By Linda Hardman
Legislative Chair
In June, South Carolina passed one of the most restrictive censorship laws for school libraries and classrooms in the nation. The brainchild of Ellen Weaver, South Carolina’s far-right State Superintendent of Education, the law prohibits schools from exposing students to any books or materials that are not “age and developmentally appropriate.” The law is intentionally designed to be vague so it can be used to strike anything that promotes diversity or even mentions LGBTQ+ issues. Descriptions or visuals of any kind of sexual content are banned for all ages of students.
The law disproportionately targets books by women and non-binary authors and mirrors the wider book-banning movement across the country by focusing on removing books about race and racism as proponents of “woke ideology” and critical race theory. CRT says racism is inherent in America’s way of life and reinforced by its laws and institutions. CRT, however, is only taught in the nation’s law schools. The new law states that school districts must list all books and media that students can access on their schools’ websites. The State Board of Education, not the school districts, has the final say over what material is allowed in schools.
The regulation prohibits any textbooks, library books or other materials that include “descriptions or visual depictions of ‘sexual content,’ as that term is defined by Section 16-15-305(C(1).” So a 400-page young adult novel that includes a tastefully written one-paragraph description of a young couple engaging in heavy petting-or a young girl being sexually assaulted-would be banned.
The ACLU-SC says that the new law could be used to remove classics from South Carolina school libraries, including titles ranging from Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales” to George Orwell’s “1984.” Much of Shakespeare’s works may not pass muster, and if the library has a copy of the Bible to be used as a resource, many of the stories included therein would be questionable. Even biology textbooks that discuss animal reproduction might be controversial. There’s simply no wiggle room for common sense. Josh Malkin, advocacy director at ACLU-SC, has said, “Superintendent Weaver is seeking to hand unprecedented power to pro-censorship groups, overriding students’ freedom to read as well as parents’ rights to direct their own children’s education.”
Education has become increasingly politicized since the pandemic. Weaver is closely aligned with Moms for Liberty, an organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as a far-right extremist group that engages in anti-student inclusion activities and self-identifies as part of the parental rights movement that emerged out of opposition to public health regulations for COVID-19, opposes LGBTQ+ and racially inclusive school curricula, and has advocated for book bans.
Previously, the management of instructional materials was a district-level responsibility, and it was primarily librarians with years of graduate-level training, who curated collections at individual schools. Now the new regulation gives the state board’s members the final decision over book collections in districts and individual schools across the state. It also gives the board power to reprimand any public school employee in the state if she or he fails to abide by the regulation, a clause that most educators and local policymakers interpret as a threat to their jobs.
One of the first far-reaching consequences of the new regulation has resulted in the Greenville County School District canceling their book fairs. When Greenville County school librarians carefully dissected the state’s new book-ban policy, they were immediately alarmed by the strident language of the law which could create reprisals for them if they helped with the book fair, and the book fair had a questionable book.
Last month, Greenville County School personnel reached out to multiple book-fair vendors, including Scholastic, Greenville’s Public Education Partners, and Greenville-based M. Judson Booksellers, to see if they could guarantee in writing that their book fair collections didn’t violate the regulation, but there was not enough time to vet thousands of titles. Consequently, Dr. Burke Royster, Greenville County’s Superintendent of Education, felt he had no choice but to cancel all book fairs. Royster emphasized that the decision to cancel book fairs at 70 public schools in the district was made to protect school employees from the state board.
Obviously, canceling a profitable fundraiser that is so positively regarded by students, parents, and school personnel caused a huge stir at the August school board meeting, with many parents voicing their objections. In the meantime, the school district is in discussion with some local vendors who might be able to guarantee certain titles comply with the state regulation. The concern is whether they have the capacity to operate book fairs for 70 schools, Royster says. He also suggested that another possibility is for a nonprofit to run a book fair after hours with its own volunteers, without the involvement of district employees.
The impact of the regulation will be immediate, as other school districts, out of a concern for caution, will most likely use Greenville’s example to guide their book fair responses. In many cases, the consequences may be more dire, as the book fair fundraiser can be a financial boon to cash-strapped schools. In the meantime, Greenville County’s school board plans to send a resolution to the State Board of Education laying the blame for “pausing” the annual fundraisers on what they and many other critics describe as an overly vague book-ban regulation. The resolution requests that the state board or state lawmakers rewrite the new regulation on instructional materials so that book fairs can resume without any threat to employees. Although the state board claims that safety is their number one concern, critics argue that the rule suffers from overly vague verbiage and aims, ultimately, to weaken confidence in public schools and in librarians.