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4.6 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 4 February 2022

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

An old threat has returned to classrooms across the country — and it’s made of pages and ink. On this week’s On the Media, hear what it means to ban a book, and who has the right to choose what kids learn. Plus, meet the student who took his school board all the way to the Supreme Court in the 80s.

1. Kelly Jensen, editor for Book Riot who writes a weekly update on “book censorship news,” on what it means to ban a book. Listen.

2. Jennifer Berkshire [@BisforBerkshire] and Jack Schneider [@Edu_Historian], hosts of the education podcast “Have You Heard,” on the rights—both real and fictional—of parents to shape what their kids learn. Listen .

3. OTM reporter Micah Loewinger [@MicahLoewinger] takes a deep dive into our nations history of taking books off shelves, with the 1982 Supreme Court decision in Island Trees School District v Pico. Featuring: Steven Pico, then student and plaintiff in the case and Arthur Eisenberg, New York Civil Liberties lawyer, who represented him. Listen.

Music:Tymperturbably Blue by Duke EllingtonYork Fusiliers by Douglas Monroe & Yorktown Fife and DrumsEye Surgery by Thomas NewmanViderunt Omnes by The Kronos Quartet

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's not about the kids. It's about creating such havoc in public schools that they're
0:08.3	able to say why are we paying tax money to this institution that isn't doing its job.
0:14.8	The cries to poll books from school libraries and curricula are for who exactly?
0:20.4	From WNYC in New York, this is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. Meet the parents.
0:26.4	The parents have lost their voice to represent themselves and their children. So we're bringing
0:30.2	our own chairs to the table. Right, and we're going to claim those seats.
0:34.3	The pandemic has brunn brutal on disruptions to childcare and so politicians find electoral
0:41.4	gold in the parents' rights cost. Plus, the student who took his book banning school board
0:48.2	all the way to the Supreme Court. It's almost meant to be. I was born to be the plaintiff
0:53.7	in this case. It's all coming up after this.
1:01.5	From WNYC in New York, this is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. According to Penn
1:07.5	America, in the past month state legislatures introduced or prefiled 71 bills limiting
1:15.1	school curricula, bringing the past year's total to 122 bills in 33 states. 12 have already
1:23.7	become law and 88 are currently being decided.
1:28.6	The bills run the gamut in subject, but a lot of the book challenges come down to sex.
1:33.9	Like an Oklahoma bill prohibiting schools from carrying books addressing sex and gender
1:38.7	identity. That one was introduced by state Senator Rob Standrich.
1:43.3	A lot of these are alternative lifestyles with some of them are not. What I think parents
1:47.3	are concerned about is the over-sexualization of their children. Why are they not involved
1:51.7	in what books are shown to their children in the library?
1:54.6	In Texas, school districts are reviewing a list of more than 850 books from state representative
2:00.6	Matt Krause for material that quote might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish,
	...

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