Times Editorial : Back to the books
Posted on Tuesday, September 13, 2005
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/nwat/Editorial/32192/
Today’s the day.
After months of debate, at times acrimonious, today marks the Fayetteville School Board’s official recognition that the discussion over library books needs its own venue and time to be thoroughly considered. Laurie Taylor, whose children were formerly students of the local school system, sparked the talks on library books — how to define what is appropriate for the open-to-any-student shelves of our public school libraries — early this year by filing complaints about a trio of books she found entirely inappropriate. That initial filing resulted in three detailed, illustrated sex-related books being removed to the socalled parent collections and establishing heightened criteria for their use either by parents or by students. With a narrow victory in hand, Taylor was emboldened to further review the library collection held by our public school system, and she didn’t like what she found. Soon, she developed a list of dozens of books she wanted removed from the open collection. Although many have used the word "banned," Taylor has been careful to say she doesn’t mind — at least formally — if other parents want to let their kids see such books, but she wants a school district that allows each student’s parents to determine whether the controversial books end up in their child’s hands.
Where are we today? The debate has swelled well beyond Laurie Taylor. It’s clear that her concerns are also those of a decent contingent of the public. Nearly 70 people showed up at one recent meeting Taylor and like-minded people held, most in support of the cause. Likewise, the ranks of those who view the campaign as nothing short of censorship have also steadily grown with patrons urging the district to trust the librarians and to leave the decisions about who reads what to the parents, not to some schoolestablished system.
Today, we know that one parent who looked into the matter found some truly disturbing books on the shelves of our local public school libraries. Such books would not raise the same clamor in the letthe-parent-beware atmosphere of a municipal or university library. But these were placed within public school libraries because librarians have deemed them appropriate to their targeted (and essentially captive) audience.
We know that the librarians and a districtappointed review committee urged no change in the availability for the first three challenged books. We believe most residents who viewed the materials would find that determination to be flawed.
School district policies must ensure that those librarians’ decisions overall reflect a sense of the community they serve. We believe the librarians of the Fayetteville School District are collectively a committed group dedicated to serving the best interests of the children, but it’s also possible that any human endeavor can sometime result in poor decisions.
As a result, it falls to the school board to determine the best method to reconcile two occasionally conflicting goals: to ensure public school libraries have the resources to answer all kinds of student questions with trustworthy information and to be more sensitive to concept that the libraries must evaluate its content carefully, with some discernment of a community standard.
Yes, the libraries need materials that can deliver important information about sexual activity, both its pleasures and its perils. Not every child is blessed with involved parents, and sometimes a book in a library can be the best resource for a student who lacks a knowledgeable family resource to which he or she can turn. But particularly those kinds of sensitive subjects require an intense, careful determination about what is appropriate within each set of grade levels.
Where does that leave us? Happy that we’re not members of the school board. This is the type of scenario in which the right answer falls somewhere between the perspectives of the two most vocal interest groups involved. So that means the final decision will leave nobody entirely happy.
Perhaps if everyone welcomes this as an opportunity for a real, in-depth conversation about an issue we all view as important to our children’s future, the meeting at 6:30 p.m. today in the high school auditorium will lead us to a better understanding of our community and our collective expectations for our education system.
That’s a good thing. Really.