Banned Books Week to remind Arizonans of growing censorship in public schools

It may feel like a thing of the past, but book bans in Arizona are currently in effect—a fact educators and reading enthusiasts want to make sure isn’t swept under the rug.

The week of September 22 is Banned Books Week, a time organizers hope to highlight the value of free and open access to information reading books can bring, while also drawing attention to the harms of censorship.

Sen. Christine Marsh, D-Phoenix, a former public school teacher, has spoken out and voted against every law that has the potential to ban books in Arizona.

The past several legislative sessions have been inundated with bills that attack public schools, Marsh said.

The broader concept of banning books troubles Marsh, who believes it often ignores children who come from different racial backgrounds, are part of the LGBT community, or are facing tragic circumstances–all themes that are prevalent in books flagged to be banned.

“Taking away the opportunity for those kids to see themselves, at least a tiny bit, in the literature that they are reading, I find to be a disturbing problem,” Marsh told The Copper Courier. “Reading is one of the best ways to learn empathy.”

It creates more work for teachers who are already overwhelmed with some of the largest class sizes in the nation, Marsh said. She pointed to the time, energy, and money that comes with removing books from classrooms. In many instances, schools might have already purchased sets of books, or teachers might have purchased tests on books before they were banned; almost functioning as an indirect way to defund public schools.

Feeding into the culture war of public education

In Fall 2020, once school resumed in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the “culture war” on public education intensified. There were national organizations and anti-public school legislators feeding into fear and capitalizing on the idea that what teachers were doing needed to be monitored for indoctrination.

“What was fed to them [parents] is that ‘these folks who are on the computers with your kids [teachers] are bad, you should be watching what they’re doing,’ and that fed into the fear of what was happening in larger society,” Garcia said.

In 2022, the movement obtained a valuable ally: voters elected Tom Horne as Superintendent of Public Instruction. Horne ran on a promise of “exposing horrible teachers,” according to Arizona Education Association President Marisol Garcia, which restricts teachers’ ability to do their job, and has put them in the crosshairs of the far-right.

Many teachers have been taking “preventative measures” such as proactively sending out permission slips for books when they aren’t required to, Garcia said, out of fear of legal repercussions from parents.

Unfounded book fears sow mistrust

In September, a Higley Unified School District teacher was investigated by police after a parent accused her of disseminating child pornograpy and being a groomer over a book used for a school assignment, 12News reported. The unfounded accusation brought with it harassment and threats of lawsuits from other parents.

“They’re afraid of the climate that has been created by politicians around these issues that are not real,” Garcia said. “The culture war is actually impacting teacher retention.”

Last year, Garcia received a permission slip from her son’s teacher, asking for parental permission to read The Color Purple by Alice Walker in class. The book details the life of an African-American woman living in the South who survives incredible abuse and bigotry, and has been labeled by the state legislature as “sexually explicit.”

“[Its] an amazing book that has won every single award and plays a critical role in understanding history,” Garcia said, and that parents should be just as upset as educators about books like these not being able to be utilized in classrooms.

Overburdening educators

The environment that Horne and likeminded state legislators have created is very negative for teachers, diluting what they can teach and creating more work for them, said Tyler Kowch, communications manager for Save Our Schools Arizona.

“A lot of the attacks on book bans are really attacks on representation,” Kowch said.”These books are lifelines to students who, you know, maybe don’t get to be themselves at home, but they can read a book, and they can see themselves in a book.”

Teachers will always be mindful of district standards, the maturity levels of students, and what is appropriate for them, Kowch added.

“When people talk about sexually explicit material, oftentimes they’re talking about queer representation, those are two very, very different things, and they may try to conflate them,” Kowch said.

Teachers need to be trusted to be the professionals that they are, Garcia said.

Garcia believes much of the mistrust and fear surrounding what’s taught in schools could be alleviated if teachers were trusted to be the professionals that they are. Instead, book bans are used to drive a wedge between parents and educators, in turn contributing to why teachers leave the profession and why so many are not entering the education workforce.

“Educators enter the profession with—most of us—a secondary degree outside of our bachelor’s degree, who are working beyond our means and being exploited by all these expectations put on by legislators,” Garcia said. “To have people who don’t have the background in how and what to teach at a grade level, telling us what we should and not teach.”

In 2023, Arizona had one of the highest rates of educators planning to leave the profession at 13 percent, which is nearly double the national rate.

“I think that at the end of the day, parents and educators are on the same side, politicians are trying to leverage this for election purposes,” Garcia said.

What laws have been proposed, and what is in place?

LAW: House Bill 2495, introduced in the 2022 legislative session, requires public schools to get parental approval to teach books or other material that make references to sex, and was signed into law by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey.

LAW: House Bill 2439, introduced in the 2022 legislative session, establishes parental review for books that are approved for public school libraries, requiring schools to post the list of newly purchased books on their websites for at least 60 days after approval and was signed into law by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey.

Kowch attended a Paradise Valley school board meeting after this bill was passed, where it was pointed out that the schools would have to do an entire index of their library, and scan every single book to put on a website.

FAILED: Senate Bill 1700, introduced in the 2023 legislative session, would have allowed a parent of a public school student to request for the removal of a book they find lewd or too sexual. It was passed by the state Senate, but never became law after being held in the House.

This law would have created the opportunity for just one parent to have an outsized influence over what is taught to an entire class, Kowch said.

VETO:Senate Bill 1007, introduced in the 2024 legislative session, was an extension of HB2495, adding a felony designation, but never became law after being vetoed by Gov. Katie Hobbs.

VETO: Senate Bill 1696, introduced in the 2023 legislative session, would have made it illegal to have any form of undefined “sexually explicit material,” or for sexually explicit acts to be filmed or facilitated on property owned, leased, or managed by the state or any other government entity in Arizona. By combining materials and facilitation into one law, it would have prevented librarians at public schools and libraries from referring teens to some classic works of literature—and even informative books about reproduction and puberty. It was vetoed by Gov. Katie Hobbs.

“A parent has a right if their student has come home with a book to say, ‘oh, you know, I don’t want you checking this book out from the library, this isn’t the value that we teach in our home,’ but they don’t have the right to, you know, impose their own personal values on other people,” Kowch said.

The legislators passing these laws aren’t interested in protecting children once you see the other initiatives that they go after and the types of things that they ignore, Kowch said.

What books are being banned?

A few books that would fall under the category of “sexually explicit” or “make references to sex” include: The Color Purple by Alice Walker, The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, and the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.