Book Banning in Hanover County Public Schools Has Begun

The school board passed the measure 5-2

The hot ticket on June 13th was the Hanover County School Board meeting. 

I arrived at 5:30 to ensure that I would have a place to sit, and as I strategically parked my car on the street rather than the parking lot of the building, I noticed a man getting a giant sign out of a car near mine. 

I waited a few minutes in my car before trying to find my people waiting outside to get in. But as I walked around the corner to the front of the building, I was greeted with an onslaught of profanity. 

There was the man in the car with his sign. He’s the same one who was harassing high school students all over our region. His sign says “F*ck Biden” on one side, and “Infowars” on the other. He had a buddy also holding a sign which said “Stop Grooming our Children.” He must have also been responsible for the giant waving inflatable that also proclaimed “F*ck Biden.” 

Yet our librarians are apparently the ones corrupting and grooming children. 

Yes, my county’s school board heard comments about and voted on a new process for reviewing books in our public schools. In simple language, it’s a policy to make banning books easier. 

I was number 32 of 46 on the list of public speakers last night. The chair of the board allowed all of us to speak, and it was a packed house. 

This was my statement: 

I am a constituent in Hanover County.

My highest level of education is a Master’s Degree. 

I have two children who are products of Hanover County Public Schools.

I am a product of a public school system in Virginia and of a Southern Baptist upbringing. 

I strongly oppose the new policy on reviewing books for circulation in our school libraries. 

You say that this is not a policy to ban books because children could still access books in public libraries or purchase them. However, the same “parental rights” groups who are pushing this policy are also trying these tactics sitting in on our Pamunkey LIbrary board meetings. Not every family has the means to purchase books. This policy will disproportionally affect marginalized students. 

I have the right as a parent for my child to have unlimited, age appropriate access to quality literature in school. Our children explore the world beyond their safe familiar bubbles in the best way through books. They learn other points of view, develop empathy, and satisfy curiosity. 

If apathy is the enemy of democracy, and empathy is the enemy of fascism, then ignorance is the enemy of civilization. 

I can no longer sit back and watch this unfold. I’m here to voice my opinion, and yes, my opinion matters. There are more people who think like me in this county than you realize. 

I know that reading books helps people develop empathy, like the feelings toward people who are Jewish that I developed when I read books like The Diary of Anne Frank and Night by Elie Wiesel about the Holocaust. Or the concern I felt about racism by reading To Kill a Mockingbird, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, or The Bluest Eye. Reading the last two books also helped me realize that the abuse I endured as a child was not my fault.

An ignorant society is not valuable to civilization. It’s merely more controllable by those in power. Humans are curious by nature, and squelching the opportunity to quench this thirst is soul crushing. One only needs to read books like 1984 by George Orwell and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury to understand this type of misery. 

But our democracy is sliding into a theocracy. Soon our world might look that the one that Margaret Atwood describes in the Handmaid’s Tale. And that is not the world I want to live in. 

Edited education is a handicap.

And it all begins with banning books. 

Of the 46 speakers, I would guess about ⅔ spoke against passing this policy. Many who spoke for the policy are elderly and no longer have children in public schools. And of the younger people who spoke for it, two couldn’t even pronounce library correctly. They pronounced it “LIBARY.” 

But guess what? The board voted to pass it anyway, giving our appointed school board, none of whom are currently educators or librarians, full power to ban whatever books they want. Under this policy, books should go to a library committee for review, but the school board has the ultimate authority. 

And then they proceeded to ban 17 books, one of which I spoke about that night: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. They also decided not to follow their policy to have these reviewed by their library committee, for this would be like the Supreme Court tossing a decision back to the lower courts, and why do that when the Supreme Court exists. 

All 17 books are on a list of about 120 titles that the conservative group Moms for Liberty has decided are too vulgar for public schools. This is the list the school board is working from. 

I’m so grateful my last kid in the system graduates Saturday. The very program she went through, the dual enrollment program in cooperation with one of our local community colleges, is in jeopardy now, as well as any AP or IB curriculum. 

Teachers will now have to go through a painstaking process to catalog every book in their classrooms so that it can be approved by their administrators. As if they don’t do enough free work. 

Hanover will lose teachers. This is a giant step backward for our educational system. 

___________

Lead photo is of books in my library. Photo by author.

Are ridiculous book-banning policies being passed where you live? I’d love to hear about it. 

As always, I hope you all are safe and healthy.