You Know They Won't Stop at Banning Books, Right?
It was going to be beautiful.
That’s how I imagined my classroom library, one I cultivated and expanded between January 2011 and May 2013 while teaching English at Middle College High School (now Renaissance High School) in Franklin, Tennessee.
The process started slowly, with the first books taking up not even half of the sole metal bookcase that came with my room. Even then, I told my students I didn’t care what books they borrowed. If they never returned them - fine. The fact they thought one was important enough to take made me happy.
My library grew a little bit every month. I spent most of the summer of 2011 and 2012 expanding the collection thanks to Goodwill, McKay’s, and other sources. You could find me on hot summer afternoons in my classroom, organizing the collection and assembling the cheapest bookcases Staples sold.
My students, even (especially) those who proudly proclaimed their disdain for reading, would have no choice but to learn in the temple of words I’d built.
Books did disappear over time, and when they did, I couldn’t help but smile. I just bought more to fill in the gaps. And so, for a while, my classroom library was beautiful.
But it could never happen again.
There are now so many people in Williamson County, Tennessee, whose bigotry and suspicion prevent teachers like me from building classroom libraries. They would make me lock those hundreds of volumes away forever.
Making excuses as to why my books were immoral would be easy. Finding an old picture of my classroom, I conjured up what someone might say while browsing my shelves:
· American Gods by Neil Gaiman: “Offends Christianity!”
· Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides: “Promotes alternative lifestyles!”
· Post Office by Charles Bukowski: “Glorifies drunkenness!”
And so on and so on.
I witnessed the beginning of this trend as a teacher. In May 2014, my principal and I attended a school board meeting where “concerned citizens” and a few board members protested the proposed social studies textbooks’ supposedly anti-Christian message. Leading the charge was Saturday Night Live alum Victoria Jackson, of all people.
This anti-intellectualism seemed like an aberration then, but since I left teaching at the end of 2014, it has turned into a dangerous force. COVID-19 was a turning point that emboldened the far right in Williamson County.
It’s hard to describe how disheartened I feel about this, considering Williamson County Schools (WCS) provided me with much more than a job. WCS also gave me a great public school education, culminating with the IB Diploma Programme.
Could WCS do the same today? I fear it’s only a matter of time before those advocating book bans start protesting IB at Franklin High School. It’s easy to imagine a crowd screaming “(((Globalist))) conspiracy!” at the top of their lungs during a school board meeting.
That fight over IB in WCS is coming, and when it does, I’ll fly back to Franklin to defend it in front of the board and all the bigots. It’s the least I can do.
As for my classroom library, I sold it back to McKay’s in the summer of 2013, just before I moved downstairs to teach history. Who knows what might have happened to those books if they had stayed in WCS.