Back in 2011, the Republic School District (the school district in which I live) removed some books from its library and triggered a national media firestorm that eventually led to the school district to reverse the removal.
The school district in Buffalo, Missouri, is not making that mistake:
A committee has elected not to remove a coming-of-age novel from the library at the middle school in Buffalo after the principal filed a formal complaint against the book.
The book in question apparently has a sex scene in it. You know, when I was in middle school, I was reading adult novels with sex scenes in them, but I had to go to the local library to get them. I don’t think M. Gene Henderson Middle School or North Jefferson Middle School stocked those kinds of books. Of course, in those days, adults did not write books for children and put sex scenes in them. Does this serve to depict reality or to normalize, that is, to create reality? I dunno. That’s a question for another time.
What this illustrates, though, is that national grievance concerns are impacting local-level and community-level governance as they seek to avoid controversy in determining standards and offerings that reflect their community, not the community of the loudest and best-funded nationwide.
Power to the people. Unless the people use that power against the interests of their betters elsewhere.
Yes. Power to the people, so as long as the people do as they’re told.
You, sir, as a librarian, should know better than the citizens of a community far from you. Or at least the organizational collective units of your profession would have us believe.
The ALA would very much like to create the impression that it represents the whole profession. A couple of years ago, I got into a long listserv argument with some librarians who wanted to teach local political officials that their professional duties were defined by the ALA. I told them my professional duties were defined by the people who sign my paychecks.