shhh... don't tell the ala

Discuss the issues surrounding intellectual freedom, censorship, selection, and in loo parentis in school libraries. Do not restrict your comments to print format only, and consider how long standing programs (such as AR, or highly restrictive filtering) may play a role in intellectual freedom issues. How will you deal with these issues?

I love the ALA. I love that they’re fighting the good fight on important issues, and I am proud to be a card-carrying member of what I think is an important organization. I think that, theoretically, the ALA’s position statements on intellectual freedom are reasonable and aspirational and certainly well thought out. But to me, these statements deal too much in the realm of theory and don’t provide a lot of guidance to librarians in practice (which is fine-- this is just to say that they feel incomplete to me). It also seems, though I don’t know, that the ALA’s position statements apply more easily to public libraries, and that school libraries might face issues of intellectual freedom and censorship in different ways.

The ALA’s statement on Access for Children and Young Adults to Nonprint Materials states: “Recognizing that librarians cannot act in loco parentis, ALA acknowledges and supports the exercise by parents of their responsibility to guide their own children's reading and viewing” (www.ala.org, 2010). I understand that public librarians don’t (and needn’t) act in loco parentis, but I think that statement gets a lot blurrier in a school setting. Teachers do act in loco parentis in all sorts of ways.

Here is my question about nonprint materials: would the ALA condone unrestricted internet access in school libraries? I agree with the ALA’s statement that students should have unfettered access to “a diversity of content and format.” Surely, though, there is information that is so obscene or age-inappropriate that exposing children to it could be harmful to them. School libraries have collection development policies-- books that are appropriate for students are chosen by librarians. Not every book that is published is one that students have access to in school. I believe it should be the same for nonprint resources like the internet. I don’t think children should have unsupervised, unfettered access to the internet. I don’t know much about how filtering software works, but I feel that some level of guidance toward appropriate resources is necessary in school libraries.

As for labeling and rating systems, this is another area where the gap between theory and practice leaves something to be desired. I understand the ALA’s position that adding ratings or other labels to materials that aren’t part of the published product (ratings on movies or video games, for example) is a form of censorship, as it can either implicitly or explicitly limit a student’s access to library materials. However. I believe there are times where some guidance is appropriate and necessary. I think it’s important to consider the intent of the ratings, and the impact that they have. Are ratings there to provide guidance or to deliberately restrict access? It reminds me of the early 1990’s debate over warning labels on music, and the sale of certain music requiring parental consent. Here’s how I feel: warning label= okay; requiring parental consent= not okay. That’s essentially how I feel here.

The other question that comes up for me is, who is doing the labeling? When big bad Accelerated Reader adds ratings for its books, that makes me suspicious (though again, I don’t have a huge problem with it unless books rated MG+ aren’t made available to students who want to read them). If librarians create systems that work for their libraries and their communities, I have less of a problem with that. I realize that puts a lot of power in the hands of librarians, but I think we’re a pretty trustworthy bunch.

An example from the real world. I work in a K-8 private school library. The head librarian is a big proponent of YA literature, and has worked hard to create a teen section that will appeal to middle school readers. Books in the teen section that have particularly mature content or language have a red dot on the barcode-- 7th and 8th graders may check these books out freely, though K-6th grade students need parental permission to do so. I think the ALA would be super cranky about this. To me, it makes practical sense. A book for an 8th grader might really not be appropriate for a 2nd grader. Are the 2nd graders prohibited from browsing through the teen books? No. If a second grader wanted to borrow Twilight (or Breaking Dawn, for that matter), do I think a parent might want to weigh in? Yes. Could I find that second grader a really exciting book about love and vampires that was more age appropriate in the meantime? Sure. If the parent gave their consent, would I have a problem with a 2nd grader checking the book out? Nope.

Could guidelines such as the red dot system be misused and infringe on students’ intellectual freedom? Absolutely, but not necessarily. The head librarian at my school explained to me that this system has freed her up to develop a really rich and varied teen collection, without fretting too much about potentially mature themes or language. So it’s complicated.

No matter what a school library’s policies are regarding intellectual freedom and access to information, they should be clearly communicated to families, through collection development policies, letters home, or other means of family education. And we should of course continually be teaching students how to evaluate books and nonprint materials for themselves.