Today’s teenagers live in a media flooded world with a constant barrage of sexually explicit images. It is challenging for them to sort out the various emotions they experience and the sexual identities they assume as they develop and grow through physical, cognitive, and psychosocial changes. Much of the teenage literature on adolescent sexuality deals with cautions about such valid issues as HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, sexual assault, date violence, and sexual abuse. School librarians can easily access resources to help teenagers to better understand themselves and their peers and to cope with serious problems. But do the materials we provide in our school library collections represent only the negative aspects of sexual relationships? How many of our school library resources reflect positive, or even neutral or non-judgmental, aspects of adolescent sexual relationships?
It is disheartening but not surprising when the appearance of the word “scrotum” on the first page of a Newbery award-winning book creates, on a school librarian’s listserv, responses where several school librarians state their reservations about having such a book in their school library. Currently, fear of challenges, pressures around family values and community standards, and personal conflicting moral persuasions contribute to the practice of self-censorship by teacher-librarians in their collection management work. This dangerous practice serves to limit students’ access to library materials that may be critical to students’ physical and psychological sexual health and to their development as accepting, open-minded human beings --indeed to their human right to free development of personality.
The Oxford dictionary defines ‘sex’ as determining male or female groups, sexual instincts, desires and sexual intercourse whereas ‘sexuality’ is defined as the capacity for sexual feelings and a person’s sexual orientation or preference. ‘Sex education’, according to Grolier’s Encyclopedia, is the instruction in the various physiological, psychological, and sociological aspects of sexual response and reproduction. Besides the biology of human reproduction, topics in sex education include “ differentiating between appropriate and inappropriate touching, abstinence, contraception, promiscuity, and masturbation. Other issues include prostitution, homosexuality, oral and anal sex, sexually transmitted diseases, and HIV and AIDS. A third area that is often included in sex education/health curricula is the subject of emphasizing how students can and should access both a trusted adult and other sources of accurate information” (Gish, 2007).
As an experienced school teacher-librarian of 16 years in public, Catholic and private middle and high schools, I have had to recognize and wrestle with my own censorship practices. I readily admit that in the past I have withdrawn books from circulation when a parent or colleague pointed out a sexually explicit section and I have refused to purchase books that posed the threat of a possible challenge for sexual content. I realize now that where I failed in those instances was recognizing and understanding my obligation as a teacher-librarian to uphold the rights and freedom of students to read and access information.
Censorship is a common practice that school librarians need to recognize, acknowledge, understand, and resist. Self-censorship, as defined by the Book and Periodical Council (2007) of Canada, is “[a]ctions by individuals and institutions that, anticipating challenges or state censorship, choose not to create or make available controversial works”. Censorship also includes the rejection by a library authority of materials which the librarian, the board, or some other person or persons bringing pressure on them, deems to be obscene, dangerously radical, subversive, or too critical of the existing mores (Dillon & Williams, 1993). In the practice of collection development, teacher-librarians may act as censors, both consciously and unconsciously. This is particularly the case for controversial and challenged materials, as Coley’s (2002) and Bellows (2005) research findings suggest. Dillon and Williams (1993) claim that self-censorship, or inside censorship, is quietly practiced with what the librarians often perceive to be good intentions.
Teacher-librarians must consider their legal obligations by reviewing school selection policies in light of the recent challenges to the Canadian Charter and Rights and Freedoms. Courts continue to rule that schools are not exempt from upholding student’s human rights under the Charter. These rights include the freedom to information and the freedom to read (Schrader & Wells, 2005). The Canadian Library Association’s Position Statement on Intellectual Freedom states that, it is “ the responsibility of libraries to guarantee and facilitate access to all expressions of knowledge and intellectual activity, including those which some elements of society may consider to be unconventional, unpopular or unacceptable.” The Canadian School Library Association (CSLA), a division within the Canadian Library Association (CLA), supports the CLA Statement on Intellectual Freedom. The CSLA’s publication Achieving Information Literacy has in one of its Outcomes the expectation that students “respect the ideas, values and cultural backgrounds of all information sources” and “recognize the contribution of diverse points of view for learning and personal inquiries.” In the provinces, school library associations often assert their commitment to intellectual freedom. For example, the Ontario School Library Association, a division of the Ontario Library Association (OLA), states that “intellectual freedom requires freedom to examine other ideas and other interpretations of life than those currently approved by the local community or by society in general and including those ideas and interpretations that may be unconventional or unpopular” as well as “freedom of expression includes freedom for a creator to depict what is ugly, shocking and unedifying in life.”
Consider this scenario. A well regarded teacher-librarian has over many years established an effective school library program and after consultation with the students, teachers, administration, and parents adopted a prominently displayed library mission statement reflecting the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, developed a sound selection policy and created thorough procedures for the reconsideration of library materials. The school is situated in a middle class suburban community where there is a growing conservative constituency. On occasion, teachers and parents have raised concerns about some of the sexual content in the library’s materials, but never formally challenged any items. In the recent past, a neighboring high school was embroiled in a challenge to remove A Handmaids Tale from the senior English curriculum due to its sexually explicit content. After an acrimonious series of meetings, the school hearing committee decided to retain the novel. In protest, several parents withdrew their children from the school. When this teacher-librarian selected materials that had sexual content for the library program, what do you suppose was going through her mind? This essay is an attempt to speak to her and to all self-censoring teacher-librarians at that decisive moment when fear and dread may enter into their thoughts and negatively influence their actions. The aim is to help contribute to a better understanding of the motivations held by individuals and groups who challenge sexual materials in libraries.
Although no teacher-librarian can ever fully predict what library materials will be challenged or by whom, Canadian books such as The Diviners, Handmaid’s Tale, Snow Falling on Cedars, The Wars, and Hold Fast are some of the more well recognized English language novels that have been challenged in schools for their sexual content (Book and Periodical Council, 2007). Statistics from 2000 – 2005 collected by the American Library Association’s (ALA) Office For Intellectual Freedom indicate that out of 13 institutions, schools libraries were the most challenged and that sexually explicit, when combined with sex education books, had the highest number of challenges (Kravitz, 2002). In the ALA’s top 10 list of most challenged books in 2005, seven were fiction with sexual content. Judy Blume, who wrote Forever and Deenie (both works dealing with adolescent sexuality), was listed as the most challenged author. In Canada, currently under protest from many youth advocacy groups such as the Canadian Federation for Sexual Health, the Canadian AIDS Society, and the Sexual Health Division of Toronto Public Health., the ruling Conservative Party of Canada is proposing to raise the age of sexual consent from 14 to 16. Now, more than ever, there is a need for teacher-librarians to not only be prepared for these challenges, but more importantly to understand the reasons why sexual materials are repeatedly targeted and how these assertions can be misguided, fallacious, or socially irresponsible.
One of the prevailing attitudes held by many adults is that children need to be protected as long as possible from the adult world of sex, because the children are naïve and too young to understand it. Williams and Dillon (1993) outline reasons for the attempts by adults to preserve the innocence of childhood by keeping children away from books dealing with sex. The current division between adulthood and childhood is a social construct that began in the 17th century with the idea of the institution of childhood emerging in the 18th century. Subsequently the law continuously increased the age by which compulsory schooling extended childhood dependence on adults, with a corresponding loss of childrens’ rights. A reason given for this exclusion of children from sexual knowledge is that adults maintain power over children, which can be a very different motivation than that of protecting their innocence.
When the power of the adult is based on the child’s ignorance, it is very threatening to adults in authority, particularly to teachers and parents, to lose this control over children. Postman (1982, as cited in Williams & Dillon, 1993) posits why adult power over children’s ignorance exists:
As the concept of childhood developed, society began to collect a rich content of secrets to be kept from the young: secrets about sexual relations, but also about money, about violence, about illness, about death. (p 61).
Adults disclose these “secrets” in stages “culminating in sexual enlightenment “as children, in their progression to adulthood, are judged old enough to understand. Williams and Dillon ask us to consider the serious implication of excluding children from knowledge about sexual relations as a basis for adult control over children. In this regard, we should ask critical questions about our roles as teacher-librarians in relation to the child’s right to education, the free development of personality and intellectual freedom. When we self-censor sexual materials, so we act as controllers of adult “secrets”? Due to the universal and democratic access our youth have to explicit sexual information in our electronic age, are we not clinging to romantic notions of innocent childhood that are outdated? “Conservative censors can be seen as the old guard, mounting a last ditch attempt to hold on to the vestiges of adult power, privilege and exclusive knowledge” (Williams & Dillon, p. 67).
Another argument for censorship is that exposure to sexually explicit material can morally corrupt our youth and encourage them to adopt risky sexual behaviors. This point of view regards children as blank slates who lack the critical capacity to make judgments and who will uncritically or blindly act out what they read and view. Williams and Dillon (1993) refer to this as the “hypodermic needle theory” (69), where children are filled with the “poison” from the sexual content of books, films and the Internet. This flies in the face of current curriculum directions based on research about the effects of media that claim children are a diverse group who actively construct meaning from what they read and who reveal an ability to be critical and discerning. There is no empirical research that proves a definitive causal connection between reading for instance and “undesirable” behaviour. In fact the opposite is true. Youth who engage in criminal activities are less likely to be readers the result of many factors, one of which is often a reading disability (Williams & Dillon, 1993)). There are those who believe that reading material can serve as an escape valve dissipating aggression that might otherwise injure society. (Sadker & Sadker, 1973, p. 368)
Aligned with the hypodermic needle theory are those who believe that explicit sex education will lead to premature sexual behaviour (Brinkley, 1997). Many of the same arguments used in challenging sexually explicit library materials are used by opponents of sex education and their voices promoting abstinence only programs are on the rise in the US and Canada. How does the censor reconcile with the 2001 United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) reporting that the Netherlands and the Nordic countries, considered liberal and permissive in their approach to teenage sexuality, have the lowest number of teenage pregnancies whereas countries such as the United States, United Kingdom (UK) and Canada report the highest numbers in the developing world?
Conservative and religious groups such as Focus on the Family, Family and Youth, and the Christian Coalition in the US, UK and Canada have been promoting abstinence only sex education programs without contraceptive information. Monbiot (2004) writing for the Guardian states that although teenagers enrolled in the program have promised to remain virgins, results show that these assurances only “delay the onset of sexual activity”. Consequently they are unprepared for the ultimate capitulation and, because of the shame of broken vows, are less likely to use contraceptives or to seek timely help to terminate a pregnancy. Monbiot (2004) concludes that abstinence only programs actually increase the rate of teenage pregnancy. Not only are the abstinence programs a failure in lowering the US teenage birthrates, a report titled Scientific Integrity in Policymaking prepared by the Union of Concerned Scientists claims the Bush administration has prevented the US Center for Disease Control from further data collection and has “forced them to drop their project identifying the sex education programs that worked after they found that none of the successful programs were “abstinence only’”.
The UNICEF report concludes that success in lowering the teenage birth rates in the Netherlands, for instance, has resulted from “the combination of a relatively inclusive society with more open attitudes towards sex (my italics) and sex education, including contraception.” Another European study quoted in the UNICEF report, that analyzes successful sex education programs in Europe, states that “the spirit in which sex education is offered and delivered appears to be more important than the specific approach adopted”. In these regions, teenagers “feel comfortable discussing sexuality in a warm, mutually supporting environment” and when asking for “information about sexual health [they] feel no shame or embarrassment.” How many of us can say we provide the appropriate open “spirit” in providing information about teenage sexual behaviour for our students or a “warm, mutually supporting” library environment where our students “feel comfortable discussing their sexuality”? Swedes, known for their progressive socio-sexual policies considers teenage sex “neither as desirable or undesirable, but as inevitable.”
The Canadian Guidelines for Sexual Health Education posted online by Public Health Canada encourages a more integrated approach where “sexual health is linked to other curriculum areas in the school (such as the library program) to be comprehensive in relation to integration, coordination and breadth.” It states that:
Effective sexual health education provides opportunities for individuals to explore the attitudes, feelings, values and customs that may influence their choices about sexual health. The goal is to encourage positive sexual health outcomes and to increase individual awareness of the social support available for such behaviour.
Ontario’s Physical and Health Education Curriculum for grades 1-8 is based on the idea that students need to develop an “understanding of sexuality in its broadest context”, requiring that “teachers and learners must develop a comfort level with these topics so that information can be discussed openly, honestly, and in an atmosphere of mutual respect” echoing the language used in the UNICEF report. Throughout grades 9 – 12 in the Physical and Health Education Curriculum document, repeated references are made to “healthy sexuality” in its positive sense and “the need for students to develop informed decision-making”. This speaks to teacher-librarians in their efforts to support the school curriculum when selecting library materials dealing with all aspects of human sexuality “in its broadest context”, including stories that deal with the diverse experiences of teenage sexuality.
Succumbing to the neo-puritanical atmosphere by preventing student access to information about sex, teacher-librarians are contributing to the endangerment of students’ health and wellbeing. Varying Canadian statistics exist that reveal the average age at which Canadian teenagers have sexual intercourse. In the most recent Canadian Youth, Sexual Health and AIDS Study published in 2003, the average age for first intercourse for boys was 14.1 and for girls 14.5. By grade nine, 21% of Canadian teens have had sexual intercourse at least once. 33% of grade nine students reported having had oral sex. Even grade seven students are sexually active with 27% indicating heavy petting including below the waist. The major reasons given by those students who have not yet had sex are that they have not met the right person or are not yet ready. The possibility of contracting sexual diseases or the awareness of negative family and peer opinions had very little impact on their decision to have (or not) have sex. An alarming Canadian statistic is that in “2003, females aged 15 -29 years old represented 41% of AIDS diagnosis” (Mitelman, 23).
Whether teacher-librarians approve of these behaviours is irrelevant. What we are obliged to do is make readily available, to all students, reliable, explicit information about contraception and safe sex practices in an open and proactive atmosphere. As well, Young Adult literature must be available dealing with these very real issues.
Historically, the purpose of children’s literature was to teach children how to behave and to pass on the traditions and morals of the times. Some parents and teachers in a backlash response to the contemporary proliferation of sexually explicit images on billboards, in film, television, magazines and the Internet, want the school to be a place sheltered from such images and knowledge, a place where a higher “moral” ground is upheld and protected. As Simons and Dresang (2001) comment in School Censorship in the 21st Century:
[I]t must seem paradoxical, if not laughable, to the streetwise teenagers of today to see books being removed from classrooms [and libraries] because they describe a full-bosomed female or an incident of nocturnal emissions of semen…..Given the fact that serious discourse on real human problems is conspicuous by its absence, school programs of study may take on an Alice-In –Wonderland aura to many of these young people (p. 66).
Even worse, teenagers may see school as a place where materials that reflect their culture are censored due to fear and conservative forces. Consequently it has less relevance to their lives as Williams and Dillon (1993) warn us:
For a substantial and growing number of children, school is an irrelevance. The gap between school life and real life appears to be widening. Whenever we as educators try to avoid such controversy,whenever we duck and weave instead of confronting issues, we contribute to that gap (p. 72).
School libraries should be places where students find literature and information that is considered by some to be dangerous and subversive, because what challenges the status quo can help students grapple with the very difficult questions and issues regarding their sexuality, an integral part of themselves as functioning social and biological human beings. Students need to trust that in their school libraries, they will have fair access to diverse literatures about various sexual identities and explorations, whether they are sexually active, contemplating experimenting sexually, or abstaining from sex.
So there she is, the teacher-librarian ready to embrace a more open and democratic approach to her collection development in a socially responsible manner that reflects the sexual health and the diversity teenage students. What resources are there to assist her in selecting library materials? For controversial young adult fiction that is more “edgy, raw and relevant” depicting a “harsh realism” dealing with issues like teenage pregnancy, sexual abuse and homosexuality with no easy answers, Radical Reads: 101 YA Novels on the Edge by Bodart (2001) is one recommended resource. The list of controversial yet highly regarded and well-reviewed books dealing with the more negative aspects of teenage sexuality compiled by Bellows (2005) in his research on self-censorship by school librarians includes such titles as Friction, America, True Believer, Stoner and Spaz, and When Kambia Elaine Flew in From Neptune. Novels depicting adolescent sexuality in a more positive light include titles such as, Go and Come Back, Postcards from No Man’s Land and My Heartbeat.
Sadly, at this stage, few print resources depicting positive teenage sex relations, especially for same-sex, are easily accessible to adolescents even in large urban centres like Toronto. In a search of the Toronto Public Library’s OPAC under the heading of ‘Youth – Sexual Behaviour – Juvenile Fiction’, it was possible to find 3 titles listed, all of them in French. Under ‘Youth – Sexual Behaviour – Fiction’ 9 titles were listed with some even in English. One of the titles, A Bad Boy Can be Good for a Girl, showed 13 copies circulating and 23 holds. Under ‘Teenage Girls-Sexual Behaviour – Fiction’, one item appeared, entitled Whores On the Hill, about girls enjoying their youthful freedom and entering the world of sexuality, had no plot summary.For Doing It by Melvyn Burgess,a book about the lives of three sexually active British boys, recommended in the School Library Journal, there were no summaries or even subject headings listed. Even Forever by Judy Blume, who is one of the most censored authors in the United States, has no subject headings or summaries providing an indication of what the novel is about. The patron must access another library database, such as Thomson Gale’s What Do I Read Next?, in order to find more detailed subject searches and plot summaries. What is the message here? Has the censoring chill set in so deeply that the selection of sexually explicit books with a positive slant remains at a paltry few (and even those are inadequately indexed)? As Judy Blume’s words remind us, “it's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.” Add the censorship of the Internet in school libraries through filtering to that list and the loss is alarming.
Franz Kafka’s description of the role of literature in society maintains that a “ book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul”. In our duties and responsibilities as professional teacher librarians let us not contribute to the “chill” of self-censoring literature that deals with teenage sexual relationships. Instead, let us be the educators who provide a warm and mutually supportive atmosphere with relevant and accessible resources available in promoting a sexually healthy life for our youth. Because family values regarding sexual issues are vastly different, teacher-librarians should not be involved in imposing their sexual mores or standards on the family by neglecting to purchase materials about teenage sexuality. Furthermore, if teacher-librarians are to support provincial Physical and Health Education curricula on sex education, we must demand that publishers get out of the cold and into the heat of teenage sex to provide a variety of literature dealing with adolescent sexual relations in the broadest sense and rainbow of identities, but especially the affirming variety.
Finally, on a global perspective, sex education for children is critical in preventing the horrors of HIV/AIDS, child pornography, child prostitution as well as trafficking in children. UNICEF reports that every year over 2 million children are sexually exploited. Programs such as Girls' Access to Education (GATE), through organizations like World Education has been working to prevent trafficking of girls using a curriculum that focuses heavily on adolescent girls' health and empowerment issues. In these classes, girls learn about the dangers of trafficking, prostitution and other forms of abuse, as well as the consequences of unsafe sex, STDs, and HIV/ AIDS. Many girls have saved themselves from sexual exploitation as a result of what they learned through the GATE program. (Academy, 2006)
Children throughout the world, have the right to learn about sexual and reproductive health as an integral part of their general health. Munoz (2000) aptly summarizes that we need to empower young people to make their own decisions free from discrimination, coercion or violence. They have a right to receive honest, scientific and timely education for the full and responsible exercise of sexuality. Young people have the right to enjoy equality between women and men so that they may be able to make responsible and conscientious decisions that guarantee their quality of life. She concludes by drawing an interesting parallel that educators need to acknowledge:
Sexuality appears to be the only area of life in which parents and teachers agree that the less informed or trained people are, the better their chances of making the right decisions. In all other aspects of life, we are sure that the sooner and better prepared we are, the greater our chances of being successful. We would never think of waiting until our child had decided to study engineering to teach her how to count (p. 121)
References
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