Musings on Intellectual Freedom and YA Services (Young Adult) (Viewpoint Essay‪)‬

Watching with dismay the protests against Governor Walker's public union-busting activities in Wisconsin, I realized that one of the unacknowledged downsides to his activities, if successful, would be to make school librarians, if any are left, even more fearful of any controversy over collections. Most of the intellectual freedom challenges involving young adults occur in school libraries, which also account for one third of challenges overall. School librarians are already scared for their jobs from state and local budget cuts, since they are often not considered "instructional" staff. Decimating their union rights will not help a situation where fear of controversy with parents already abounds, if not with the librarians themselves, then with their employing principals and school districts. One of the great ironies of U.S. public education is that teachers' colleges and employers say they want independent, critical thinkers and literate employees produced, but any attempt to expose children and young adults to alternative viewpoints is often politically contentious. I was reminded of this a year or so ago when I led a discussion of YA books for the biannual Children's and YA Literature conference sponsored by the Nassau (NY) Library System. One of the titles I picked for discussion was Sold (Hyperion, 2006/ VOYA December 2006), by Patricia McCormick, about the young Nepalese girl sold into sexual slavery by her father. The conference usually draws some teachers as well as a mix of public and school librarians, and I had a seventh grade teacher in the mix. The entire discussion group loved the book, agreeing that McCormick achieved more with her understated writing than she might otherwise have done with a shocking depiction of the graphic rape visited regularly upon the enslaved girl. The teacher, however, had reservations about "appropriateness" for her seventh graders. (I have learned to loathe that exceptionally slippery code word in the mouths of librarians.) I finally asked her whether they could read it (yes); did she think it was an excellent depiction of the topic (yes); and was the topic the possible political problem (yes). Once we had the political reservations in the open, we had a useful intellectual freedom discussion that acknowledged her fears, but did not necessarily guarantee the absence of problems. We also talked about the IF distinction between a classroom required reading book and a library book voluntarily chosen, with any required title obviously being the more problematic of the two.