Editorial: Book-banning list latest sad chapter in a sorry saga

Some people never learn, including some who run unsuccessfully for local school board.

Voters last year approved Eric Grow’s candidacy for the board of directors of the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. rejected, but Grow stays on a mission. Grow recently shared a list of about 400 books on his school board campaign’s former Facebook page. He thinks maybe we should ban or restrict books in the BCSC libraries.

Grow’s list of books includes checklists for categories of naughty things or ideas that don’t align with his worldview, making them offensive in one way or another. By Eric Grow.

Something like that is exhausting. You’d think Grow would have better things to do than control what can be read by children who don’t own him. Our schools have professional librarians who uphold standards and are accountable to the school board, which Grow wasn’t elected to, but he still seems to know better than the voters and the kids’ own parents.

“Unfortunately, some of the books available in BCSC libraries are a cause for concern and underscore the need to improve the review process for library materials,” he said in an article published by The Republic’s Jana Wiersema on Sunday. “This is an urgent issue that deserves our community’s attention and I hope we bring it to the forefront of public discussion.”

OK. Let’s do that. Let’s start with this: Who appointed Grow to referee? It certainly wasn’t the voters.

If Grow wants to be a busybody, that’s his business, but that doesn’t make it anyone else’s. When Grow says of books in school libraries, “This is an urgent issue that deserves our community’s attention,” we’re saying nonsense.

Let us state without qualification that we have never viewed a child reading a book as something to worry about.

However, we are concerned that too many people in this community and this country judge others for what they read or want to take books out of children’s hands because they don’t like something about them. This is the “urgent issue that deserves our fellowship’s attention,” because frankly, such attitudes are un-American.

In fact, some of the books on Grow’s list are masterpieces. Let’s talk about just one of them, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. This book has been taught as American literature to generations of schoolchildren beginning in sixth grade, based on the understanding and maturity level of the students.

However, on Grow’s list, the only notable thing about “To Kill a Mockingbird” is that it contains “sexual content,” “violence,” and “derogatory terms.”

To which we say, so what? do great works. The Bible does. life does.

Among other things, To Kill a Mockingbird is a story about standing up for what is right. It’s also about how innocent children view the corruption of the adult world. It’s also about the human tendency to denigrate people who don’t conform to us.

We encourage anyone who can read and understand To Kill a Mockingbird to do so.

But we cannot understand why anyone would want to restrict the reading opportunities of children who, with parental and qualified school guidance, are mature enough to read, understand and choose for themselves.

For heaven’s sake, how else are we supposed to learn and grow from young people?