On February 4, the SC State Board of Education removed four books from all state public school libraries and classrooms:
All Boys Aren’t Blue
Flamer
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Push
Please note that the vote was not unanimous, with two dissenters out of 15 votes. You can find and contact your State Board of Education member here.
This is a result of Regulation 43-170, which passed without a vote and newly allows for the statewide censoring* (banning) of books by removal from school libraries.
The stated purpose of this regulation is to “establish a clear, transparent, and uniform process that provides certainty for local educators, respects the legitimate prerogatives of parents, and protects students from materials that are not age or developmentally appropriate.”
However, this regulation creates an immediate judgement call (and overstep) by defining any “description or visual depiction of ‘sexual conduct’” as inappropriate for any age, full stop.
The regulation’s executive summary tries to sidestep this by qualifying that “sexual conduct” has already been defined in “longstanding South Carolina law.” However, this is misleading. The regulation bans all mention of sexual conduct for all age groups in isolation, while the law provides context throughout the entire chapter for prohibition only in the cases of obscenity, defined as:
“patently offensive” references
appealing to “prurient interest”
lacking “literary, artistic, political or scientific value”
Nothing in the referenced Article 3 prohibits children from material that describes or depicts sexual conduct outside this context of obscenity, and it also distinguishes minors under the age of 12 from those under 18.
Lest it sound like I’m defending exposure of children to descriptions of sex, let me say this: I think it is important that we acknowledge that there ARE books that are not appropriate to be included in a school library.
However, the automatic disqualification of a book of clear value, not meeting the definition of obscenity, simply because it contains any description of sexual conduct is NOT defensible under South Carolina law as it is currently written—and overriding that seems to be entirely the point of this new regulation.
Ellen Weaver’s Not-So-Hidden Agenda
As we have seen in other areas of overstep in SC law, this regulation creates much cause for confusion, as teachers wonder whether everything from a reference to “elephant poop” to an image of Michelangelo’s David is appropriate. Simply insisting that the regulation “should be clear,” as Board of Ed chair David O’Shields does, does not make it so.
Rather it calls into question the motives behind this regulation. The Department of Education’s certainty that “inappropriate” material should be obvious, when teachers themselves say that it is not, points to two intentions:
To smooth the way for removal of books with educational merit, diverse perspectives, and historical accuracy. The regulation expressly prohibits this type of removal, which has been repeatedly ruled unconstitutional, but given the fact that state superintendent Ellen Weaver, who has championed this regulation, has previously embraced clearly biased, inaccurate material as optional curriculum material, and the fact that the Board of Education is not elected but appointed by our governor and state legislature, there is not much hope for accountability in this area.
To reduce confidence in teachers and school librarians and set the state up as a dictator over first amendment rights. One of the ways the regulation does this is by allowing “complainants,” i.e., parents or guardians, to appeal local school board decisions, setting up yet another system to override local communities with broken state systems. Our district (among others) has always had procedures in place for parents to object to library material; it’s only in the wake of unfortunate politicization of our schools and curriculums that these have been grossly misused.
Take Action
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