Choose librarians! Read banned books!

In a rare bit of good timing, I put down my thoughts about a recent hubbub about half-empty bookshelves in some Ontario public schools just in time for Banned Books Week (which is upon us!) in The Hub—take a look! 

The story I’m reacting to, of Peel region schools that tossed books older than 15 years, was covered even in American outlets. That’s annoying because while locally important, there wasn’t any there there when it came to the story’s broader newsworthiness. (Unless you count its ability to make people shout things they already thought about schools, left-wing politics, the education system, and censoriousness generally.)

Obviously, what ends up in public school libraries is an appropriate topic for public discussion. The public education system is democratically accountable to voters and parents, and we care about how kids are educated. I’m skeptical that we would (and I’m not so sure we should) avoid this conversation even without public schools.

But there is a temptation to control public libraries tightly enough that we’d never be surprised by what’s in them. The two ways to do this are to so thoroughly bureaucratize the process as to leave little discretion, or to take direct control of what books must be on (or must come off) the shelves. I argue that those two things are not really that different, though the latter—a straightforward ban*—feels more ominous.

The fact that this is such a hot potato is *puts on libertarian hat* what worries me about government funding for libraries. I think libraries and access to books and information are important. I worry about powerful institutions, which rarely protect vulnerable people, being stewards of these things. *Hat off.* But I like public libraries. They provide a valuable third space in a world that’s short on them. That’s why they’re such a great access point for offering other services.

At any rate, I find the tension between opposition to bans and overreaching bureaucrats on one hand and the desire to control what’s on library shelves interesting. I hope you’ll check out my whole argument for deferring to librarians.

What am I reading?

I feel as though I ought to read at least one of the 13 most challenged books of 2022, or maybe a challenged publication from Canada (though there are fewer/less frequent, and Freedom to Read has less pizzazz than Banned Books Week) but I haven’t chosen one yet.

I found Justin Ling’s primer on that OG Nazi that ended up in Parliament interesting and useful.

I am still reading Democracy for Busy People. It would go faster if it were less interesting. (Or if there was an audiobook that I could combine with the visual text—my preferred method of book consumption.)

I’ve just finished Helena Rosenblatt’s The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century (and watched an RCGS lecture by the author) and enjoyed it. I have questions. In a good way.

Speaking of Ancient Rome, just in case you’ve been thinking of it anyway, try Jason Kuznicki’s American Times, Roman Morals and The Domus Mindset.

I’ve recently finished and would recommend Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism and Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America. Both were correctives for the frustrating presentation of white nationalism as a bunch of lost and confused young men we just have to put back on the straight and narrow.

*As the Kurt Vonnegut Museum points out, they never call it a ban.