Banned Books

1
Banned Books

• Artemus Ward
• Northern Illinois University
• http//polisci.niu.edu/polisci/faculty/ward
• The Bill of Rights Institute Seminar
• Benedictine College Atchison, KS February 19,
  2008
• Salina Bicentennial Center Salina, KS
  February 21, 2008

2
The Question

• Can public schools ban certain books from junior
  high and high school libraries, based on their
  content?
• Does this violate the First Amendment's
  freedom-of-speech protections?

3
Schoolhouse Rights

• In Meyer v. Nebraska (1923), the U.S. Supreme
  Court struck down a state law that forbade the
  teaching of modern foreign languages in public
  and private schools.
• In West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette
  (1943), the Court held that under the First
  Amendment a student in a public school could not
  be compelled to salute the flag.
• In Epperson v. Arkansas (1968), the Court struck
  down as a violation of the Establishment Clause a
  state law that prohibited the teaching of the
  Darwinian theory of evolution in any
  state-supported school.
• But these cases dealt with required curriculum
  and not optional, library books.

4
Tinker v. Des Moines (1969)

• John Tinker, 15, was a student at a public high
  school in Des Moines, Iowa. Mary Beth Tinker,
  his 13-year-old sister, attended junior high
  school. After meeting with a group of adults and
  students, they decided to publicize their
  objections to the Vietnam War by wearing black
  armbands to school.

• School authorities became aware of the plan and
  adopted a policy that any student wearing an
  armband would be asked to remove it if the
  student refused, the student would be suspended
  until he or she returned to school without the
  armband. The Tinker children wore armbands and
  were suspended from school.

5
Tinker v. Des Moines (1969)

• Do students have the right to political
  expression on school grounds?
• Does the state have the authority to restrict
  speech under its police powers protect the
  health, safety, welfare, and morals of the
  people?
• Is there a difference between elementary, middle,
  high school, and college students for free speech
  purposes?

6
Tinker v. Des Moines (1969)

• Justice Fortas wrote for the Court
• In order for the state, in the person of school
  officials, to justify prohibition of a particular
  expression of opinion, it must be able to show
  that its action was caused by something more than
  a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and
  unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular
  viewpoint.
• comprehensive authority ... of school officials
  must be exercised consistent with fundamental
  constitutional safeguards.
• Students do not shed their constitutional rights
  when they enter the schoolhouse door.

7
Tinker v. Des Moines (1969)

• The Court ruled that this symbolic
  speech--"closely akin to pure speech"--could only
  be prohibited by school administrators if they
  could show that it would cause a substantial
  disruption of the school's educational mission.
• The school allowed other forms of political
  expression such as Nixon and Humphrey campaign
  button and the Iron Cross.
• School isnt just about attending classes and
  learning prescribed material. It is also about
  intercommunication among the students.

8
Students Are Not Adults

• Despite the progressive language of Tinker,
  several Supreme Court cases have established that
  students in public schools generally do not have
  the same rights as adults. They have fewer rights
  to free speech, privacy, and other liberties.
• The question is how to balance childrens rights
  to receive information with educators and
  parents concern about the suitability of certain
  materials.

9
Board of Ed., Island Trees School Dis. v. Pico
(1982)

• In 1976, a New York school board decided to pull
  a number of books from library shelves in
  response to a complaint by community group,
  Parents of New York United.
• The group said the books were anti-American,
  anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and just plain
  filthy and concluded that "it is our duty, our
  moral obligation, to protect the children in our
  schools from this moral danger as surely as from
  physical and medical dangers.
• The books in the High School library were
• Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
• The Naked Ape, by Desmond Morris
• Down These Mean Streets, by Piri Thomas
• Best Short Stories of Negro Writers, edited by
  Langston Hughes
• Go Ask Alice, of anonymous authorship
• Laughing Boy, by Oliver LaFarge
• Black Boy, by Richard Wright 
• A Hero Ain't Nothin' But A Sandwich, by Alice
  Childress
• Soul On Ice, by Eldridge Cleaver
• A Reader for Writers, edited by Jerome Archer
  (Junior High library)
• The Fixer, by Bernard Malamud (included in the
  curriculum of a twelfth-grade literature course).

10
Board of Ed., Island Trees School Dis. v. Pico
(1982)

• A plurality of the justices ruled against the
  Board on First Amendment grounds. Justice William
  Brennan (with Marshall, Stevens, and Blackmun)
  held that the right to reador receive ideasis
  implied by the First Amendment. The government,
  in the form of local school boards may not
  remove books from school library shelves simply
  because they dislike the ideas contained in those
  books.
• Brennan called libraries places for voluntary
  inquiry and concluded that unlike required
  curriculum, the school boards absolute
  discretion over the classroom did not extend to
  the library for that reason.

11
Board of Ed., Island Trees School Dis. v. Pico
(1982)

• Chief Justice Warren Burger (with Powell,
  Rehnquist, and OConnor), dissenting
• a plurality of the Court, in a lavish expansion
  going beyond any prior holding under the First
  Amendment, expresses its view that a school
  board's decision concerning what books are to be
  in the school library is subject to federal-court
  review. Were this to become the law, this Court
  would come perilously close to becoming a "super
  censor" of school board library
  decisions. Stripped to its essentials, the issue
  comes down to two important propositions  first,
  whether local schools are to be administered by
  elected school boards, or by federal judges and
  teenage pupils  and second, whether the values
  of morality, good taste, and relevance to
  education are valid reasons for school board
  decisions concerning the contents of a school
  library. In an attempt to place this case within
  the protection of the First Amendment, the
  plurality suggests a new "right" that, when shorn
  of the plurality's rhetoric, allows this Court to
  impose its own views about what books must be
  made available to students.
• If the school can set curriculum, select
  teachers, and determine what books to purchase
  for the school library, it surely can decide
  which books to discontinue or remove from the
  school library.

12
Frequently Challenged Books

• Obscenity was not at issue in Pico, but is often
  used to challenge books.
• The American Library Association (ALA) collects
  data and publishes lists of the most frequently
  challenged books. Between 1990 and 2000, there
  were 6,364 challenges reported to or recorded by
  the ALA
• 1,607 were challenges to sexually explicit
  material
• 1,427 to material considered to use offensive
  language
• 1,256 to material considered unsuited to age
  group
• 842 to material with an occult theme or
  promoting the occult or Satanism
• 737 to material considered to be violent
• 515 to material with a homosexual theme or
  promoting homosexuality,
• 419 to material promoting a religious
  viewpoint.
• Other reasons for challenges included nudity
  (317 challenges), racism (267 challenges), sex
  education (224 challenges, and anti-family
  (202 challenges).
• Seventy-one percent of the challenges were to
  material in schools or school libraries. Another
  twenty-four percent were to material in public
  libraries.
• Sixty percent of the challenges were brought by
  parents, fifteen percent by patrons, and nine
  percent by administrators.

13
Top Ten Challenged Authors (1990-2004)

• Alvin Schwartz
• Judy Blume
• Robert Cormier
• J.K. Rowling
• Michael Willhoite
• Katherine Paterson
• Stephen King
• Maya Angelou
• R.L. Stine
• John Steinbeck

14
Top Ten Most Challenged Books (2006)

• And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and
  Peter Parnell, for homosexuality, anti-family,
  and unsuited to age group
• Gossip Girls series by Cecily Von Ziegesar for
  homosexuality, sexual content, drugs, unsuited to
  age group, and offensive language
• Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor for
  sexual content and offensive language
• The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things
  by Carolyn Mackler for sexual content,
  anti-family, offensive language, and unsuited to
  age group
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison for sexual
  content, offensive language, and unsuited to age
  group
• Scary Stories series by Alvin Schwartz for
  occult/Satanism, unsuited to age group, violence,
  and insensitivity
• Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher for
  homosexuality and offensive language
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen
  Chbosky for homosexuality, sexually explicit,
  offensive language, and unsuited to age group
• Beloved by Toni Morrison for offensive
  language, sexual content, and unsuited to age
  group
• The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier for sexual
  content, offensive language, and violence.
• Off the list this year, but on for several years
  past, are the Catcher in the Rye by J.D.
  Salinger, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck and
  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark
  Twain.
• Note Data based on 546 challenges analyzed by
  ALA.

15
Conclusion

• The U.S. Supreme Courts inability to provide
  clear guidelines in this area, coupled with the
  general principle of state/local/community
  control of education, have resulted in continuing
  challenges to library books in public schools.
• Unless the Supreme Court decides to take another
  book-banning case, the issue will at best be
  decided regionally by the various U.S. Courts of
  Appeals.