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I reiterate: Every facet of every school program is aimed at general categories of students, and serves the needs of specific students to the exact extent that they fit the applicable general model.
The class in question in both these cases is "parents with moral objections to a subject", a class large and vociferous enough that it got its own specific policy carve-outs. These and all other policies are designed for general classes of people, and they serve people to the extent they fit neatly inside those classes. This is the entire point of policy as a concept. We use it to try to maximize fairness and efficiency. When individuals don't fit neatly, we try to shoehorn them in to the existing class categories, and if that results in poor service, we generally don't care much. If they won't fit at all, we either dismiss their concerns or bypass policy, generally with a statement about "person X objected to Y, but the school is required by policy to do Z..." Every facet of public schooling demonstrates this simple reality, from class sizes to curricula to teacher standards to classroom discipline, grading and so on.
The fact remains that schools are not and cannot be designed to satisfy the interests of individuals, only those of general classes, as is necessary and proper for common-use public infrastructure.
School libraries do not exist to enable self-expression. Neither parents, teachers, librarians nor students have a valid interest in expressing themselves through the book selection in the library, individually or as a class. The school library is not a public forum any more than the classroom is. Parents do have a valid interest in their kids improving their reading skills, and learning to read for pleasure is an excellent way to secure that interest, but that interest can be satisfied by any text that holds their attention. No specific text is necessary, and they do not have a valid interest in exposing other parents' kids to material those parents find objectionable.
It is entirely possible to satisfy their legitimate interest exclusively with books no one objects to their kids having access to, so we should do that. No legitimate interest is harmed by doing so. If book selection becomes so contentious that no books are available, then libraries are not a good idea any more.
I would rather try to prevent them from speaking on such subjects at all, and I think it is vastly easier and more practical to do so than it is to get them to speak fairly.
Government enabling the education of children is a good thing.
Government helping parents to control what their children are exposed to is a good thing.
Government exposing kids to material over their parents' objections is a bad thing.
Government helping some parents exposing other parents' kids to material over those parents objections is a bad thing.
Requiring unanimous consent for all material is an entirely fair and practical method of achieving the legitimate goals of a school library, provided people engage in good faith. If they are not willing to engage in good faith, then it is better not to have a library at all than to allow it to serve as a partisan weapon to be fought over.
And once again, this is already how it works for me, and always has, and always will. Many things I think should be in the library absolutely will not be allowed in the library, because other parents find them objectionable. I accept their veto. They must accept mine. There is no reason I can see to argue otherwise.
On a practical level, I simply do not believe that is a thing that is going to happen. I see no reason to accept entirely concrete harms in pursuit of purely theoretical benefits. Hatred of and discrimination against my values and interests is too firmly rooted to be overcome in this lifetime. The school is not going to do a good job teaching my kid about the controversial ideas I wish to impart to them, so I am resigned to handling that part of their education myself. Others should do likewise, and the school should be constrained to serving the general interests we all hold in common as much as possible. That is the best possible outcome, given the realities of the situation.
The fact is that subtractive fairness is simpler and much more practical to achieve then additive fairness, much easier to protect from bad-faith actions, and its fail-state is strongly preferable. All of these are commendable virtues when setting policy for a system I cannot trust to treat me fairly or to pursue my interests in good faith.
In the classroom, it is easier to achieve fairness by enforcing silence than through mandating speech, so I would prefer that we enforce silence.
In the library, it is easier to achieve fairness by removing books than it is by adding them, so I would prefer we enforce removing them.
In either case, trusting a system I know is hostile to act in good faith toward me is a very foolish idea.
There is a right to protect your child from influences you consider harmful.
There is a right to access of public services.
There is no right to an audience for your personal views.
There is absolutely no right to requiring the recipients of a public service as an audience for your personal views.
Censorship is not indoctrination. Requiring silence on a subject or the removal of a book is not equivalent to requiring speech on a subject, or that students be allowed to access a book. Removing books from a library violates no right of parents, teachers, librarians or students, because they have no right to access any particular book nor any particular class of books.
Once more, this is already how it works for me. Materials I think should be accessible are already banned, and nothing you say or do, no argument you make or law you propose will change that.
If this is what the court held, then the court is wrong. There is no "regime of voluntary inquiry" in public school libraries, nor in libraries generally. Curation and censorship is and always has been the norm. That censorship should be enforced equitably, rather than being a political prize for the librarians and whichever groups or individuals they personally favor.
Yes.
"The library only contains books that no one has objected to" is a neutral system.
"The library contains books a majority has not voted to remove" is less neutral, but reasonably acceptable.
"The library contains books people want in it, with their selections filtered by the judgement of the librarians" is less neutral than either of the above.
I've been arguing that the system is not neutral, and that additive neutrality is some combination of impractical and impossible. Not everyone can have their favorite books in the library because there is not enough room. Not everyone will be allowed to have their favorite book in the library, because the system is loaded with bias. Since we cannot allow all books, and we cannot prevent people removing others' books because they personally object to them, the fairest solution is that everyone gets to remove books, and the next best alternative is that the majority gets to remove books. Subtractive neutrality is the best possible route to a more neutral system. I suffer its drawbacks just as strongly as any other would, and find them tolerable. I am not asking anyone else to accept things that I myself do not accept. That is the best neutrality that you can ask for.
Whatever the merits might be of that argument in some contexts, in the contexts of removals of books which are currently on library shelves, it amounts to a claim that the majority has the right to silence the views of the minority. Which they don't.
Neither the minority nor the majority have any right to expression of their views in this context, because the library is not a public forum for the expression of views.
The books got on shelves because people chose to put them there, pursuant to a public service. That public service is helping kids improve their reading skills, and perhaps, maybe, their general knowledge. Excluding specific books or even topics of books that some consider objectionable compromises neither of those goals. It does compromise the ability of individuals or groups to see their views represented, but no group, whether majority or minority, has any right to have their views presented at all.
The library cannot present all views, because space is limited.
The library will not present all views, because it is run by humans, and humans are biased.
The library should not present all views, because many of the parents the library exists to serve consider exposure a wide variety of views to be harmful.
Presentation and non-presentation are not equivalent, and non-presentation is by necessity the default.
The desire for presentation can be satisfied elsewhere. The desire for protection cannot; there is no way to un-expose a kid.
Majorities getting their way over minorities is the basis for our entire system, and the will of the majority is overridden only when doing so preserves some necessary right. There is no necessary right being preserved here, but even if there were, the better solution would be to simply allow anyone, majority or minority, group or individual, to exclude whichever books they wish. Allowing anyone to add whichever books they want is not possible, and allowing the majority to pick the books would be less fair than allowing the majority to exclude books, for the reasons stated above.
They absolutely do, have and will. As I have pointed out repeatedly, books I think should be in school libraries absolutely are not allowed in school libraries, for exactly the reasons stated above. I do not object when this principle cuts against me, and you have presented no realistic alternative, because there is no realistic alternative. You can't un-bias the system, and you can't give libraries infinite space. You are not engaging with either limitation in any principled fashion.
Because you are talking about something different. There is a difference between 1) not going out of your way to provide the means for someone who wants to speak; and 2) silencing someone who is already speaking.
When there is no right to speak at all, silencing people for speaking at the expense of the proper function of a system is entirely reasonable. The people in question here did not have a right to start speaking, and indeed doing so was a defection against the commons. Using public resources to advertise your personal ideology or to expose other people's kids to media their parents do not wish them exposed to is unacceptable behavior. Preventing people from doing so is the norm, and always has been. When people violate these norms, there is no requirement to allow them to continue to do so because they are "already speaking". The fact that they are "speaking" where they should not is exactly the reason it is good to stop them.
You are claiming they have a right to continue speaking. This implies they had a right to begin speaking. I know that I do not enjoy such a right, so I do not believe they enjoy it either. If this is "something different", I do not see how.
[EDIT] - Maybe I'm wrong! Maybe school libraries are a forum for speech. If they are, how do I get my prefered material into them? As I've mentioned previously, I think students should have access to gun culture media. Can you describe a plausible way for me to get back issues of Guns & Ammo magazine into public school libraries in New York City? If there's a right to speech, what is the plausible procedure by which I can access that right? It can't be down to the Librarian's choice, because they are a public employee and have no right to use their platform for personal or partisan promotion; we pay them to do a job, and we can absolutely specify exactly how we want that job performed. It has to be the parents or the kids, right? So if I'm a parent, how do I get my stuff stocked in the library, over the objections of the other parents, staff, etc?
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