Restricting Access to Information

Why Restricting Access to Information (also known as banning books) is Bad

A Speech

by Jennifer Lowe

As many of you know, I am a Young Adult Librarian.  What not everyone knows is that I have a Master's Degree in Library Science.  What I was in graduate school, I had the opportunity to work in several different kinds of libraries.  Those experiences helped me to realize that the public library is where I wanted to work.  To me, the public library is a pillar of democracy.  Anybody can walk into a public library and gain access to reliable information about pretty much anything.  That is an astonishing fact, when you really stop to consider that.  For most of human history, information was only available to wealthy people, mostly men, who also held most of the power.  (Coincidence?) In large parts of the world, that is still the case.  (Side note: I am aware that not everyone feels welcome at the public library or receives the assistance that they ought to while there.  I maintain that is because those libraries have bad librarians working in them not because there is anything wrong with the concept of public libraries.)

For most of the time that I have held my current job, it has been my responsibility to purchase items for the Young Adult collection, which includes fiction and nonfiction in multiple physical formats - i.e. traditional print books, audio books, and graphic novels.  (We do also offer these items in electronic formats, but that is the responsibility of a coworker.)  Every year, the American Library Association publishes a list of the books that were most frequently challenged over the past year.  To challenge a book means that you are asking a library to remove it from the shelves so it is unavailable for patrons to borrow.  If you look at the books on these annual lists, you will notice that they are mostly titles aimed at teenagers.  Very occasionally, a book for children will appear on the list (And Tango Makes Three, for example), but most often, the books are either published for the teenage reader or are an adult book that schools feel teenagers should read.  Looking at this list each year tells us a lot about society and where our concerns lay.

While I encourage you to take the time to look at the list, which is published in Autumn to coincide with Banned Books Week, I will give you a brief summary here.  The books that are on the list generally fall into one of three categories: 

1. The content deals with race in some way.

2. The content deals with LGBTQ matters in some way.

3. The content features drinking/drug use/language/sexual activity.  (Another side note: these are often the books that actual teenagers feel best represent actual teen life and I think we need to really think about the fact that many people feel that the real lives of teenagers are inappropriate for teenagers.)

Since 2020, the number of challenges to books in the US has increased dramatically.  Why?  I don't mean why in 2020 in particular.  I think we all know that year was a disaster and a half.  I mean that I was asking myself why anyone wants to restrict access to information in the first place.  Why that is the solution that comes to mind.  I think the biggest value I was raised with growing up was to mind your own business.  What other people do at home is none of our concern.  If my grandmother has opinions about the life choices of any of her children or grandchildren, she certainly isn't sharing them with us.  And I would never voice my thoughts on someone else's life either.  (I realize that most normal families are all up in each other's business and I have just described some weird alien family and you all probably think we need therapy.  Keep it to yourself, though.  It's none of your business!)  So the idea that you would go so far as to try to tell a whole school or community what books are or aren't appropriate to be read by other people is mind-blowing to me.

I have come up with two possible answers to why someone would want to restrict access to information.  The first is that they are an actual dictator.  Dictators succeed and thrive because they knowingly give out false information to the people over whom they rule.  If those people were to get a hold of the true information, they would quite likely stage a coup, thereby ending the success (and probably life) of the dictator.  So it is in the dictator's best interest to limit the information available to their subjects, in order that the subjugation continue.  Since there are relatively few dictators in the world, let's set this possibility to the side for now.

My other answer is that people are afraid, not for themselves but for their children.  They are afraid of what might happen if they expose them to new ideas, to scary ideas, to different ideas.  They think that if their children find out about these new concepts, they will be changed by them.  Yes, they will.  That is the whole point of reading.  To experience something beyond what you can see before you.  To learn empathy.  To see into other worlds.  But also to realize that those other worlds can have so much in common with the one in which you live.  To see yourself.

Let's say your child brings home a book that is about a teenager experiencing abuse at home.  And you might think that sounds upsetting and so you don't want your child to read this book.  They don't need to know that such things exist in the world.  But what if they have a friend going through this?  What if they are able to help someone in the future because they recognized the signs of abuse and trauma they learned about in this book?  Maybe their future spouse/partner will come from an abusive home and reading this book will help them relate in some way.  Maybe it will just show your child that they don't know what anyone else is dealing with and they should give people some grace just in case.

I don't know what else to say.  The world is a scary place and bad things happen all the time.  Hiding from the bad things don't make them stop happening.  Sometimes when you pull a monster out into the light, you realize it isn't a monster at all.  Let people read what they want to read.  It will make them better equipped to handle life's challenges or to help someone else handle theirs.  It will make them better humans.

(This was written for clause 5 of the Politician badge.)