Missouri’s library book ban is based on dogma, not rational discussion of the facts | Opinion
Sadly, in the past year we have witnessed several states and local communities invoking extreme rules and passing draconian legislation restricting and outlawing what can be read or taught in schools. This is especially the case in Missouri, Florida, Texas, Utah and South Carolina.
A Missouri law, for example, made it a crime to provide minors with ill-defined “obscene” material. This resulted in librarians across the state removing hundreds of items from their collections that might be deemed criminal by the state — including works from Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, graphic novel adaptations of classics by Shakespeare and Mark Twain, and educational books about the Holocaust.
It was not a surprise, therefore, that in February the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri challenged that law. Under the law, the ACLU argues that school staff are forced to choose between students’ First Amendment rights and prosecution.
In addition, according to Joe Kohlburn of the Missouri Library Association, “The law presents specific peril for school librarians, but also endangers the work and livelihoods of public and academic librarians who work with K-12 schools in various capacities.” As he concluded, “Librarians have been undermined politically in this state for long enough, and the fear of prosecution is an ongoing issue for keeping qualified professionals in Missouri, as well as bringing new people into the profession.”
I continue to be amazed that there are those in Missouri and elsewhere who, based on their own personal choices and political ideology, want to ban books for all students — not just their own children — enrolled in public schools. Simply put, what advocates of book banning are suggesting is that they don’t want students to step inside someone’s shoes. They don’t want students seeing the world through oppressed or marginalized eyes and how that has the capacity to change one’s life, often in a potentially positive way.
Beyond the ACLU’s legal challenge, I contend that banning books has another significant effect: It prevents understanding, empathy and solidarity — outcomes to which most of us aspire when not responding to siloed and recalcitrant political beliefs in a knee-jerk manner. As a scholar of communication, I am intrigued by book banning debates in Missouri and several other states.
Temporarily see your opponent’s viewpoint
Book banning discourse reminds me of a concept in rhetoric about which I conducted research and taught in my undergraduate Argumentation and Advocacy course at the University of Texas at Austin for more than 40 years: self-risk. Self-risk is the idea that, to engage in genuine argument, we contractually agree and at least privately acknowledge at the outset of debate a willingness to be open to changing or modifying our beliefs, even if persuasion is not the actual result. Moreover, self-risk, unlike public risk, does not require us to admit to others when an argument actually changes our mind.
To engage in self-risk, one must stand inside the shoes of their interlocutors at least momentarily, and temporarily view the world as they do. This is necessary to thoughtfully and logically reflect on the merits and validity of opposing positions from the inside out. In short, self-risk is the opposite of dogma and promotes the human virtues of empathy, understanding and solidarity. Put differently, it is a person-building as well as a person-risking activity.
My students learned that self-risk is not some idealistic process limited to the ivory tower. It is not a prescribed way for people to engage one another argumentatively, nor is it a politically motivated tool explicitly designed and used by faculty to convert students. To the contrary. What they realized is that self-risk describes something all of us actually do on subjects of great importance to us and for which there are consequences — that self-risk is an optimal way to make the best decisions humanly possible and avoid costly mistakes.
We must wonder, therefore, how anyone who believes in rational argument and is concerned about education could oppose these virtues by dogmatically and habitually insisting that banning books is desirable.
Richard Cherwitz is the Ernest A. Sharpe Centennial Professor Emeritus at the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin.
