Schools find loophole in Minnesota's ban on books

are always a big thing when we talk about kids and what kids should read and what kids should not read. And of course, people have their own opinions when it comes to that. But I wanted to talk about this because in 2024, Governor Tim Walz signed a bill into law that prohibited schools and libraries from banning books. But this year, it has been reported that the Northwoods School, which is located in Cook, Minnesota, banned 80 books. And so the state is now fifth on PEN America's banned book report. And this is something that we certainly wanted to talk about. It's pretty interesting because when you think of, I thought we had a book ban and then and then we see something like this. So we wanted to bring in political science professor David Schultz joining me now to talk a bit about this. Good to see you, David. Thanks for hopping on. Thank you for having me on today. My pleasure. Of course. So when we talk about these book bans, this might be a little confusing to people, especially when I just mentioned there that the Northwood School ban 80 books, but people might say if we have a ban in place, how are books still being banned? How do we explain this? That's actually a really good question here at this point is that I think it's because of what lack of enforcement along the line there, that there's a sense in which it's supposed to be voluntary compliance. You can't ban books, okay, we can't ban books. But what if somebody does, who's out there? Is there a county attorney to do something? Is the Attorney General supposed to do something that I think becomes the question now is what's the mechanism in place and why was there no mechanism in place up there to prevent that from happening that's that I think is a story and part of it but again a lot of it is expecting people to voluntarily comply so it seems like a loophole uh there in a sense David I wanted to mention something from the school superintendent so the superintendent said that books were not banned just removed from the shelves after complaints from parents. So kind of what you insinuated there, can schools essentially get away with banning books, but not actually calling them a ban? They seem to be able to doing that, except the pictures that I've also seen indicate that not only have they been pulled from the shelf, but I think it's one picture that I saw, maybe you saw it also too, said these books are not available for circulation. Well, if they're pulled from the shelf, if they're not available for circulation and students can't take them out. What do you call that? I mean, it sounds like a book ban to me, but by the fact that, again, they're saying technically not a book ban, and more importantly, the fact that there's no mechanism in place that seems to be able to prevent this from happening, they effectively have gotten away with it. And I think as you mentioned, or maybe you didn't mention in the beginning here, we're fifth in the nation on book bans because of one school district, and we've had more book bans from that one school district, then what is it, like Iowa, Wisconsin, and the Dakotas put together. That's a pretty good accomplishment for one school to basically be equal more than five states. Yeah, and it certainly raises a lot of questions, and then, of course, sparks some more conversation. I'm interested, too, David, if you can talk about maybe historically what we have seen, specifically in Minnesota, because this isn't a new conversation about book bans. Banning books has been a talker for a while now and in all over the country, and especially in the political world too. Yeah, I was about to say at some point that I think we've had book bans as long as we've had printing presses to print books. I mean, it goes back to the very beginning or someone once said the mass production of books made it possible for the mass banning of books. But yeah, we've had a history in this state in terms of book bans, not as serious as some other states have. But across the country, we've had books ranging anywhere from To Kill a Mockingbird, to Slaughterhouse-Five, to I'm trying to think at this point, a whole host of books that are out there. Toni Morrison, I believe. Toni Morrison, I was gonna say, The Color Purple at one point. I mean, we've had lots of books there. And for people, they sometimes object because they don't like maybe the sexual content. They don't like it talking about race they don't like about the themes and so forth but the whole purpose of reading books the whole purpose of having books in libraries is to what is to challenge us at the today in class just to give you an analogy you know i teach at the college level and i was talking about some subjects in terms of race in the state of Minnesota racial relations and at one point i said to my students this is getting uncomfortable and i said yeah it is and i said that's the whole point the whole point is is to get people to think about things in a way that's different and the whole point of education um is to get people to think about the world differently than they did before because schools are not pep rallies not supposed to just reinforce what you believe but to get you to challenge it and when we start to get books again some books anywhere from again from Toni Morrison to To Kill a Mockingbird to Slaughterhouse-Five to Mark Twain a whole bunch of them like that even if you don't like the themes that are in those books the whole purpose is to what read them and maybe criticize them and say why don't we like those themes and so i think the school district up there is probably uh doing the students a disfavor in the same way that school districts across the country do disfavors when they ban books they basically are telling students we're not going to expose you to ideas that help make you better thinkers And with that being said, on the educator side of things, how frustrating is it for you as an educator when you see this about banning books? I mean, to me, the whole, again, first off, it's incredibly frustrating, it is. Because again, one of the things that I wanna be able to do is to get my students to read widely, to think about why some books are good, why some books are bad of how they challenge you and when i get people who basically say i i don't even i don't even want to consider i don't want anybody and it's not just about a one person saying i don't want to read Slaughterhouse-Five i don't want to read Toni Morrison what this book ban basically does is to say what nobody gets to read Slaughterhouse-Five nobody gets to read Toni Morrison and there's a sense in which what to what extent should one person or let's take in this case, maybe one person or maybe I don't know if it was a librarian or a principal have the right to say that a whole bunch of students, a whole group of people don't have to write to read a book or don't have a right to read this book because I object. And then on the other end of things, though, if you are a parent, which we have seen in these situations who then voice their concerns about what your child is maybe being exposed to at school if you do have an issue with some of that. How do you then voice that or I guess can you not? Well, you can and parents can of course, you know raise concerns and say, maybe this is not appropriate or for things for my child or something like that. And so one option is go to talk to teachers, I mean, go to talk to teachers, go to talk to principals and say, I have some concerns with this book, see if you can work it out or something like that. again the same thing should your objection in terms of saying that i don't want my child to read that book mean that no children should read that book those are very different questions that are out there um and and again parents of course have have broad broad authority to be able to have some control over what their students learn but at the same point or at some point here along the line if parents you know if this one parent objects to this book another parent objects to to that book, somebody else objects to that book, pretty much we're down to what, maybe no books that are going to be read because everybody has a different reason to object to them. And so we also have to be thinking about how do school districts put together kind of an integrated, comprehensive curriculum in the same way that in my classes, I structure things where readings fit together so that I can get students to think about things. And maybe, just possibly, if parents are at a point where they say, I just don't like any of the books or any of the themes that are being addressed, there might be other options in terms of what? Pulling your child out, private school, religious school, homeschooling. So there's a variety of options. But again, the big issue is, should one person, whether it's a principal or a parent, be able to prevent others from reading materials? Yeah, because what we do know is that whatever you choose has a big impact on not just, of course, your student, but the other students inside of one school and also in a district as well. David Schultz, we appreciate your time. Great insight, as always, but just such an important conversation as we talk about the law and what loopholes we're seeing. So we appreciate you. Thank you for joining us this afternoon. We appreciate it. My pleasure. Thank you.