March 17, Jill DeTemple, professor of religious studies at SMU Dallas, for a piece advocating that community members gather and discuss shared values in a civil setting rather than create book banning lists. Published in the Dallas Morning News under the heading: What we keep getting wrong in conversations about banned books: Bit.ly/3CRTRxK
Judging by the headlines, it might be easy to believe that every school board in the United States is getting ready to purge their libraries of materials that some find offensive.
In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has directed schools to remove all books with “pornographic content.” Texas House Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, has demanded school libraries account for their holdings related to race, gender and sexuality, prompting some teachers to remove titles from classroom shelves. In Tennessee, Maus was eliminated from a junior high school reading list, resulting in the book moving to a top seller position on Amazon, and in Washington State, the Mukilteo School Board found itself defending a decision to make To Kill a Mockingbird optional due to the complexities it presents around racist language and a white hero saving a black protagonist.
We’re in a stuck conversation. Here’s how we get out.
By Jill DeTemple
Judging by the headlines, it might be easy to believe that every school board in the United States is getting ready to purge their libraries of materials that some find offensive.
In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has directed schools to remove all books with “pornographic content.” Texas House Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, has demanded school libraries account for their holdings related to race, gender and sexuality, prompting some teachers to remove titles from classroom shelves. In Tennessee, Maus was eliminated from a junior high school reading list, resulting in the book moving to a top seller position on Amazon, and in Washington State, the Mukilteo School Board found itself defending a decision to make To Kill a Mockingbird optional due to the complexities it presents around racist language and a white hero saving a black protagonist.
Reaction to these events has been largely predictable. Progressives decry what they see as censorship designed to muzzle minority voices. Conservatives champion parents’ rights when it comes to what they think their children are exposed to in public schools. This is an old, stuck conversation we’ve been having in this country since at least the 1850s with the publication of The Scarlet Letter and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It is performed as a kind of grievance olympics, where the assumption is that the group that can claim the greatest harm wins. But it’s the wrong conversation, especially as it leaves teachers out in the cold or simply left to defend every move they make.
No wonder these difficult conversations, coming during the challenges of the pandemic, have resulted in more than 50% of our teachers thinking about quitting the profession. They are being set up to fail.
In talking about lists of books, we’re avoiding the real issue: what we value, individually and as a community, about education.
Civic conversations about common values may seem like a pipe dream in this deeply polarized moment. But as someone who has spent more than two decades teaching about religion to college students, and as a researcher and practitioner of dialogue in classrooms and broader community groups, I have seen the possibility and power of conversations that move from stuck talking points that reinforce entrenched positions to curious exchanges that invite deep reflection and curiosity about others’ experiences.
Yes, it can, but not if we keep focusing on those book lists, which are by definition a limited yes-or-no, in-or-out conversation that excludes complexity from the very beginning.
At the level of school boards and governing bodies, we would be better served starting not with policy discussions — leaping immediately to questions about single texts or genres — but by backing up a bit, asking curious, reflective questions that invite multifaceted replies.
How have educational experiences shaped the people in the room? What are their deepest wishes for education in their communities? What values are important to them and where do they feel conflicted?
Where the stuck conversations about specific texts focus on disagreements, these questions may reveal shared concerns and values that allow more nuanced considerations that better serve community needs.
We also need to support teachers by giving them tools to hold age and content appropriate conversations in their classrooms using the same basic principles: structured conversations that make space for everyone to speak and listen; questions that invoke personal experience, values, and complexity; and an emphasis on listening to understand and speaking to be understood.
Until we do this, until we engage in genuine and curious conversations that get at what really matters to people, and until we equip our teachers to do the same, we’re just fighting over paper, no closer at all to the optimal society those papers claim to support.
Jill DeTemple is professor of religious studies at SMU Dallas and an academic associate at Essential Partners. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.