by Molly Jesse and Richard Jesse
There’s an effort afoot against banning books from Vermont libraries. H806, sponsored by Rep. Robin Chesnut-Tangerman (D-Middletown Springs) and other lawmakers on the Democrat/Progressive spectrum would “prohibit the banning or removal of library materials by public or school libraries and restrict any form of State funding for a library that violates the materials retention rules adopted by the State Librarian.” Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman has conducted “Banned Book Tours” at which he reads from books banned from school libraries in other states.
What comes to mind when you think of banning a book from a school’s library? Do you think of a book being removed from the library because it has been deemed pornographic .. or racist .. or age-inappropriate for, say, elementary children? Likely people have complained about the book?
But what about a book that has not been added to a library? A recent example from Vermont Daily Chronicle is an EWSD parent who asked that the book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (Abigail Shrier) be placed “on an easel atop the shelves in the HS library.” A district administrator stated that the book “actually goes against our equity policy and can cause harm,” and the book is not in the EHS Library collection.
In his article “The Truth About Banned Books” in The Free Press, James Fishback writes:
“I’ve spent time meeting with students, parents, teachers, and school board members. Several students complained that their school libraries had become one-sided, offering only books in line with progressive orthodoxy. So I decided to investigate just how one-sided things actually are. I surveyed the library catalogs of 35 of the largest public school districts in eight red states and six blue states, representing over 4,600 individual schools.”
Fishback looked up books written by some well-known progressive thinkers. Here is what he found. In addition, we note whether the books are available for students usage in our Essex High School (EHS) Library:
In EHS
Library? Title and Percentage of the 35 Districts That Stock the Book
Yes – The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx) — 75%
Yes – Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent (Isabel Wilkerson) — 60%
Yes – The 1619 Project (Nikole Hannah-Jones) — 54%
Yes – Stamped (Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi) — 71%
Yes – An African American and Latinx History of the U.S. (Paul Ortiz) — 40%
Yes – The New Jim Crow (Michelle Alexander) — 60%
No* – Guide to Political Revolution (Bernie Sanders) — 40%
Yes – White Fragility (Robin DiAngelo) — 54%
Yes – So You Want to Talk About Race (Ijeoma Oluo) — 57%
Yes – This Book Is Anti-Racist (Tiffany Jewell) — 45%
*The EHS Library has Our Revolution (Bernie Sanders)
Fishback also looked at books written by some well-known conservative thinkers. Here are the results for these books:
In EHS
Library? Title and Percentage of the 35 Districts That Stock the Book
No – Capitalism and Freedom (Milton Friedman) — 8%
No – Created Equal (Dr. Ben Carson) — 5%
No – Woke Racism (John McWhorter) — 3%
No – Breaking History (Jared Kushner) — 2%
No – Social Justice Fallacies (Thomas Sowell) — 0%
No – The War on the West (Douglas Murray) — 0%
No – The 1619 Project: A Critique (Phillip W. Magness) — 0%
No – The Case Against Impeaching Trump (Alan Dershowitz) — 0%
No – Decades of Decadence (Marco Rubio) — 0%
No – The Diversity Delusion (Heather Mac Donald) — 0%
No – The Case for Trump (Victor Davis Hanson) — 0%
Note: The only books in the EHS Library by any of these eleven authors are Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (Dr. Ben Carson) and Marxism: Philosophy and Economics (Thomas Sowell).
Here are two more examples of censorship:
In EHS
Library? Title and Percentage of the 35 Districts That Stock the Book
Yes Dreams from My Father (Barack Obama) — 75%
versus
No Decision Points (George W. Bush) — 37%
Yes The Truths We Hold (Kamala Harris) — 57%
versus
No So Help Me God (Mike Pence) — 6%
After reviewing the information above, some Vermonters reach this conclusion: EWSD libraries, like many school libraries, have become reflections of politicized school administators and librarians. And Essex and Westford students, and students across Vermont, deserve education, not indoctrination.
The authors are Essex Junction residents and parents. They operate a non-profit, Make Water Safe for the World.