I remember Tipper Gore being a founding member of the PMRC to regulate and ban certain music and lyrics. Was she involved in the banning of Go Ask Alice and other controversial young adult novels from high school libraries? If not her, who?
I misspoke, btw, excellent answers, I seemed to remember a coalition of some sort, with a banned book list, that was sent to public high shools as a suggestion on what books to remove from the shelves. However, after much searching, I must have been mistaken on that too.
in most libraries this is up to the Library Board. Tipper Gore and others did not ban lyrics or music but promoted regulation of hate or derogatory lyrics for those underage.
The banning of books like Go Ask Alice is usually up to the local book review committee in the Community, or sometimes the librarian who is in charge. Due to parental complaints or groups with a specific agenda many books are banned on high school shelves in one part of the Country and assigned as reading in another. So check with your local high school librarian and book review board that is probably where the problem lies. One of our the Governor’s of our state a few years back wanted Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street banned in high schools because it talked about infidelity. Such bans were a joke in other states. The Community here tried to ban Portnoy’s Complaint as total pornography even from adult the adult library collection.
So check out who is making the decisions in your state and protest.
There are some books that perhaps should not be on the open shelves but these are very few and certainly Go Ask Alice, is not in that class at all. It is for teenagers and a very serious and authentic book.
Usually books are taken out of school libraries because of complaints from parents or the school board. In my experience, the local school board is the final decider on removing books from a school library.
In public libraries, it is much more difficult to get books removed because the library board usually takes a more broad perspective on keeping ALL books in the library. Schools, however, usually have a different client base to answer to.
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in most libraries this is up to the Library Board. Tipper Gore and others did not ban lyrics or music but promoted regulation of hate or derogatory lyrics for those underage.
The banning of books like Go Ask Alice is usually up to the local book review committee in the Community, or sometimes the librarian who is in charge. Due to parental complaints or groups with a specific agenda many books are banned on high school shelves in one part of the Country and assigned as reading in another. So check with your local high school librarian and book review board that is probably where the problem lies. One of our the Governor’s of our state a few years back wanted Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street banned in high schools because it talked about infidelity. Such bans were a joke in other states. The Community here tried to ban Portnoy’s Complaint as total pornography even from adult the adult library collection.
So check out who is making the decisions in your state and protest.
There are some books that perhaps should not be on the open shelves but these are very few and certainly Go Ask Alice, is not in that class at all. It is for teenagers and a very serious and authentic book.
References :
Each school has their own committee. The American Library Association helps libraries fight banned books.
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This must be different for publicly funded schools and private ones, be they charter schools or church-based ones….those would be a "law unto themselves".
Schools have a responsibility towards their students. This is often expressed as "shielding innocents"…but what they are being shielded from is less to do with what they can come across in the rest of their lives, more to do with the religious/moral standards of those doing the shielding.
School boards, or parents’ committees, serve to moderate this by providing the community whose "community standards" are used to judge what is suitable or not for the community’s youth. I believe this is more correct than having national bans, especially in a large country where there are many small communities whose views encompass considerable variation. By allowing each school, or district, to make its own decisions on these matters, it is the LOCAL community standards being enforced. (It is another matter again when it turns out, as if sometimes does, that most of those wanting to ban a book have not actually read it).
Not every piece of literature is suitable for all ages. But in high schools we have "children" old enough to drive and have sex and marry, and in many countries old enough to drink alcohol. And all have seen TV from birth and get daily access to the internet.
So the book-banners are attributing enormous power to the written word in selecting that medium as the one to keep their "innocents" away from. This is unfortunate, as a book is the one format which gives time and space for a full consideration of an issue, whether in factual or fiction form.
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