ttyl Pulled From Round Rock Middle School Libraries. Is It Censorship?

Recently a familiar scene played out in Round Rock. Parents learned that middle school libraries included a book called ttyl which included adult situations and bad language. The parents complained and put together a petition of 150 other parents who didn't want the book in the library. Panels were convened, appeals were taken and finally the superintendent of schools made the decision to pull the books from the middle school libraries and move them to the high school libraries. What is the reaction to all of this? Predictably, there are cries of censorship. This raises a question that I have been wanting to blog about: What is censorship?

A Little Background

First, a little background. ttyl is a book by Lauren Myracle about three fifteen year old friends who get into some age inappropriate situations. One girl strips at a frat party and finds herself on the internet. Another girl is seduced by a teacher and has to be rescued by her friends. One of the girls has a potty mouth. According to the author and her supporters, the book is a cautionary tale about the choices girls make. According to the book's detractors, it is pornographic smut which encourages bad behavior. I haven't read the book yet. However, I will note that a Christian counselor recently recommended that I read the book, because in his words, that's how kids really talk.

Censorship They Say

Back to the big question: Is this censorship? Lauren Myracle thinks it is. (On a completely unrelated note, I want to give Ms. Myracle props for a great pun. Her blog article is titled "Jesus Bans Myracle." The Round Rock superintendent's name is Dr. Jesus Chavez. I am likely to read the book on the strength of the pun alone). On her blog, she writes:

But it IS banning a book to say, "This book is now banned from all middle schools. It is not allowed to be on the shelves, it is not available for students to check out." It IS censorship to say, "Look around. See all the lovely books the library has chosen for its population? Now, draw a big black line through all the pink books with smilies on them, because we don't like them and we want them to no longer exist in this glorious collection."

* * *

If I were in Nazi Germany, and my uncle, say, wrote me a letter expressing his ideas about what Hitler was doing, and the Minister of Propaganda intercepted that letter and drew black lines through certain words before giving it to me, that equals censorship, right? Someone else is deciding what's appropriate for me to read and what's not.

Mrs. Jennings wanted ttyl blacked out in all the middle school libraries in her district. That IS censorship.

And she got what she wanted.

She also says:

Censorship, on the other hand, is an individual seeking to suppress materials from a position of intolerance, imposing his or her values on the group. Censorship, in this case, ensures that students can only read what Superintendent Chavez and the Jennings deems acceptable.

But why should the Jennings’ opinion be given greater weight than that of the librarians, teachers, and other parents who reviewed the book and found it appropriate? What are her qualifications? What was her process?

Finally, she concludes that the First Amendment rights of Round Rock Middle Schoolers were violated.

The American Library Association would agree with Ms. Myracle. Its Intellectual Freedom Manual states:

“Intellectual freedom can exist only where two essential conditions are met: first, that all individuals have the right to hold any belief on any subject and to convey their ideas in any form they deem appropriate; and second, that society makes an equal commitment to the right of unrestricted access to information and ideas regardless of the communication medium used, the content of the work, and the viewpoints of both the author and receiver of information. Freedom to express oneself through a chosen mode of communication, including the Internet, becomes virtually meaningless if access to that information is not protected. Intellectual freedom implies a circle, and that circle is broken if either freedom of expression or access to ideas is stifled.”

But Is It Censorship?

I have included the lengthy quotes because I wanted to let the author and the ALA speak for themselves. I hope that I have accurately reflected their viewpoints because I am going to take them to task. In my mind, there is a huge distinction between censorship and failure of the government to make a work available to the public in a given forum.

I would define censorship as banning or prohibiting an item. For example, if the Williamson County District Attorney prosecuted Barnes & Noble for selling ttyl, that would constitute censorship. For another example, if the Round Rock schools prohibited students from bringing ttyl onto campus, that would strike me as censorship as well. In Ms. Myracle's example from her blog, if the government intercepted a letter and blacked out portions of it, that would clearly constitute censorship.

However, for the Round Rock School District to say that we will provide ttyl in the high school library rather than the middle school library because it is more age appropriate for high school students doesn't look like censorship. The action of Dr. Chavez does not prohibit any middle school student from reading the book. Any student who wants to read the book may buy it on Amazon.com, check it out from the public library or read it when they enter high school. Indeed, the fact that the book has been "banned" may do a lot to stimulate interest in it.

What concerns me here about the claims of censorship and book banning is the subtext which says that decisions about what books should be included in public school libraries should be left to the professionals, namely librarians and teachers. When parents object to inclusion of a specific book that they have concerns about or when school boards and superintendents accede to their wishes, there is a sense that something sacred has been violated. Literary professionals frequently argue that parents should be allowed to decide what their children read, but not what is made available to other children. However, this doesn't seem to give any weight to the notion that parents have a legitimate concern about the overall school environment. It also doesn't give much credit to the fact that public schools are paid for by the public, including the parents who are complaining. Finally, it doesn't give much credit to the notion that the First Amendment is a two way street. The First Amendment gives citizens, including parents, the right to petition the government for the redress of grievances. That is what happened in this case.

The Legal Issue

One of the arguments that I intended to make was that there is no constitutional right to object to a book being removed from a public school library. However, it turns out that there is, although it probably wouldn't apply in this case. In Board of Education v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982), the Supreme Court held that a case where a student sued for violation of his civil rights based upon books being removed from a school library should be allowed to go to trial. That case has some similarities to the present one. A group of school board members sought to remove books from the school library that they thought were anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-semitic and "just plain filthy." They appointed a committee to review the books and then rejected the committee's recommendation that most of the books be retained. A parent, acting on behalf of a student, sued the school board for violation of the student's First Amendment rights. The District Court tossed the suit out without a trial, finding that the school board had acted properly in applying community values. The Supreme Court sent the case back for trial, finding that the School Board's reason for removing the books was an issue which should be developed at trial.

The Supreme Court agreed with the school board that it should be allowed to act based upon community standards, stating, "We are therefore in full agreement with petitioners that local school boards must be permitted 'to establish and apply their curriculum in such a way as to transmit community values,' and that 'there is a legitimate and substantial community interest in promoting respect for authority and traditional values be they social, moral, or political.'" However, that authority did not extend to the wholesale suppression of ideas.

The Supreme Court summed up the issue as follows:

With respect to the present case, the message of these precedents is clear. Petitioners rightly possess significant discretion to determine the content of their school libraries. But that discretion may not be exercised in a narrowly partisan or political manner. If a Democratic school board, motivated by party affiliation, ordered the removal of all books written by or in favor of Republicans, few would doubt that the order violated the constitutional rights of the students denied access to those books. The same conclusion would surely apply if an all-white school board, motivated by racial animus, decided to remove all books authored by blacks or advocating racial equality and integration. Our Constitution does not permit the official suppression of ideas. Thus whether petitioners' removal of books from their school libraries denied respondents their First Amendment rights depends upon the motivation behind petitioners' actions. If petitioners intended by their removal decision to deny respondents access to ideas with which petitioners disagreed, and if this intent was the decisive factor in petitioners' decision, 22 then petitioners have exercised their discretion in violation of the Constitution. To permit such intentions to control official actions would be to encourage the precise sort of officially prescribed orthodoxy unequivocally condemned in Barnette. On the other hand, respondents implicitly concede that an unconstitutional motivation would not be demonstrated if it were shown that petitioners had decided to remove the books at issue because those books were pervasively vulgar. Tr. of Oral Arg. 36. And again, respondents concede that if it were demonstrated that the removal decision was based solely upon the "educational suitability" of the books in question, then their removal would be "perfectly permissible." Id., at 53. In other words, in respondents' view such motivations, if decisive of petitioners' actions, would not carry the danger of an official suppression of ideas, and thus would not violate respondents' First Amendment rights.

In the Pico case, most of the challenged books were written by African Americans. As a result, there was a hint that the school district was racially motivated. However, in the case of ttyl, it seems pretty clear that removing a book based on its language and age appropriateness would pass constitutional muster.

Conclusion

I plan to read ttyl. Based on what I know, I would probably recommend it to my 16 year old daughter, but not my 13 year old daughter. However, I am not convinced that this is a case of censorship.