With school back in session, it was only a matter of time before stories like this one started cropping up; with parents complaining to school boards about the inappropriateness of titles on the school reading list.

Not surprisingly, I’m against this sort of thing. Part of the process of education is expanding one’s base of experience and boundaries; we ought to be exposing people to new things – books are a great way to do that. Sure, some of the material might be (and ought to be) challenging; the idea is to get kids to think about things that are new to them, or to think about things they know from a different perspective. Some of these things might fall outside the bounds of comfort for moral guardians (and most of those bounds are, in practice at least, a means of exercising control of information in order to control people), but life doesn’t always fall within the bubble these folks want to create, either – and books are one way of describing life and the human experience – a pretty safe way, at that. I’d rather my kids come in contact with things like (in the case of the books called out in the link) sexuality and drug use through the venue of a book, where they can think and ask questions in a safe environmment, rather than, as they say, “on the street” where naiveity in those sorts of areas can lead to all sorts of bad places.

a pretty good rule of thumb regarding books in this context – if somebody wants to keep you from reading something, there’s probably a very good reason why you should be reading it. Gatekeepers have their place, but that place isn’t necessarily standing between growing minds and information that will foster that growth. Our responsibility as a society here isn’t to keep our young people sheltered from information; but rather to be available to provide guidance and additional context about the information so that these young people have the proper tools to make good, informed choices.

So in closing, I’m going to quote the late comic Mitch Hedberg, who through his stoner persona, hit on some great peals of wisdom:

Every book is a children’s book if the kid can read!

Maybe I should have saved this one until later in the month, when Banned Books Week hits, but it’s just as relevant today as it will be on September 24, so I’m going to let it stand.