This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Elementary school teachers often put such care into creating their classroom libraries: shelving multiple copies of each book, stringing lights around them to set the mood, situating beanbag chairs and magic carpet squares strategically to encourage students to settle in. Now imagine that cozy nook turned into a battleground—parents squabbling over the appropriateness of even the most well-loved copies of classics with broken-in spines, and outside organizations demanding titles be pulled from shelves and topics from curriculums.
The last time UConn associate professor Victoria Ford Smith taught the university's children's literature course, she noted that her English students, many of them teachers in training, already were thinking about the resistance they're likely to encounter one day. "I've had students say things like, 'I would be afraid to have this in my classroom library,'" she says. "They're 19, and they're anticipating complaints from parents or outside organizations.
I'm sometimes surprised by how uncomfortable they are. But those moments are great, because I can say, 'Why do you think this is inappropriate? What child are you imagining?
Can we think of a child for whom this would be completely appropriate?'" Their instinct to self-censor reflects the findings of "Reading in a Permacrisis: Building Critical Literacies with Children's Literature," a collaboration between researchers at UConn and the University of Glasgow who surveyed teachers and librarians on censorship and book bans and developed a toolkit to help them before challenges arise. "We all think about this when we put together a college syllabus, what pressures our own students will be under when they are in classrooms," Smith says. "For me, this project was a great way to talk to people who are in the classroom, hear their experiences and learn about the ways censorship is happening." About 18 months ago, English professor Katharine Capshaw says she partnered with UConn's Global Affairs to develop the project with Smith and Anna Mae Duane, director of the UConn Humanities Institute and an English professor.
They immediately pulled in colleague Melanie Ramdarshan Bold from the University of Glasgow, and this spring brought on UConn Ph.D. student Amber Weinstock. The group used their networks to find 14 K–12 teachers, school librarians and public librarians in the U.S. and United Kingdom, and interviewed them individually and in small groups to hear about their encounters with censorship and book bans. The educators also participated in two collaborative workshops.
"I had thought the extremes of book banning were just a U.S. issue, but it is an issue in Scotland too," Duane says. "The emphasis over there is on different things, but there exists the sense that if a parent is unhappy, it could become a legal battle. "Another takeaway," she continues, "was how often some of these battles are not coming from parents at all.
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