By Ava Uhlack, April 16, 2024
Cal Poly Pomona professors have the ability to choose required texts for their students’ education. However, teachers in early education don’t quite have the luxury of a broad literary range. With book banning in K-12 education at an all-time high last year, there is concern as to whether this challenge of curriculum could reach the university level.
The current political climate has caused discourse in school districts as book titles are being taken out of libraries. A look at the most banned or challenged books in 2022 reveals most texts revolve around LGBTQIA+ content.
Titles like, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky and “Looking for Alaska” by John Green are included in the most recent report published, according to a report by the American Library Association. “Looking for Alaska” revolves around a young boy, Miles “Pudge” Halter, and his journey into boarding school as he meets Alaska Young.
While school districts reserve the right to control the curriculum, the pattern of certain topics removed from libraries may address the topic of censorship.
“I grew up in middle school and high school knowing that I was gay,” said Peter Olson, an associate professor within the College of Education and Integrative Studies. “If there were a lot of heterosexual romance novels that were there but only the gay ones were banned, I would’ve felt like, ‘I should hide who I am, clearly who I am is seen as wrong by the community.’”
The main concern is that younger age groups are exposed to sexually explicit concepts that are too mature for their age. School districts have a right to remove or add texts to curriculum based on what they think would be best for the learning process of the students, according to Olson. Their decisions are based on what will best benefit students in parallel with what is currently taught in the classroom like proper grammar usage and sentence structure. Allowing mature topics to be learned alongside this is not suitable for younger students, according to Olson
“I was an elementary school teacher, so we’re always talking about what text is developmentally appropriate,” Olson said. “I think sometimes the media improperly labels a particular action by a school district as banning when they are really saying, ‘OK, this book is not appropriate for middle school or elementary school.’”
The same sentiment revolves not only around sexuality but ethnicity as well. “The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie and “Out of Darkness” by Ashley Hope Perez are two other texts included on the list of books being challenged. “Out of Darkness” is a story about a love affair between a teenage Mexican-American girl and a teenage African-American boy set in the 1930s New London, Texas.
The concern lies with marginalizing authors of color and not allowing for their stories or voices to be heard, considering such has occurred in history before, according to CPP Communications Specialist Marcela Moreno.
Moreno’s concern is that history is bound to repeat itself, and in the current political climate, there is the chance that the freedom to access any book or literature could be taken away again.
“Our political climate has gone backwards,” said Moreno. “I’m Mexican. If we got rid of all the Mexican books, then you are losing out on a whole bunch of history. The same with Indigenous folk who wrote many amazing stories, and those stories have been lost as well.”
Along with losing history, students can also lose the chance to learn their own writing styles if they are only allowed one perspective.
“If students are limited to one style of story that’s being told in a certain style, they won’t know they have an option to write any other way,” said Moreno. “They have the capability to write whatever they like. However, they will be taught a certain way, which I feel that they’ll be losing their sense of expression.”
Liam Corley, a professor of English and Modern Languages, said students could see the barring of themes as discouraging since students find their voices through reading and writing.
“When they feel a demographic or group they identify with is being discriminated against by the official policy of the school or the school board, it becomes very personal,” Corley said.
While every school district is different and can alter its curriculum based on the community it serves, childhood education is the foundation for many people’s first iterations of their own identity By restricting the literacy range it could put a hinderance on the ability of students to take in all information and think or create perceptions for themselves, according to Moreno.
As of September 2023, there has been legislation passed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to ban book banning within California school districts, although any policy is subject to be overturned or challenged.
Feature image courtesy of Tom Hermans