(WPDE) — The South Carolina Dept. of Education voted this month on the first round of challenged books since a new law took effect in August.
Last month, the Instructional Materials Committee recommended removing seven out of the 10 challenged books from all public school libraries. Those books include “Normal People” by Sally Rooney, “Ugly Love” by Colleen Hoover, “Damsel” by Elana Arnold, and four books from “The Court of Thorns and Roses” series by Sara Maas.
On Nov. 5, the State Board of Education voted to unanimously uphold the recommendation to permanently remove the seven books from school libraries and agreed that “Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare, “1984” by George Orwell, and “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee should stay.
The committee also considered the removal of four more books on Thursday.
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The committee voted to keep “HMH Into Literature Grade 8.” The decision will be up for final approval at the next full State Board of Education meeting on December 3.
The committee also voted to keep “Crank by Ellen Hopkins” in schools but only grant access to students whose parents opt-in to allow it.
The committee voted to hold the decision on “Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes” and “The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros” until the complainant provided specific quotes from the text.
Josh Malkin, the Advocacy Director of the ACLU of South Carolina, released a statement, which read:
Today’s hearing highlighted the basic unfairness and absurdity of Regulation 43-170 itself. The book-banning regulation allows one person’s discomfort with a single passage to take a book off the shelves for approximately 800,000 children in public schools. This is a troubling mindset to enable. This is not democracy.
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