How do you feel about banning books from children and teens to read in schools?
“Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight” (Steven Chbosky)
John’s latest business trip to Chicago seemed again to have caused him to feel restlessly bored. With several deadlines to meet today, he’d thus decided to “kill some afternoon time” at a sports bar patio deck near O’ Hare. For he anticipated a phone call from a manager soon directing him to drive downtown to his local office.. How oddly it seemed now to him how close by his outside table lie to such a busy road strewn with dangerous delivery zones across from him. What sense did it make he further reasoned to potentially impede here the right lane flow of traffic? However, he did find some relief from these concerns then as he turned his attention to the late Harry Carey bellowing out “Take Me Out to The Ballgame” at the Cubs game broadcast on the nearby TV.
Suddenly John lurched his head violently toward the left in sync with a screeching whine of rubber and anticipated metal on metal collision of vehicles near the restaurant that quickly followed. Without hesitation , John then instinctively lurched up from his seat to the safety of the cafe lobby as a fusillade of glass, rubber, and steel fragments from the wreck showered the area he had been sitting. A crowd of onlookers soon quickly gathered on the far side of the road as the two male drivers, one white and one black. angrily flung themselves outside of their heavily damaged vehicles. A potential riot now seemed likely as rocks and bottles were quickly thrown around the accident scene by some passing teenagers as the two drivers sparred off in angry verbal confrontation. Why weren’t the police around to take decisive action in such an emergency, John wondered as he could have been killed?
John now thought about calling his wife at home in Peoria as well as his regional boss in Cook County. For he sensed a need to reassure them of the facts about how he’d come so close to being involved in such a horrible accident but through quick action had escaped from physical harm. But then he hesitated and ultimately said no in reasoning that it did not seem worthwhile to upset both of them so dramatically with the gruesome details of this tragedy.
But in this crisis situation, didn’t these others have the right to know? So giving attention to a similar vein of thought concerning John’s puzzling decision above to withhold the historic truths to his wife and work colleague about witnessing his accident, one must similarly wonder why so many books that chronicle relevant facts about matters of race, gender, and cultural diversity have been banned by school districts across America today. Notably, my home state of Florida under Governor Ron De Santis oversaw the attempted removal of 874 book titles with 566 books successfully banned at the primary- secondary levels in 2022 alone. Such government “overrreach” tactics seem to me eerily reminiscent of the Nazi Book Burning Campaign of Nazi Germany in the 1930s to wipe out the historic records of the Jewish population living throughout pre World War II Europe at that time. Click on the link below and then scroll through an updated list of books banned in Florida recently.
So as the new school year in my Broward County region begins next week, I’d like you to consider the potential negative impact of several new pressures that these teachers in South Florida will face as a result of these book banning state decisions. For what happens to an instructor when a student chooses to read and subsequently talk about a banned book in class? Or how can school librarians maintain an acceptable repository of information control about those students who are curious to locate information found about those banned books and related topics? To what extent as well will banning books escalate racial and gender issue violence among students who reject such dictatorial like decisions? Very simply, delivering sound education and playing partisan politics does not mix well when it comes to one’s freedom to read.
Take a look at several book titles below that have either have been banned in Florida public schools or are under heavy consideration to do so.
Snippets of a Traveling Mind 
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