Protecting Children, The Nampa School Board banned 22 books. Critics are fighting to restore them.
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HARRISON BERRY
mid a national wave of concern over books available to school children addressing sex, race and class, the Nampa School Board voted on May 9 to permanently relegate 22 books from schools to a Nampa School District storage facility. Three of them were listed on the optional recommended reading list for the district’s AP English classes: Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” and Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.” What followed was a showdown between three parties laying claim to the interests of children. These were parents worried that schools were exposing students to smut and hazardous ideas, a school board ready to accept that interpretation of literature and take action, and critics who viewed all of this as a winnowing of childrens’ minds and an abridgment of their First Amendment rights. If it was anyone’s aim to prevent students from getting their hands on the challenged texts, they failed. A grassroots resistance sprang into action. Independent, Boise-based Rediscovered Books began raising money and buying copies of the disputed titles, distributing more than 1,200 of them at protests coordinated by a new group, the Nampa Banned Books Fan Club. Together, they’ve made more copies
privately accessible, but have also waged a so-far unsuccessful campaign for the school board to reverse its decision on the grounds that rather than protecting children, censorship takes the prerogative away from parents. “Parents don’t have the right to control what other people have access to for their children,” said the fan club’s leader,
College of Idaho Associate Professor, eServices Librarian, and Educational Technology Coordinator Lance McGrath. “Talk to your kids about what they’re reading, what your family values are. Provide that guidance and direction, but don’t take that right away from
another parent and their student.” The controversy caught a troubled school district in a national crossfire. Both around the country and in Idaho, growing numbers of parents have expressed concern that libraries and teachers are exposing their children to inappropriate materials, from sexualizing content, concepts like gender and Critical Race Theory (CRT), and values not taught at home. Earlier this year, the Idaho Senate passed a resolution condemning “divisive” curricula that strays from portraying the United States as “a pillar of freedom in the world,” and the Idaho House of Representatives passed a bill that would have punished librarians for passing “harmful” material to children. In Nampa, high turnover at the uppermost levels of the district driven by dissatisfaction with the board has resulted in the resignation of a longtime superintendent and a new makeup of the board, one vocal in its opposition to socalled leftist topics allegedly being taught in schools. For the majority of trustees, there was urgency behind the May 9 vote. For Trustee Marco Valle and President Jeff Kirkman, removing the books would curtail their then-ongoing review by teachers and parents, but buy time for the board to craft a clear policy for addressing book challenges. Trustee Tracey Pearson said leaving the books on the shelves could cause “lifetime trauma to a child that
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