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In this Jan. 25, 2018, photo, books marked with red stickers, meaning they might be removed from the shelves, are on display at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania library in Indiana, Pa. IUP is planning to remove tens of thousands of books that have little or no readership. (AP Photo/Michael Rubinkam)
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Editorial: In Pine-Richland book wars, a lack of trust makes solutions impossible

Michael Rubinkam

Editorial: In Pine-Richland book wars, a lack of trust makes solutions impossible

Pine-Richland school directors are now entering their 14th month of debating policies for acquiring and challenging library books. The district has found itself, like so many others, consumed by the rancor of the culture wars: Marathon meetings, screaming matches, accusations of cowardice and bad faith.

At issue are policies regarding the district’s in-school libraries, and specifically the acquisition of books for the collection and the challenging of books already acquired. Due to a lack of trust among everyone involved, every nitty-gritty detail of every policy has come under scrutiny, with each side fearing at every turn that the other is trying to put one over on them.

This has manifested itself in an absurd pair of seven-hour and five-hour meetings in the first weeks of 2025, at which next-to-nothing has been accomplished, except further rending the community.

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Schools and libraries are natural flashpoints at times of low social trust because they represent community standards and values, and in particular the passing-down of those standards and values in a context beyond the immediate reach of parents. This requires trust among those who use these institutions that their leaders will respect, as far as possible, the community’s wide variety of values, backgrounds, belief systems, and so on.

A public school — and in particular a public school library — will always reflect a wider range of values than any one person or family holds, or even finds acceptable. Matters of curriculum, because they are typically mandatory, are much higher-stakes (and should reflect a narrower range of shared values) than library collections, which are voluntary assets that must cast a very wide net.

Last year, Pine-Richland superintendent Brian Miller articulated this principle with admirable simplicity: “Every book in the library should be suitable for some students, but no book in the library has to be educationally suitable for every student.”

For instance, books taking a variety of perspectives on LGBTQ identities or the causes of the Civil War or the person of Jesus Christ would each be appropriate for some students with some backgrounds and values, but not all, and that’s fine.

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Indeed, at the secondary level, there should be at least one book (and ideally several) in a public school library that each and every parent would be alarmed to find in his or her child’s backpack. If there isn’t, the collection is incomplete.

Many of the policies under consideration in Pine-Richland, however, stem from a fear among some parents that exactly this will happen: that books they disapprove of will find their way into their children’s hands. They want to have fair warning of what books are being acquired, and certainty that their kids won’t be exposed to anything they wouldn’t expose them to at home.

The former is reasonable, though a 30-day comment period is likely excessive. The latter is not: It is an impossible burden to place on school staff not just to prevent a child from checking out particular books (which can be handled by software), but to prevent the child from finding the book by other means — say, through friends. A school is not a home, and cannot have its policies dictated by parental anxieties.

The tragedy in Pine-Richland is that its leaders are attempting the impossible: to replace a lack of trust — between the community and district leaders, among community members themselves, and between parents and their own children — with policies and procedures. While Mr. Miller, the superintendent, has articulated common-sense principles, it takes mutual trust to put them into action.

Without that trust, peace in the community will remain out of reach.

 

First Published: January 15, 2025, 10:30 a.m.
Updated: January 15, 2025, 5:19 p.m.

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In this Jan. 25, 2018, photo, books marked with red stickers, meaning they might be removed from the shelves, are on display at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania library in Indiana, Pa. IUP is planning to remove tens of thousands of books that have little or no readership. (AP Photo/Michael Rubinkam)  (Michael Rubinkam)
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