State education board votes to remove 7 books from all SC public school libraries

WEST COLUMBIA — The South Carolina Department of Education has banned seven books from public schools statewide, the first time it has done so under a new instructional materials regulation.

The decision by the S.C. Board of Education on Nov. 5 stemmed from a statewide book-ban policy enacted Aug. 1 and the recommendation of a five-member board committee that reviewed the books on Oct. 31.

The board voted amid protests from eight individuals who spoke at the meeting — educators and free-speech advocates — as well as the delivery of a written statement from one of the authors targeted by the ban. Several criticized the board’s procedure, describing it as a “kangaroo court for books” that eventually could censor school materials and restrict students’ access to books that represent their experiences.

“I urge you to see the absurdity of this process,” Susan Long, an education researcher, told the board.

Four of the books being removed are from the Court of Thorns and Roses series by fantasy writer Sarah J. Maas. Also removed were “Damsel” by Elana Arnold, “Ugly Love” by Colleen Hoover and “Normal People” by Sally Rooney. William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” George Orwell’s “1984” and Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” were spared.

Chris Hanley, chairman of the state board’s instructional materials committee, said the seven removed books were “not close calls”; each contained graphic or detailed descriptions of sexual conduct. The three titles the board retained only mention or acknowledge sex acts, he said.

He defended the decision to ban the books without reading them, relying instead on excerpts provided by education department staff. 

“Nobody needs to read a ‘Playboy’ magazine cover to cover to decide if it contains pornography,” Hanley said.

Targeted books

Long, a member of the National Council of Teachers of English, noted the lack of teacher, librarian or student input when education department staff drew up the book-removal recommendations. Another speaker, Javar Juarez of Columbia, said the department’s book bans are “viewpoint discrimination” and, therefore, a violation of the First Amendment.

During the board’s instructional materials committee last week, staff attorney Robert Cathcart laid out the reasoning for removing books: Under the regulation passed by the state board, express descriptions or visual depictions of sexual conduct in a book, “or any passages” in a book, require that it be removed from all South Carolina schools.

The department is not debating student speech or expression, but is instead reviewing materials “selected by public employees as part of their public duties available in public buildings” for the education of minors, Hanley said.

The department has an obligation to review materials because what schools offer to students is “government speech,” he added.

Only the 2004 book “Crank” by Ellen Hopkins was spared an up-or-down vote after Hanley, a physician and acupuncturist in Summerville, asked the committee to reconsider a staff recommendation to remove it.

“There was one emailer who discussed drug use in their own family and how this book actually helped the emailer deal with that situation,” Hanley said on Oct. 31 at the instructional materials committee meeting.

The board’s action does not prevent students from bringing their own copies of the books into school, board chairman David O’Shields said. That decision, he said, would be up to parents and local schools.

He praised his local high-school librarian for pulling “The Court of Thorns and Roses” book from the school’s shelves before anyone challenged it.

“Our librarians are smart people,” he said.

Hanley said it would be “embarrassing” to cite the violating passages during the meeting, adding that the department does not need to supply taxpayer funds to buy or display such content. Board members spared the works by Shakespeare, Orwell and Lee because any references to sexual content in these books were “oblique,” Hanley said. 

“(Orwell) went right up to the line but never crossed it,” Hanley said.

‘Court of last appeal’

The book challenges were not generated by parents, as envisioned in the regulation, but by department staff. The goal was to clarify how the state board expected local boards to enforce the regulation, a department spokesman said last week.

The state board has no list of books it plans to review and will let parents and local boards take the lead on book challenges going forward, Hanley said.

The committee’s preemptive review of these titles was an effort to relieve local districts from dealing with titles that have already generated controversy and to set a precedent for how the regulation would be implemented, Hanley said. 

But some argued that such a precedent is still not clear.

Josh Malkin, the S.C. ACLU’s advocacy director, pointed to several sexual passages of “1984” which he described as “clearly” violative of the regulation — not in an effort to get the classic dystopian novel banned, he said, but to illustrate how teachers might not have a clear view of what is and isn’t allowed.

Long, the education researcher, said the board’s process relies on excerpts, making it vulnerable to “subjective interpretations.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that works are obscene if, taken as a whole, they lack literary or artistic value, award-winning author Elana Arnold wrote to the board. Her book “Damsel” was one of the seven books removed.

To call a book obscene based on a few passages lifted out of context is “ignorant, intellectually dishonest, or both,” Arnold wrote.

One board member pushed back at the Nov. 5 state board meeting, saying she was worried that if the state challenges the appropriateness of books, parents will have no recourse.

That suits South Carolina Superintendent Ellen Weaver.

“This is the court of last appeal,” Weaver said.