So We're Censoring Wishes Now

I thought I’d seen pretty much everything in this research. In the last three years I’ve seen every type of complaint imaginable about all types of books. Yet there is still capacity to surprise. Book challenges are any request to remove, restrict, or relocate books within schools or libraries. What they all have in common is that the books actually exist in the institution. Well turns out that some parents are so terrified of their kids learning about the existence of LGBTQ people that they will complain about books possibly being purchased. In Rockville, Indiana, the North Central Parke Community School Corporation saw this exact unique situation.

Just as the 2021 school year was starting, two parents contacted a teacher of the “young 5s” which I take to be a kindergarten class specifically for kids who turned 5 close to the start of the school year (I was one of these!). Their complaints were not about anything in the class, it was about the teacher’s Amazon Wishlist. You see, our public funding of education is such dog shit that teachers have to regularly pay for things themselves and ask for donations from parents of various materials. This is all that occurred here. But the teacher dared to include three books that the parents could not abide: Knight & Prince (I’ve written about this one before), Dazzling Travis, and Stella Brings the Family. As the school would make clear repeatedly, these books were not actually in the classroom, though they should have been, but even the mere possibility that they could be must be stopped.

The reason for the objection is entirely predictable: all of the books include LGBTQ themes or characters. You see “sexuality and gender” are “sensitive issues” that “are inappropriate for a 5 year old.” Simply showing kids that queer people exist is not “age appropriate.” The teacher noted that each of these books are children’s picture books designed and appropriate for five year old readers (or listeners). One parent asserted that they might be “considered age appropriate but I don’t believe the topics are.” You see Stella Brings the Family dares to show that gay parents exist and “this is introducing homosexuality to my child” and this cannot be allowed. Similarly, the celebration of breaking gender norms in Dazzling Travis “is dealing with gender identity.” There is literally nothing more about this one, the simple assertion of gender identity makes it inappropriate.

While the teacher’s principal tried to offer a degree of support, noting the importance of diversity - oh that dirty word comes back! - in the classroom experience, Superintendent Mike Schimpf basically tossed the teacher under the bus and reinforced the queerphobia of the challengers. In email exchanges he suggested that no books should be present that were not aligned directly with specific curriculum but the principal noted that virtually none of the books in classroom libraries are designed that way and this type of policy would change them pretty dramatically. So instead he issued a press release stating that the District “will not provide instruction regarding human sexuality, sexual orientation, or assertions regarding gender identity to any student below 4th grade” when the human sexuality curriculum began. The action plan is particularly interesting:

Saying the books were removed ignores the fact that they were never in the classroom in the first place but the message throughout this is that LGBTQ inclusion cannot be allowed. Taken seriously this policy would require purging nearly all books in a classroom library. After all, Stella Brings the Family has “to do with human sexuality” to the same degree that any generic picture book depicting straight parents does. Both present the different kinds of families that make children and thus both instruct in human sexuality. Similarly, any fairy tale that depicts a knight winning the hand of a princess teaches straight sexuality in the same way that Prince & Knight does for queer folk. Finally, picture books are full of lessons about gender identity in the depiction of how cis kids dress and play in ways that are identical to Dazzling Travis.

But of course this has nothing to do with prohibiting human sexuality, instead it is about prohibiting any knowledge of queer existence. This is another in the long line of idiotic “neutrality” claims that I write about a lot, see here. Schimpf treats straight, cis people as invisible. Depicting their lives is natural and neutral, only queer existence can possibly be sexuality and gender identity because we are the only people to have those things in his mind and in school policy. This just reinforces that schools are straight spaces only; queer students, teachers, and community members are not to be accepted easily - in fact there are tantalizing hints in the massive amount of material turned over that a high school teacher was making homophobic comments to students at this time.

Sadly the outcome of this and the rash of book banning and purges of libraries going on lately is most likely to scare teachers into self-censorship, better to just not even think about getting such dangerous books than risk the backlash. This is made more likely by the fact that the teacher in question here was transferred by the District, per the School Boards 15 September 2021 minutes, to a Title One position. As this was barely a month into the school year there is little doubt that this was in retaliation for daring to even think about including queer lives in the classroom. This is supported by the fact that this was the only staffing change to receive a divided board vote in that meeting. Since staffing decisions aren’t public records I can’t say more about that but the fact that she was transferred is a message to teachers to walk carefully and adhere to the conservative values of the straight space of education. I hope teachers continue to resist but I worry that the witch hunts are just going to drive them away, further diminishing the public education system that conservatives have spent decades undermining.

Note about sources: As with most of my writing, all of the information used here comes from emails disclosed by the Superintendent’s office under the Indiana public records laws. I have not attempted to contact the teacher or administrators involved because to do so would potentially put them at more risk. Something that seems more likely by the fact that the teacher was already disciplined in this case. Additionally, it is worth noting that the District disclosed more than 700 pages of completely irrelevant documents that could never have any connection to my request. This was likely done to hide the 20 or so pages of useful, relevant material.