Authoritarians often try to present themselves as reasonable, common-sense types who just want to be left alone by all the woke leftists. Google News referred me this morning to an excellent example of the pattern, a letter to the editor of the Sarasota Herald Tribune. It's semi-paywalled, and the site nagged me to shut of my adblocker, so if you click through be prepared to deal with that.
The writer was indignant that the Herald-Tribune had run an op-ed opposing "book bans." The headline, he declared, "shows your paper's dislike of the USA." There are no book bans in Florida according to him, only restrictions on materials in middle-school libraries. This is a distinction without a difference, aside from being dishonest: as far as I can tell, the activists involved don't merely want to "restrict" access to materials, they want to remove those materials from the shelves.
"Young people should be shielded from harmful material, be it in books, films, audio or on the internet." Here we have the faux-reasonable stance. Who decides what is harmful? The most reactionary, authoritarian elements of a community, of course.
"Parents are the people responsible for their children, not the state or activist college students." If the state shouldn't be involved, then why is the state of Florida intervening to decide what materials children should not be allowed to see? The reference to "activist college students" is a nice evasion. Activist adults want to decide not only what their children will see, but other parents' children as well.
And not only children, but other adults: "If the parents want their children to read something, they can easily purchase it on Amazon or at another location (i.e., a flea market)." Here the underlying agenda peeks out: this writer's illogic, followed to its conclusion, would eliminate public libraries altogether. If I want to read something, I can easily publish it on Amazon or at another location (i.e., a flea market)", right? One of the reasons public libraries came into existence was because people couldn't afford to buy everything they wanted to read. It's why public libraries and other public services are so popular with most people, even when they're a bit uneasy about some of the content they provide; it's also why authoritarian scum hate public resources - those who can't afford to pay should just go without. Censors of literature have always been happy to shield adults from "harmful" material, though as far as I know there's never been any good evidence on what is harmful, or how, or why.
"Columns like this one by Emily Bowlin do not add to the educational process; they merely mislead individuals. I did not read 'Slaughterhouse Five' in middle school – I read it much later – and I seem to have turned out mostly OK." The writer is the one who wants to mislead, by confusing material available in school libraries with material assigned in class. Is Slaughterhouse-Five really being assigned in middle schools? I admit I've been surprised as I've followed the controversy, to see what apparently is being assigned at that level.
Maus, for example, Art Spiegelmann's graphic memoir about his parents' experience in Auschwitz, was attacked for showing in drawings the nakedness of mouse-headed human beings in a concentration camp. Supposedly it was assigned reading for middle-schoolers in some districts, and that brought even me up short - not because of the nudity, but because of the overall disturbing subject matter. I wouldn't forbid a middle-schooler who wanted to read Maus, but it's not a children's book any more than Slaughterhouse-Five. Not because it's "harmful," but because it is upsetting; I'd encourage such a kid to talk to me about his or her reaction.
I wondered if Maus was being assigned because of an assumption that it's a "comic book" and therefore kid stuff. I wouldn't be surprised, though that very question was discussed amply when it first appeared in the 1980s. I'd like to think that teachers and librarians would know better, but I'd never assume that. The bigots and frothers who are at the forefront of book restrictions do not know better, though: they simply want to control what others see. Significantly, they never seem to recognize that in reviewing these materials, they themselves have been harmed. It's only weaker vessels they pretend to worry about, and let me stress again that they want to keep other adults from having access to these and other materials.
I was lucky. At my request, my parents gave permission for me to
explore the grown-up section of the public library when I was in second
grade. I wanted to read an encyclopedia, as I recall (this was more
than sixty years ago), and I didn't venture beyond that for a long
time. I didn't read Slaughterhouse-Five in middle school because it hadn't been published yet, but I did read Nineteen Eighty-four in sixth grade. That was on my own initiative; I'd already read Orwell's Animal Farm.
I didn't understand the sexual parts, but I did understand the parts
about controlling one's own memory, about the misuse of language, and
about resisting political authority - which is more than can be said of many adults.
The role of parents is, I admit, difficult to define. By custom and law they're given a great deal of power over what their children can read or watch or do. This isn't always good for the children. Even today there are parents in the US who don't think girls need schooling past the sixth grade, and not all of them are Amish. Many parents try to exert authority over their kids even long after they're adults. The older children grow, the less of a veto their parents should have over their lives. Material about sex/gender and sexuality must be available once they reach puberty, because their parents can't be relied on to give them accurate information, and it is definitely harmful when a middle-school kid gets pregnant or catches a disease because they don't know how to protect themselves. Right-wing religious parents are no help at all. They'd rather children - their own, or other people's children - die rather than get the information they need. An informed child is a threat to adult authority; that's why right-wing Christians have opposed laws against child abuse, it's not because they want to protect children - very much the opposite.