Book Censorship News, February 16, 2024

We know that the teams and people behind ebook bans are angling for extra than simply books. The books are a straightforward goal since they require vital funding on behalf of faculties and libraries to maneuver via a evaluate course of. Books have all the time been low-hanging fruit for censors all through historical past as a result of they signify data, they signify concepts, and so they signify the world round us. We should understand that whereas ebook banning is one large problem unto itself, it’s however a department on the bigger tree to systematically topple publicly funded, democratic establishments like faculties and libraries.

But one factor that has not fairly been touched sufficient associated to the focusing on of those establishments is that this: far-right teams searching for ebook bans, eliminating trans lavatory rights, eliminating trans sports activities rights, canning variety fairness and inclusion initiatives, and ending social-emotional studying, amongst different issues, have been purposefully focusing on surveys designed to assist perceive who our present technology of younger folks actually are, together with their beliefs, their identities, and their desires, targets, and wishes for the long run earlier than them.

Thanks to PEW Research, we all know that as of 2021, one-quarter of at this time’s teenagers overtly establish someplace beneath the LGBTQ+ umbrella. PEW can also be liable for shedding perception into the racial variety of at this time’s younger folks. 52% of youngsters are white and non-Hispanic, in comparison with 61% of Millennials once they have been youngsters; 70% of Generation X once they have been youngsters; and 82% of Boomers once they have been youngsters. One-quarter of at this time’s teenagers are Hispanic, whereas 14% are Black, 6% are Asian, and 5% have two or extra racial identities. Roughly 6% of at this time’s teenagers are immigrants, and 22% are the youngsters of immigrants. That data is as of 2020. This type of information just isn’t solely helpful for understanding younger folks’s on a regular basis experiences within the classroom, however it’s important for making certain that at this time’s tradition displays and shares that variety. A Nineteen Nineties curriculum or library assortment doesn’t appropriately serve 2024 college students.

That is exactly why there was a serious push for the final a number of years by the identical folks banning books to choose their younger folks out of surveys distributed by academic establishments. These surveys are how teams like PEW and others study a big swath of individuals. The data gathered is nameless and meant to offer perception into our ever-changing demographics.

To be clear, these surveys are usually not solely helpful for PEW. They’re utilized by researchers throughout many establishments and organizations. But simply as folks angle to ban books they don’t need youngsters to have entry to, falsehoods and mischaracterizations about these surveys abound. There is this concept these surveys are usually not solely indoctrination however that they “target” youngsters and “steal” their data. Neither of those is true, after all, however reality has by no means been a priority right here.

Pictured above is the primary web page of certainly one of these surveys. This is the Illinois Youth Survey, distributed to eighth graders at collaborating faculties; you possibly can take a look at the whole survey right here. The survey was created by the Illinois Department of Health to assemble well being and social information, which helps in so many capacities. Not solely will we get a way of issues like altering demographics of at this time’s youth. We are also capable of see traits in well being — are youngsters smoking fewer cigarettes however utilizing vapes greater than the identical youngsters ten years in the past? Are extra youngsters dwelling in “non-traditional” households? This type of information helps the federal government work out what initiatives to fund in an effort to meet the wants of its folks.

Book banners push for opting out of those surveys below the idea that the federal government is attempting to groom or indoctrinate their youngsters due to well being and social conduct questions. Does asking a scholar how they establish make them abruptly change their gender? It doesn’t. If asking anybody a fundamental query have been sufficient to entice them to vary themselves, remedy could be loads cheaper, faster, and accessible to all — it may come within the type of a questionnaire.

As dad and mom push to finish survey use, they skew the information. Skewing the information erases actuality — and it’s notably perplexing as a result of it looks as if the opt-out contingent could be proud to have their college students’ voices heard if their “strong Christian family values” have been carried ahead with their youngsters. But maybe that’s simply it. The worry that their college students might establish or report dwelling via experiences that aren’t those being pushed by their dad and mom is why they need their youngsters to choose out. They’d quite silence their very own youngsters’s voices than have those self same youngsters have a voice in any respect.

Moreover, this opt-out push obfuscates what might be recognized, studied, and defined about younger folks. If sufficient dad and mom choose their youngsters out of the surveys, then those self same dad and mom do two issues. First, they will level to information and say it isn’t consultant as a result of it solely reveals the data from the dad and mom who didn’t shield their rights and choose their baby out (i.e., “you keep saying 25% of today’s teenagers are LGBTQ+ but you’re only asking the kids who would say that”). Then, they will say that the information used to assist information curriculum and assortment choices is indoctrination as a result of it doesn’t take their particular beliefs into consideration. They personal the cycle.

Those are, after all, the identical individuals who parrot the lies that at this time’s youngsters can’t learn at grade stage and level to standardized take a look at scores — information acquired precisely the identical method.

Book banners don’t wish to know the truths their youngsters dwell as a result of it strips them, the dad and mom, of their energy. So, to carry onto that energy, they help in erasing the truths of a complete technology out of worry that their very own child would possibly fill in a bubble that mother or dad believes must be eradicated altogether.

It’s laborious to know the reality when, at each flip, they’re working laborious to make the reality unimaginable to search out.