Freedom to Read? Part Five: Libraries Should be Open to All - Except the Censor

Editor’s note: This op-ed is the last of a series of articles about State Superintendent Ryan Walters and the erosion of intellectual freedom in Oklahoma’s public-school libraries. Since taking office, Walters has called on lawmakers to remove books from school libraries, instituted book-banning rules, shunned the American Library Association, and recommended deregulating over 200 districts from state library staffing standards.‍

March 1, 2024‍

Since we began work on this series, recent developments have only crystalized our position that state superintendent of public instruction Ryan Walters poses a danger to intellectual freedom in Oklahoma’s public-school libraries. We have repeatedly reached out to Walters’ press secretary, Dan Isett, to request information and a response to the concerns we and other advocates have voiced about Oklahoma State Department of Education policies, including:

 · The call for book bans in public-school libraries, especially titles that deal almost exclusively with sexuality and gender, topics both awkward and uncomfortable but especially important given the increased rate of suicide attempts among LGBTQ+ teens who crave acceptance over rejection;

· A severe school librarian shortage, that, instead of being addressed, is enabled by allowing districts to be deregulated from mandated library staffing levels;

· Adopting new information literacy standards that do not align with national best practices and pushes Oklahoma school libraries away from accepted standards promoted by the American Library Association and the American Association of School Libraries, which have been in place in the state for years with no issue, until now;

· The suppression of ideas, including Critical Race Theory, Social-Emotional Learning, and acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community, instead promoting a philosophy of barring critical thought and debate in a marketplace of ideas and advocating for a prohibition of ideas, speech, and media that do not fall in line with Walters’ own political views;

· The intentional snubbing of valuable allies such as the Oklahoma Library Association, the Oklahoma State School Boards Association, the Cooperative Council for Oklahoma School Administration, and the Oklahoma Public School Resource Center;

· The real and present danger created for LGBTQ+ students as Walters carries on his crusade against “woke indoctrination,” as evidenced by the recent tragic death of Owasso High School student Nex Benedict, a nonbinary teen who told police the day before they died that they had been bullied and beaten by other students in a school restroom; and,

· The fact that only one out of four Oklahoma fourth graders scored proficient or better on the state’s standardized reading test in 2022, nine points below the national average.

Our call for OSDE to address these critical issues has gone unanswered. An open records request submitted on December 7, 2023, asking for the number of book challenges made under OSDE’s new administrative rule barring “pornography” and “sexualized content” from school library shelves and which titles are being challenged has been unfulfilled for eighty-five days (as of March 1) and counting.

The good news is that some Oklahoma public school districts are finally stepping up to resist Walters and his fascist notions. During a February 20 special meeting, the Edmond Public Schools Board of Education voted unanimously to file a petition asking the Oklahoma Supreme Court to determine if rules adopted and enforced by the Oklahoma State Board of Education, OSDE, and Walters are valid under Oklahoma law.

The action is in response to a letter Walters sent to the district last month regarding two books in its high school libraries. One title is The Kite Runner, by Afghan American author Khaled Hosseini, an acclaimed 2003 work that features a scene depicting an act of sexual assault inflicted upon one character. The other title is The Glass Castle, a 2005 memoir by American author Jeannette Walls that depicts, among other things, sexual abuse suffered by Walls and her siblings during their beleaguered and difficult upbringing. The book spent 440 weeks on the New York Times paperback bestseller list.

“In the letter, the State Department of Education ordered the district to remove those books from the libraries, which is not something within their authority to do,” Edmond Superintendent Dr. Angela Grunewald said in a statement to parents. “If we do not remove the books from our libraries, the State Department of Education is threatening to downgrade the district’s accreditation.”

Since 1997, Grunewald explained, Edmond Public Schools has had a clear policy for the review of books in its school libraries. U.S. Supreme Court decisions have also found that local school boards and superintendents may not “unilaterally remove materials from public school libraries without following the policy of their district. Legal counsel advised the district that removing the books without following its own policy could violate those rulings, she said.

“We also firmly believe in local control for school boards in Oklahoma and standing up for the laws passed by the state legislature that guarantee that control. Simply put, we contend that this is a case of overreach where the state department of education has wrongly removed our locally elected school board from making decisions regarding education and materials inside of our district,” Grunewald said. “I want to make clear that today’s action is not about any individual book or books. It is about the fundamental principle that these issues are for our school board and our community to decide—not the State Department of Education.”

Since then, three other Oklahoma City metro school districts—Oklahoma City Public Schools, Deer Creek Public Schools, and Mid-Del Public Schools—have come out in support of Edmond Public Schools and their action. “This is a battle that should matter to every school district and every individual who cares about public education,” Mid-Del Schools Superintendent Dr. Rick Cobb said in a statement. “This is a battle against overreach by the state. This is a battle for local control.”

Deer Creek Schools Superintendent Dr. Jason Perez said that every public school district in Oklahoma has a duly elected board of education chosen by their respective communities to represent the interests and values of their patrons. “This level of local control is a right belonging to public school parents in Oklahoma and should not be undermined by any agency at the state level,” he said. “Our communities deserve local control, and our school districts need the first opportunity to address issues as they arise.”

Oklahoma City Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Sean McDaniel (before announcing his resignation days later for unrelated reasons) said his district supports the rights of school districts to challenge actions they believe do not serve the best interests of their students and community. “Districts have schoolboard members, who are elected by their constituents, to establish the policies that best fit the needs of their respective community.”

The Oklahoma State Legislature is also wising up to Walters’ antics, seeking more of a say about who is selected to serve on the state board of education. SB 1395 advanced from committee on February 28, a measure that would add four seats to the state board of education, two seats each to be appointed by the House and Senate leadership. HB 3550 would give the legislature authority to deny or withdraw district accreditation, rather than the state board of education having that power.

You pay for what you get

Ryan Walters won a free and fair statewide election to become state superintendent in 2022. We can’t deny that, but it’s not like Oklahoma voters didn’t know who they were electing.

On July 28, 2022, then the Oklahoma Secretary of Education, Walters stood before the Oklahoma State Board of Education, led by then State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister. As a candidate for state superintendent in the middle of a tough Republican primary runoff election campaign, Walters addressed the board about a social media post from a conservative account the day before, alleging that Tulsa Public Schools libraries contained copies of Gender Queer: A Memoir and Flamer, two books with LGBTQ+ themes that have been among the nation’s most-challenged titles.

“What we see is left-wing indoctrination pushed into the school system under the guise of academic learning,” said Walters, demanding that the state school board “do something” about the accreditation of Tulsa Public Schools. “We cannot allow district leaders to push indoctrination and pornography on our kids. We have to do better for our kids.”

Tulsa Public Schools quickly removed the books from their shelves in an act of self-censorship. It wasn’t the first time Walters invoked the perceived evils of “left-wing indoctrination,” and it certainly hasn’t been the last. The episode resonates as a prologue to his current administration.

On January 23, Walters announced he had named Chaya Raichik, the woman behind the “Libs of TikTok” social media account, to OSDE’s mysterious and secret Library Media Advisory Committee. For all we know, Raichik could be the only member. We asked Isett for the names of the other committee members but received no response. Known for her anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, Raichik re-posted a video in August 2023 that had been created by a school librarian from Tulsa Union Public Schools’ Ellen Ochoa Elementary. The video, which had been altered by Raichik, was meant as a joke, but that’s not how Walters took it. After the altered video went viral, the school began receiving bomb threats.

The school librarian, Kirby Mackenzie, was named Union Public Schools’ 2023-24 teacher of the year on February 21 and will compete for the title of Oklahoma teacher of the year.‍

Last thoughts‍

There are glimmers of hope in all of this. Maybe it’s not the end of the world.

The tricky thing for us and others to understand is: if Oklahoma students are not reading up to grade level, and reading is one of the “Back to Basics” disciplines deemed so important by Walters, why subvert the state’s public-school libraries?

In a 2023 op-ed published by The Daily Caller, a Washington D.C.-based conservative media outlet, Walters wrote that woke education is “the forced projection of inaccurately held, anti-education values onto our students. Further, to go after wokeness in education means that we are going after the forced indoctrination of our students and our school systems as a whole. We are going after books like Gender Queer and Flamer that are nothing more than thinly veiled porn pushed onto our students.”

While books like Flamer, Gender Queer, The Kite Runner, and The Glass Castle do feature mature content best suited for older readers, labeling them as pornography and banning them from library shelves is a gross injustice. Local school districts have their own policies for handling book challenges, and they should be able to decide what books belong and which ones don’t (although our view is: “knowledge is power, and students should be armed with that power”).

The books Walters objects to depict gay characters and situations. Like the “Don’t Say Gay” bills passed in Florida and proposed in Oklahoma, Walters seeks to scrub all mention of queer people from Oklahoma classrooms, as if they don’t exist or shouldn’t exist. Walters is doing the same thing with race, as Oklahoma’s ban on teaching Critical Race Theory, HB 1775, is the subject of a federal lawsuit. Next on the chopping block seems to be Social-Emotional Learning and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, which have drawn the ire of not just Walters but Governor Kevin Stitt and others in the legislature.

And what does Walter offer us instead? He gives us an OSDE partnership with PragerU Kids, an online education platform that makes apologies for slavery in the United States and genocide committed by explorer Christoper Columbus. He gives us “Teach Kids to Read” Week, a partnership with the infamous book banning group Moms for Liberty. Like an annoying TikTok video on repeat, he gives news interviews saying Nex Benedict’s death is being “exploited” to advance woke indoctrination.

In his mission to wipe clean Oklahoma public schools of wokeness, Walters seeks to replace one dogma with another—white Christian nationalism—a political philosophy that led presidential candidate Nikki Haley to omit slavery as a cause for the U.S. Civil War and other right-wing commentators to claim the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection was a “peaceful protest.”

Wokeness, as Walters uses the word, refers to anything that doesn’t fit into his (increasingly) narrow political worldview. There’s just one problem—we all don’t look, think, and feel the same as Walters. Oklahoma is full of people who aren’t upstart (alternative) history teachers from McAlester, and we aren’t all white, straight, Christian males. Some of us are students who attend Oklahoma public schools. We need books that speak to us, that tell our stories and represent our values. We need professionally trained librarians to ensure we have access to high quality books on all manner of educational topics. We need administrators who care about us more than the hot-button political phrases of the day. We need a society that accepts us for who we are.

Last year, the books that got banned were low-hanging fruit like Gender Queer and Flamer. Today, it’s important literary works such as The Kite Runner and The Glass Castle. It’s frightening to speculate what books will get banned tomorrow, next month, or next year under Oklahoma’s current state superintendent.

In response to an October 1960 questionnaire in the Saturday Review, an influential mid-century American magazine, John F. Kennedy said this about censorship: “If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all — except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.”

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