A new State Board of Education regulation sets a litmus-test for which book are ‘age and developmentally appropriate’ for SC schools.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — A committee tasked with deciding whether books fit a new standard set in State Board Reg 43-170 met today to hear 11 book challenges.
The regulation allows parents to challenge any books and request its removal from their district, but it also grants the State Board of Education (SBOE) authority to take up titles on their own and ban them statewide.
The Instructional Materials Review Committee (IMRC) heard testimony on 11 books which was identified by Committee staff as potentially violating the regulation. Based on the staff recommendations and public testimony, IMRC recommended 7 titles be removed and 3 be retained. They postponed the decision on one.
The titles recommended to be removed are:
- “Damsel” by Elana Arnold
- “Ugly Love” by Colleen Hoover
- “A Court of Mist and Fury” by Sarah J Mass
- “A Court of Thorns and Roses” by Sarah J Mass
- “A Court of Frost and Starlight” by Sarah J Mass
- “A Court of Wings and Ruin” by Sarah J Mass
- “Normal People” by Sally Rooney
The titles recommended to be retained are:
- “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee
- “1984” by George Orwell
- “Romeo & Juliet” by William Shakespeare
The committee postponed a decision on “Crank” by Ellen Hopkins. The staff recommendation was removal.
“At first glance, four elected officials just made a decision for every student and every parent in South Carolina. And I think that’s something we should all be really troubled by,” said Josh Malkin with the American Civil Liberties Union.
The IMRC doesn’t decide the merit of the books—only whether or not it violates the language of the regulation, which requires content be “age and developmentally appropriate” and fit state and district Instructional programs. Material is automatically not appropriate for children under the regulation if it contains “descriptions or visual depictions of “sexual conduct.”
Speakers at the hearing pointed to the staffs recommendations as reasoning that the IMRC’s decision making was biased, showing favoritism to classics like the three novels that were recommended to be retained by the staff adjudication. But SBOE Policy and Legal Advisor Robert Cathcart says the titles that were recommended to be retained were simply less graphic and descriptive in the sexual content they contained, which he says fits the requirements of the regulation.
“Those passages do not rise to the level of explanatory detail necessary to violate the regulations clear prohibition against descriptions of sexual conduct,” said Cathcart.
Critics also argue that the regulations put a burden on teachers to vet their content.
“We have had districts that have enacted scanners where teachers have had to go through and catalog,” said Sherry East, President of the South Carolina Education Association. “They have had to set aside staff to go through. And it’s just already stressing and overloaded and taxed system. It’s very heavy handed from the state board to do this.”
The recommendations today will be taken up by the full Board of Education at their next meeting on Tuesday.
This post was originally published on here
