you are and I don't know why you've done this. But you have to go now.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because that smell permeates the environment.
N. Rodgers: Everything and it stays in the environment. When did this happened? It happened three months ago and it still smells like that.
J. Aughenbaugh: I got something. I want to ban lima beans. I hate lima beans. I don't even like the smell in the kitchen when lima beans are being cooked.
N. Rodgers: You see, lima Beans, I don't know how you would do that? Because there's a whole bunch of southern recipes that require Lima beans.
J. Aughenbaugh: [inaudible]. That actually informs our theme for today, which is just because you don't like something doesn't necessarily mean it should be banned. What we're talking about today folks, this is a podcast episode that was suggested to us by a couple of our loyal listeners.
N. Rodgers: They also a readers.
J. Aughenbaugh: They read the transcript. But these are also a couple of my former students who have had the unfortunate experience of taking constitutional law with me. They wanted to know, can school districts ban books? It got Nia, and I thinking we start doing a little bit of research we are want to do, I happened across a report from an interest group PEN America, which has an index of school books bans
N. Rodgers: LA has a banned Books week.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, they do.
N. Rodgers: Every year. Which is, by the way, the week after Constitution Week.
J. Aughenbaugh: The American Public Library Institution.
N. Rodgers: Constitution Week is September 17 is the week where of September 17 falls and the week after that is banned book week.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. PEN America issued a report for 2022, '23 school year. Of course, they can't issue one for the current school year because it's still ongoing. But they found over 1,400 instances Nia of individual books being banned in public school libraries across the United States. Now some of these instances had similar books. The actual number of books, It was 874. But this was an increase Nia. Compared to 2022. This report also mentioned in some of our listeners are probably aware because of news reports of book bans that have occurred recently in the states of Texas, Florida, Missouri, Utah, South Carolina, etc. Overwhelmingly the book bands focus on books written by or about people of color or LGBTQ+ individuals. Some of the books were labeled pornographic or indecent. But this got us thinking, this was the nature of the question from some of our listeners. Can these school boards constitutionally ban books so that their students cannot have access to them?
N. Rodgers: Before we answer that question.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: From a librarian point of view.
J. Aughenbaugh: We do have a library in our mix.
N. Rodgers: In the house. There's a librarian in the house, a thing that people don't know about how books are chosen, which I think is an important thing to know before you get into the constitutionality of banning set books, is how do books arrive on the shelf? Yes, I am going to break hearts and crush souls when I say most librarians do not read books before they go on the shelves.
J. Aughenbaugh: It would be physically impossible for them to do so.
N. Rodgers: It would be impossible. So what happens is in school districts that purchasing is done at a central facility. There's a central facility of collections librarians. They have what are called standing orders in most school districts. They buy all the Caldecott winners because those are prestigious book awards.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They buy those titles automatically because they are considered to be standards of what you should have in your library. They also have what's called demand driven acquisition. If a student or a parent asks for a book more than a certain number of times, it will automatically get purchased and put into the system.
J. Aughenbaugh: To that point Nia, I'm going to interrupt your flow here. To that point, when the Harry Potter series became extremely popular. There were a number of school districts across the United States reporting that they were getting multiple requests from students, parents of students. Do you have the Harry Potter series? In some cases, if they only had one book each in the series, they were frequently being checked out, would the school district get a second complete series or third complete series. But to your point, that was demand driven.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, that was demand driven.
N. Rodgers: There's what's called evidence-based acquisition at the university level, in some district, in large districts, evidence-based is a publisher, will say, here's a bunch of electronic versions of the books. We'll give them to you for free, but once people click on them three times we'll make you buy it. Or three or five times. It's usually three or five times. It's like a bit like a drug dealer. Here's your first couple of hits for free, your third hits going to cost you. That is a common strategy for large districts like you think New York has hundreds of schools. Publishers will come in with electronic books. Kids like to read books on phones. They like to read books on other devices, iPad. They will say here we'll give you all the books in the world. But then once it's hit three times by three unique users, which in New York would happen in approximately 5 minutes of a book being available. Because it's so many kids, such density, then it automatically purchases those books. This idea that librarians have read every single book that's on the shelf, VCU Libraries has three million physical items that does not count our electronic books, which we just can't even get into the number of those. Three million physical items, I promise you, there's not one person in the library who has touched all three million items. It's just not physically possible.
J. Aughenbaugh: Impossible.
N. Rodgers: There is this weird idea of holding librarians directly responsible. Now that being said, librarians do purchase individual titles. When a title, and I'll tell you what happens, is when they get asked for it, when kids in the school, come in, your daughter, when she comes to the librarian and she says, hey, do we have blah, blah? Another kid comes in three days later and says, hey, do we have blah blah? Same book title. Librarian is going to go, this is a book kids want to read. You know what librarians want more than anything, is to give you a book that you want to read. That feels to us the way it feels for cooks when they cook you a perfect meal and you go, this was fantastic. That's how we feel about giving you a book that you want to read. The kids who are made to read things, it always makes me sad because you develop a hatred. I have a personal hatred for Dickens because I was forced to read Dickens all through high school. I'm just like, I don't care about your Tale of Two Cities, I don't care about David Copperfield. Leave me alone. I don't want any of your writing because I was made to do that. But I have a great love for a lot of other books because I got to read those books. They were a reward in that sense. Let's just keep that in mind the school districts are-
J. Aughenbaugh: Particularly, school district librarians are not necessarily trying to brainwash students. The process is not necessarily designed to, if you will, promote or further a particular side of the ideological spectrum or certain kinds of attitudes about certain peoples, etc. No. In many instances it's not that there wasn't a thought process, it's just libraries want people to read.
N. Rodgers: Libraries want to have people have a diverse spectrum of ideas available to them. When we look for authors of color, the reason we do that is because huge numbers of authors of color for years and years were not published or they were not published by large press. That's why when you think of classics, you almost always think of White Western, mostly male authors. Because that's who got published. Because guess what, folks? Books were expensive up until about 50, 60 years ago. Books were really expensive. Well, maybe 100 years ago, but anyway, you couldn't publish everybody and so certain people got shaken out of that list. We're trying to balance that book by bringing those voices back in. It's better for a kid, when they can see themselves in the book. Having that diversity is important. I'm now off my soapbox.
J. Aughenbaugh: No. One last point before you do get off your soapbox. Again, when libraries have more diverse book selections by a more diverse set of authors, it's in part because libraries want people to come to the library. They just don't want white, middle, and upper-class kids to come to the libraries. They want kids of all races, all socioeconomic backgrounds, because they want people to read.
N. Rodgers: They want upper middle-class white kids to read books by authors of color. To understand that their experience is not the only experience in the world. It is not in fact the most important experience in the world that all experience is important. All dreaming is important. All fantasy is important. A book taking you away to someplace else is a magical experience. We want all kids to have that because we want them to love reading. When you take books out of a system, when you say I want to ban this book for whatever reason, you need to really think about the message you're sending, which is, I don't want a kid to read this. I don't want a kid to read. That is a dangerous sentiment to engage with. The idea also that you can ban what other kids read, I personally think parents should be in charge of banning books. Parents should say, my mom should not have let my dad give me [inaudible] when I was 12. I didn't understand it and it was too sexy and too weird, and too dark and she should have put her foot down. But she was like, your dad, he read it. You liked it. Well, yeah, because my dad was in his 30s.
J. Aughenbaugh: My mom, if she had to do it over again, she probably wouldn't have allowed me to go ahead and use some of my hard-earned money at a yard sale and purchased a very well-worn copy of Mario Puzo's The Godfather.
N. Rodgers: Exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: When I was 10 years old.
N. Rodgers: That's a different question. What's appropriate for 10-year-old to talk about is probably not a horse head in the bed. You know what I mean It's probably not The Godfather.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because there were some things in that book where I was just like, so that's acceptable, adult behavior, really? But again, the burden then shifts to the parents to say to their individual children, I don't think you should read this or I don't think you should read this yet.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. I'd like you to wait on this a couple of years.
J. Aughenbaugh: My ex, Mackenzie's mom and I have had to sit Mackenzie down. My daughter likes graphic books, but some of those graphic books tend to depictions of violence. She's not ready at 11 and we don't want her exposed to that. But I've told her when you get older and you have a better understanding of, okay, what leads to violence, the downsides of violence, then you can read those books. But we want you to read, and there are plenty of graphic novels for younger children that don't have depictions of violence. Where all the women look like supermodels and not all the dudes are gay, these well-muscled buff individuals that you see in a lot of graphic books. But again, the emphasis there is on the parent. But then with many of these book bands, you have parents who are going to schools or getting state laws passed that ban books for all children.
N. Rodgers: Right. They read them and they find inappropriate passages or they find passages that they view as vulgar or [inaudible]
J. Aughenbaugh: Or obscene or whatever the case may be right.
N. Rodgers: However, telling that a large majority of those are written by people of color and people in the LGBTQIA community. Sorry, I'm just going to say this. If anybody is offended, I apologize for perhaps the way I'm communicating it, but have you read the Bible? Nothing is full of sex and violence. You have to be cautious about one person's vulgar is another person's religious icon.
J. Aughenbaugh: [inaudible], yeah.
N. Rodgers: What we're getting is a lot of parents who are pushing the removal of books. Actually, that's not true. Not a lot of parents. A relatively small number are actually responsible for a large number of the attempts at banning, and what the process is the parent goes to the school board, and stands up at the school board meeting and read certain passages out of books. The school board is horrified and says, that's it, we're banning that book. That book can't be in the school system.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then it begs the question, does the school board have the authority, constitutionally, to ban books? Now, Nia, you just got off your soapbox. I'm going to briefly step on one of mine. That is because this issue of banning books has been in the media. Various media organizations have posted articles about whether or not school districts or states can ban books. I came across one in December. They just boldly declared that it was settled Supreme Court precedent, and there are a number of lower federal court rulings that have maintained that banning books is unconstitutional and I had one of those. I'm yelling at my computer screen, great moments. Listeners, I've shared with you the fact that, for instance, my daughter cannot be in the room with me when election results come out because I start yelling at the TV. Or that, when I'm watching sporting events of my favorite teams, she doesn't like to be in the room because I start saying some profane things about refs, the opponents, my own team, etc. I had one of these moments. The soap box issue here is the media sometimes, in their desire to present a very clear narrative, misrepresents a Supreme Court, if you will, ruling or set of precedents, that's not clear. That's the case in regards to whether or not book banning is or is not constitutional. The controlling supreme court case is a case from 1982, The Island Trees School District versus Pico, we'll just call it Pico. This is a case where middle school and high school libraries in a school district in Long Island, New York decided to remove 10 books from those school libraries. Some of the books are pretty well-known books, by well-known authors. Richard Wright's Black Boy, Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five, Eldridge, Cleaver Solanice. He had titles by Bernard Malamud, Alice Childress. The removal occurred because the Vice president of the local school board was a retired New York City Police sergeant. He deemed the books obscene, anti-American, and, "just plain filthy".
N. Rodgers: What irritates the snot out of me about that is he admitted that he had not read the books.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, he had not read them at all.
N. Rodgers: Just plain filthy even though you haven't read the book.
J. Aughenbaugh: The list came from an interest group that had arisen in Western New York. The parents of New York United, Pony-U.
N. Rodgers: Pony-U.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which is the precursor for an interest group of recent vintage that has become very well-known. The Mums for Liberty, which is the modern conservative book banding group from the fine State of Florida. Pico challenged the book ban. The Federal District Court Judge in Brooklyn ruled in favor of the school board.
N. Rodgers: There was an appeal.
J. Aughenbaugh: There was an appeal. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling. The school board didn't like that. So they appealed to the US Supreme Court. Listeners of this podcast well know. This is the normal, if you will, the appeals process. Gets to the Supreme Court and the vote on the Court, and I kid you not listeners, was 4, 1, 4. Four of the justices said the school board violated the freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment. Four of the justices said, no, the school board did not violate freedom of speech found in the First Amendment. Then there was one justice who said, we need to send the case back to the lower court to determine why the school board banned the books, and to decide on the content of the specific books. Because that one justice said in some instances the school board could have the authority to ban books, but in other instances they could not. I happen to know this one justice, at least in your work.
N. Rodgers: That is your beloved, Byron White.
J. Aughenbaugh: Byron White. He was the one justice.
N. Rodgers: If anybody is curious, that's who Aughien read his dissertation on.
J. Aughenbaugh: Dissertation on, and I'm very familiar with his opinion in this case. For National media to go ahead, that Supreme Court precedent about.
N. Rodgers: Say it's settled.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's settled and it's clear.
N. Rodgers: It's 4,1, 4.
J. Aughenbaugh: 4, 1, 4.
N. Rodgers: It is not clear.
J. Aughenbaugh: This almost by definition, Nia, the Supreme Court's ruling in this case is what drives constitutional law scholars bonkers because it's not clear. There are three plausible alternatives that a lower federal court could follow. The one perspective was in the opinion written by Justice Brennan. Brennan said that minors are citizens, just like adults, and that they have a right per the First Amendments, freedom of speech clause to "receive information and ideas". The other perspective was written by Chief Justice Burger. He wrote that parents should have influence, if not control, over their children's education. He said that school boards, school district, school libraries can ban books but if parents want their kids to have exposure to these books, then they can simply go to a bookstore and buy them.
N. Rodgers: Which, just as a side note, that shows Burger doesn't understand how poor people work. The point of libraries is that you don't have to go buy a book because you may or may not be able to afford the book, you may or may not have space to store the book.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, seriously.
N. Rodgers: But he also wrote that the board could wholly dispense with school libraries as far as the First Amendment is concerned. In this particular instance, Chief Justice Warren Burger can bite me. Because while yes, technically they could get rid of libraries, that's a horrible message to send to kids.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Books. You don't need no stinking books.
J. Aughenbaugh: Historically, one of the purposes of libraries was to actually democratize society to level the playing ground.
N. Rodgers: [inaudible] what you originally build.
J. Aughenbaugh: Your access to ideas, thoughts, different cultures, different way of doing things, feelings, and emotions that you may have never been exposed to is available to you simply because you're a member of that society. I can go ahead and tell you that as a poor kid growing up in rural Pennsylvania, libraries were the great leveler as far as I was concerned in my upbringing. Because I had exposure to all books, and one of my most cherished memories of my youth was that Saturday morning when my mom took me and my sisters to the library and we got our first library cards. The librarian said, for an extra fee for $0.10 because there was no fee to get the library card. But for $0.10 we will laminate your card. I had that library card until I was 25 years old.
N. Rodgers: Carnegie built 2,509 libraries between 1883 and 1929.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: The point of the library systems in the United States was poor people did not have to be able to buy a book in order to read a book.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: That people could improve their lives rather through reading so [inaudible] burger can just bite me.
J. Aughenbaugh: [inaudible]. But there was also a narrow self-interest for Andrew Carnegie and other robber barons. They had built these big industries and they wanted workers who could read so that they could read instructions and manuals so that they could do their jobs better and there was less training and fewer accidents, etc. Again, you don't get the modern industrial United States with a poorly educated workforce. You just don't. We know this in underdeveloped nations when you don't have a good education system, when you don't have a population that knows how to read economically, they struggle in part because they don't know how to read.
N. Rodgers: Correct. We get the Brennan side and we get the Burger's side, and then we get Justice White in the middle.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Who's the swing vote.
J. Aughenbaugh: He was a swing vote throughout the '70s and throughout the '80s. He went ahead and said, "We don't have to decide the constitutional issue, we should send the case back to the District Court to do more fact-finding as to why this school district decided to remove these books." He said, and I highlighted this, and I'm making reference to Brennan's opinion, "The Plurality seems compelled to go further and issue a dissertation on the extent to which the First Amendment limits the discretion of the school board to remove books from the school library. I see no necessity for doing so at this point. When the findings of fact and conclusions of law are made by the district court, that may end the case. If, for example, the trial court concludes after a trial that the books were removed for their vulgarity, there may be no appeal. In any event if there is an appeal, if there is a dissatisfaction with the subsequent Court of Appeal's judgment, there will be time enough to address the First Amendment issues that are presented." In other words, and he says this later, we should not decide constitutional questions until it is necessary to do so or at least until there is a better reason to address them than is evident here, so all white agreed in regards to Brennan was to send the case back to the lower court. Now Brennan was sending a rather strong message to the lower court. At least four of us here on the Supreme Court think that book banning in school libraries is unconstitutional. But it's also plausible for a lower court to go ahead and say, but there are four justices, including the chief who says, we don't even have to have books, so suck it. In my estimation as a constitutional law scholar, the matter is not clear and you can see this since the Pico decision in 1982.
N. Rodgers: Can I ask a question right before we leave Justice White?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Did he not also say though that, if books were banned for political reasons. Like if you're a school board that skews Republican and you just ban books by Democrats or books that portray Democrats in a positive light, that is unacceptable. That that is not an acceptable reason to ban a book. The acceptable reasons fall more into what we think of when we think of community vulgarity standards. If your community standards are such that that book is violating then the school board could ban the book. Didn't he say there were actual instances where they really couldn't ban a book?
J. Aughenbaugh: If one reads the entirety of White's separate opinion, he mentions two things. One Nia, that you just mentioned, which is he really cautioned the District Court to force the school board to engage in reasoned decision-making. You and I have talked about this previously in other podcast episodes. Byron White was a huge advocate that government administrative bodies use reasoned decision making. That if they were not arbitrary and capricious in their decision making, then the courts should support their decisions. To your point and White covers this. If a school board is just removing books for political reasons, then that does not satisfy the First Amendment. However, and here's the second point I wanted to raise, White was also very clear that historically school boards have the authority to restrict the rights of their students because they are trying to protect and educate them. You see this, for instance, in schools. I say this in my constitutional law class, students don't have as robust civil liberties as do adults.
N. Rodgers: Under age students.
J. Aughenbaugh: Under age students.
N. Rodgers: This is not higher education students. This is a different animal.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Anybody under the age of 18 does not have the same level of rights people over the age of 18.
J. Aughenbaugh: Of 18 have. I know this stinks for 15, 16, 17, and 18-year-olds, but American society still views you as a "minor". You're not an adult yet. We want schools to go ahead and, in part educate our youth, but also protect them. If a school board can, if you will, demonstrate that they had good sound reasons, it could be because the text in question has too much senseless violence. See the godfather. Or there's gratuitous sex that has no context. Or whatever the case may be? The Supreme Court historically has been fairly consistent. It will allow the government to go ahead and pass all kinds of laws to protect children, and in protecting children, that might be limiting their civil liberties and civil rights.
N. Rodgers: Trying to find that sweet spot, allowing kids freedom but protecting them from violence by other kids. Now, I would say that one of the reasons that Justice White may or may not have felt that way in this particular case is because the retired sergeant hadn't read the books that he was trying to ban. The first thing that I would think would be an idea for the school board is read the book that you're trying to ban. Read the book that somebody is telling you about, instead of letting them tell you about it. Read the book, read the context, understand what it is, and then make a decision about whether you think it should be banned or not banned.
J. Aughenbaugh: Personally here, and Nia, you and I've talked about this off-recording. I don't like book bans. Again, listeners, I've shared earlier in this podcast episode how important libraries were to me as a poor kid from a broken home and just the the places books took me. Places that I could never afford.
N. Rodgers: Books can be incredibly empowering.
J. Aughenbaugh: On the other hand, I think that if any-
N. Rodgers: Ten-year old self should probably not have had the godfather.
J. Aughenbaugh: Father.
N. Rodgers: It was around when the movie came out.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, a few years later, but nevertheless. But I still remember high school literature teachers sending home the book lists to our parents. Books that we would be reading, and books that were available at the library and saying to our parents, you need to investigate and decide whether or not you think your son or daughter is ready to read a book with these themes, these subject matters, these issues, etc. I'm torn here because I think government institutions in regards to educating our young should have the authority to ban certain books or at least not have certain age groups read them, because they may not be ready. But then this takes me back to my old saw that, I'm sorry, listeners, you've heard me say over and over again. Just because the government has the authority to do something doesn't mean it should use that authority. I think school libraries, school boards, state legislative bodies need to think long and hard about banning books. Because not only are they denying access to all the great places that books can take these kids, but they send a particular message to the kids which is, we don't trust you to read a book to understand what the book is saying and reject what you think is problematic or accept and admire what you think is good. Wow. That sends a really powerful message to our future generations. Again, just because the government has the authority to do something doesn't mean it should use that authority. I have the authority to quiz my students every class session. I don't for a lot of good reasons. In a future podcast episode, we're going to take a look at laws that are on the books. Many of these laws have not been used in decades or centuries. But people could be arrested for breaking those laws. Then that puts the burden on prosecutors and cops as to whether or not they enforce those laws and just because you have the authority to enforce a law doesn't necessarily mean you should use it or that you should arrest somebody. Because that's the power of the state.
N. Rodgers: I suspect that in part my opinion is slightly different because of the crabby nature of my personality. There are books I think should be banned because they're crap.
J. Aughenbaugh: Wow.
N. Rodgers: Those crap, like get rich quick books, and the ones cures they don't want you to know about Kevin Trudeau. His stuff not only should it be banned, it should be used as firewood. Those are dangerous to humans.
J. Aughenbaugh: You go further than me because for me, I leave it to the individual reader.
N. Rodgers: I refer to those dangerous books because you're just awful. But those are not generally found in schools. The books we're talking about in schools, I don't believe in banning books from kids, but I do believe in age-appropriate material.
J. Aughenbaugh: [inaudible].
N. Rodgers: If you're a business school librarian who is working at an actual K through 12, you're in a rural district and you've got 300 kids in your entire school. You've got to figure out a way to keep the ages appropriate as they go through the school. You've either got to have shelving where as you get higher up on the bookshelves, they get more adult, they change in appropriateness so that as you get taller, you can reach the ones that you ought to be reading or you put then in other shelves in the case.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because I got to be honest with you here. Some of the books that Island Trees School District banned, I think I read pretty much all the books or all the authors that they banned. But some of those books I should not have read and would not have been appropriate for me to read in middle school.
N. Rodgers: No 10-year old should read Slaughterhouse 5. Not trying to say don't read it, it's a great book for an older kid. It is not appropriate for a 10-year old. The problem is is that when you ban something, there's no nuance. What you're saying is this book is outright bad, and there are very few books that fall into that category. I have named a couple of sets of them, but generally speaking, there are very few books that fall into that category. We don't generally find on the shelves books that are just irredeemable. What we need to do is figure out a way to keep them out of the hands of younger kids, but into the hands of older kids, so that those kids can experience, as we said, age-appropriate materials. I personally would ban from any library that I could find 50 Shades of Gray, because I hate that book for a variety of reasons. But that's my personal opinion and that should not prevent you from reading 50 Shades of Gray if you long to do so.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Even though I could ban them as a librarian, I wouldn't because that needs to be cross-matched.
J. Aughenbaugh: Earlier in the episode Nia, you went ahead and were less than positive about Charles Dickens.
N. Rodgers: The best of times, it was the worst of time. I don't care. Sorry.
J. Aughenbaugh: But I love Dickens.
N. Rodgers: Lots of people do.
J. Aughenbaugh: I still remember I was applying for a scholarship my senior year of high school to help fund my college education, it was a Rotary Scholarship. One of the questions they asked during the interview was, what's your favorite book? At the time, my favorite fiction book was Dickens' great expectations. I did explain why. I even told them when I first took it out from the library. How excited I was when it got assigned to us when we were sophomores in high school. Etc. But book bans don't allow for that kind of diversity of reading experience. You don't like Dickens.
N. Rodgers: I love Shakespeare.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay.
N. Rodgers: I would read Hamlet every day for the rest of my life if I had time.
J. Aughenbaugh: You would probably act it out. You will act out the difference if you will keep it.
N. Rodgers: I will go see bad versions of Hamlet. Because even a bad version of Hamlet is better than the best versions of other things.
J. Aughenbaugh: On the other hand, I know plenty of people who don't like spy mystery books. You mentioned the fact that La Care. I know people who I've recommended La Care books to. They've attempted to read one, they can't get through one, and they're just like, that was some boring stuff me. I was just like, I found everything about it fascinating. From the bureaucratic, analysis, to the discussion of cultures and values and how Great Britain wasn't any better than the Soviet Union to the just obvious misogyny that was in La Care's books. I was just like, dude, I know you're depicting what was going on in spy organizations, but you got some serious issues with women.
N. Rodgers: But you would not have discovered that if someone had said, none is allowed to read La Care.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. I didn't get to La Care until I had first read Graham Green. I got to be honest with you, Graham Green was probably not appropriate for my 14, 15 year old self. But I had access to it, and I appreciate it enough to where when I went back and read Graham Green books later, when I was an adult, I was just like, there was so much more here.
N. Rodgers: My larger complaint about book bans is it abdicates parental responsibility.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, yeah, there is that.
N. Rodgers: You as a parent should not be deciding what my kid reads. You as a parent should be deciding what your kid reads. It is inappropriate for you as a parent to decide that my kid shouldn't have access to whatever book. I will never forget when the first Harry Potter book came out and people went berserk because it was wizards and witches and witchcraft. Do you know how many millions of kids got hooked on reading because they started the Harry Potter series? Like, we can't buy that joy in reading.
J. Aughenbaugh: My goodness.
N. Rodgers: You're trying to get it banned. Sit down. You can keep your kid from reading it, and that's your right, that's in fact your responsibility. But you should be your mom when you came home from the library, should have glanced through the books. Now, she didn't have time because she was a working single mom. But if she had glanced through the books and she had said, Graham Green might be a little old for you there, but take that one back and get something else, then that's her responsibility. This idea that you can ban them for other people. I am all about you choosing not to read. I do not eat brussels sprouts. You know why? Because they're disgusting.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's how I feel about lima beans.
N. Rodgers: I know don't care how you cook them. I'm not lying enough for brussels sprouts. I've eaten them tasty once in my entire life. I don't care what it means. More brussel sprouts for my best friend who loves brussel sprouts. He cooks them and he makes them and they're delicious for him and that's wonderful more for him. None for me. That's how book should work. If you don't want to read whatever it is like if somebody doesn't want to read La Care awesome. Move on to the next author in the genre. Move on to Alistair Mclean. Move on to whoever else. I don't know, I don't understand this idea of I'm not just going to ban it for my kid, I'm going to ban it for all kids.
J. Aughenbaugh: In your part of the justification that you hear for these bans is that what is the saying to our community when we allow our kids access to these books? I'm just like, okay but what is it really saying?
N. Rodgers: Well, do you think that reading about certain things will make a kid do those things? Because if that's the case, then we need to ban catcher in the rye. It's taught in every high school. Seriously, be careful about that. Be careful about what they're saying is I don't want the LGBTQIA to influence my kid. If your kid is LGBTQIA, they need to know that they are reflected in books and if they are not in that arena, they need to know that their friends might be in that arena.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Hello. Your kids don't live alone in the world?
J. Aughenbaugh: They don't live alone in the world. It can help them to go ahead and figure out who they are.
N. Rodgers: Also, understand who their friends are. Respect other people whether they like them or not.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. When I would read about certain behaviors in books. If I didn't like them, then the book helped shape who I am. I remember reading it was Alice Walker's, The Color Purple. There were depictions in that book of a man physically harming his spouse. I found those depictions horrific.
N. Rodgers: You internalized the idea that you never do that to a partner yourself.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because that's not the way you depict love. You can't go ahead and say to somebody else I love you now let me go ahead and beat your face to a bloody pulp. That's wrong.
N. Rodgers: It's not how good men behave.
J. Aughenbaugh: It already reinforced what I was already being taught in school and at home. I think it helped shape who I am as a person today.
N. Rodgers: The other side of that is also true. I read Charlotte's Web. It did not make me a marketer because that's what Charlotte does. She markets Wilbur. He's fantastic. She markets him as a didn't make me a marketer nor did he give me a huge love of spiders. I still don't love spiders. I love Charlotte. Because Charlotte, it's a good spider. But that's the other thing is sometimes a book is just a book. I'm not trying to be ugly, and the librarians I can hear you all clenching right now and moaning. But sometimes the books, just a book and that's okay too. Not every book is life altering. Not every book changes. I've read hundreds of books that I don't remember. I've read a few, probably a couple of hundred that have truly stayed with me.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Why not let that be the case? The more you fuss over a book, the more likely a kid's going to want to read it first of all. Kids are oppositional just by the nature of being a kid. But also, why don't take those books as a learning opportunity, have the kid read the book and then talk about it. What did you think about that? Let's talk about it as a family. But no, they want to take the shortcut of, I'm just going to ban the book. Lazy parenting, that's what that is. That's lazy parenting, it's lazy society. I got all crappy there at the end. Sorry.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's quite all right. But before we conclude, and I know some listeners are going to be like, Aggie, you study the Supreme Court, let's say any of these book bans from Florida, Texas, Missouri, whatever. If they get to the Supreme Court with the current Supreme Court, how do you think they're going to rule? I really think that for many of the justices, no matter where they fall on the ideological spectrum, I think more of them are probably going to fall, they're going to probably pull out Byron White separate opinion, and say, this is the standard.
N. Rodgers: Is intent. What is the intent in the ban?
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. That lower federal courts should do a searching, if you will, investigation at trial to determine what are the reasons why these books are being banned, and I know that's a nebulous standard, but I really do believe that of the perspectives offered in the Pico case, the one that will probably resonate the most with the current Supreme Court justices. You will see liberals and conservatives actually coming together and doing what they do with quite a bit of frequency. We say that a lot on this podcast, but hey, the Supreme Court, the justices actually agree quite frequently. Then we'll go ahead and come out and say, school boards have the authority, but it has to be based on reasoned decision-making. It just can't be a blanket ban that displays animist towards certain thoughts. They have to be able to justify it in terms of protecting the educational environment for the children.
N. Rodgers: Which probably means that before you ban a book, you should read it.
J. Aughenbaugh: You should read it. You should allow there to be a full discussion of parents and school librarians. But a lot of what goes, and Nia, please forgive me for saying this. But a lot of what goes on increasingly in school boards today is school board members, and teachers and staffers, are just like, well, how dare you challenge us?
N. Rodgers: But that is an episode for another time. Because we can discuss that, and we probably should at some point discuss whether school boards are actually democratic or not, and how things work. Aughie just threw his hands up, you can't see it. But he threw his hands up like, oh, I surrender. That's a discussion we will have another time. Hey, thanks Aughie, I appreciate you explaining that this is a far more nuanced thing than the media is currently like, oh, no, it's fine. Bands are not okay. Well, that's not really true, so thank you for clarifying that. It's a 4-1-4 vote, which is about as divided as the court can be.
J. Aughenbaugh: Since we're throwing kudos here, I want to thank you, Nia, for taking time earlier in the episode to explain how librarians pick books. Because I'm afraid so many Americans think that librarians have these political axes to grind with the books that they pick. No, they don't. They're doing a job.
N. Rodgers: Actually, we do have political access to grind. We just grind them on both sides. Yes, you're right, we grind them on both sides. I am supposed to find material.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: That covers the entire spectrum of an argument, so that you, the reader, can decide-
J. Aughenbaugh: For yourself.
N. Rodgers: Thank you. Because I do think that people think that librarians are trying to bend the collections to be either progressive or woke, or conservative and traditional, and it's really not even close to that.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, because for most librarians, they want people to come to the library and use the materials at the library. In part, it's somewhat self-serving because the more people use the library, the more you're going to have a job. But it's also because most librarians want people to go ahead and access books, access materials in the collections to do research, to explore, to be curious, et cetera. Almost every librarian I've met is just like, here's my world. Come into my world and let me share how great it is.
N. Rodgers: And look at all these ideas.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: You should be partaking of all of it. It's like a smorgasbord. You should have a little bit of everything. Because it will make you a better person. The more ideas you're exposed to, the more that broadens your horizons, the better a human you are.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners think about the times we've had our good friend, Nia's colleague in the library, Hillary, come on. You guys can't see this because this is a podcast. But the smile on her face and how animated she gets about talking about trademarks and copyrights.
N. Rodgers: Publishing and how it all works.
J. Aughenbaugh: You can't go ahead and have that experience with that librarian and go ahead and say, that's some fascinating stuff. Nia, you've said this about me in regards to when we do Constitution Day. I can't wait for it to begin.
N. Rodgers: You're all dressed up in your Sunday best.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sunday best, I got my best coffee in my favorite mug, and I'm going to go ahead, and you try to convert some people to the wonder and joy of the Constitution.
N. Rodgers: That's because fascination is infectious.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: The more somebody else is fascinating or interesting, the more infectious that becomes. You're like, well, I have to know more. That's why people end up in the Internet at 4:00 AM saying I don't know how I got here. It's because you start by looking up whether Elton John is still alive or not, and four and half hours later, you're like, that's how you make falafel, how did I even get here?
J. Aughenbaugh: Four hours later, you're reading the backstory to some Elton John album that he made in 1974. And you're like, how did I get over there?
N. Rodgers: How did I get there from there?
J. Aughenbaugh: But there you are at four o'clock in the morning, like, oh man, I got to go to bed. Work today is going to drag bad. Anyways, Nia. Thank you very much.
N. Rodgers: Thank you, Aughie.
You've been listening to civil discourse brought to you by VCU Libraries. Opinions expressed are solely the speaker's own and do not reflect the views or opinions of VCU or VCU Libraries. Special thanks to the Workshop for technical assistance. Music by Isaak Hopson. Find more information at guides.library.vcu.edu/discourse. As always, no documents were harmed in the making of this podcast.