States Rush to Protect Children from Books - but not from Guns!

 

by Pa Rock

Retired Teacher

PEN America was founded one hundred years ago to promote literature and human rights.  The acronym (PEN) originally represented Poets, Essayists, and Novelists, but over the years it has been expanded to include Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, and Novelists - a comprehensive literary assemblage that earns its keep by promoting ideas and changes in the human condition through the written word.   Needless to say, PEN America has a keen interest in what we are reading -  and in what reading matter is being kept off of public bookshelves.

Late last April, about a month before the end of school and the horrible mass shooting of fourth graders in Uvalde, Texas, PEN America released a report detailing the state of book-banning in US public schools.  That report found that 1,586 books had been banned in 86 school districts across the country.  One of the findings of the organization's report was that the same types of books are being banned by all of those districts, books dealing with race, gender, sex, and LGBTQ identities.  A spokesman for PEN America noted with a certain degree of alarm that all of those topics have only recently begun to be included on the shelves of America's school libraries, and now they are being "erased."

The report noted that Texas had more school book bans than any other state, with a total of 713 books being removed from the libraries of various school districts across the state.  (Pennsylvania was second with 456 book bans in schools, and Florida third with 204.)   Texans ban books at an alarming rate, and they do it to "protect" their children from ideas that some parents and state officials regard as dangerous because they present lifestyles and histories that vary from the way that they were taught to perceive the world. 

Sadly though, the state that is the quickest to pull books from school libraries is also one of the most reluctant to do anything that would slow the flow of guns into society.

Parents from Uvalde are planning a massive protest in Austin on August 27th with a simple goal.  They want the age to purchase an assault weapon in Texas to be raised from eighteen to twenty-one.   That's a commonsense measure that should not be controversial.  But it's Texas, and in Texas you don't mess with anyone's gun "rights," and the Uvalde parents are certain to meet with stiff opposition to their very modest proposal.

Perhaps the Uvalde parents would create a bigger fuss if they showed up to protest in Austin and began handing out banned books.  As many Texans already seem to know, books are dangerous!