Censor your own kid's reading if you must

Crandall Park offers exciting diversity of birds

I’m glad the Galway school board rejected two recent requests to ban books from the high school curriculum. But why was the board involved?

School boards have bigger and better things to do than micromanage curriculums. Teachers pick the books, and if students or parents object, they can take it up with the teachers. Get elected officials involved and, before long, students like those in Florida are reading that slaves learned skills they were able to apply for their personal benefit. 

The Galway board voted 6-1 to keep the books, and, judging from community reaction, local parents oppose book-banning. 

But around the country, parents who want to whitewash American history have demanded that white students never read anything that could make them feel guilty and mounted successful campaigns to take over school boards and library boards.

We should not feel safe from their self-righteousness here in upstate New York. A motivated minority can beat an apathetic majority in elections where only a fraction of voters show up.

In Galway, the books in question concern gender identity and immigration, among other things. Parents who want their kids to avoid such issues are allowed to have them opt out and choose substitute books. Why isn’t that good enough? Why do some people feel compelled to force their preferences on every other family?

David Page cast the single vote against the books, saying he read the books himself, loved them and looks forward to having his children read them.

But other kids might not have parents like him, he said.

“I have concerns for students who don’t have that support at home,” he said.

What a guy. That’s how you dress up censorship as concern. 

Many of the rest of us, when we had teenagers at home, did not consider it a good use of our time to track down and review every book they were reading.

The books in question are “The 57 Bus” and “Ink Knows No Borders: Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee Experience.” 

“The 57 Bus” tells a true story about an episode in 2013 in Oakland, California, where a teenage boy on a school bus used a lighter to set fire to the skirt worn by a non-binary student who was sleeping.

Both books have been critically praised and are widely used in schools. They address complex subjects central to the American experience.

I don’t know why a couple of people in Galway asked for these books to be removed, because the complainants have not revealed themselves. They did not speak up when the subject was discussed at school board meetings. Apparently, they were hoping to get the curriculum changed without saying who they were.

We want school to reflect the complexity of our history — the light and dark, shades and shadows. That can’t happen if we tell students to close their eyes.

Crandall Park

We took a little walk along the pond in Crandall Park this week, and a great blue heron floated down and landed in the knee-high water. I wanted to get a photo of the heron in flight, but it was busy hunting for its brunch near the shore, unconcerned about the boys running around nearby, and I tired of waiting.

But while we stood there, next to a big patch of green plants with little orange flowers that was buzzing with bees, a gray-green hummingbird zipped by our shoulders, hovered over the flowers for an instant then disappeared in a flash across the road and into the trees on the other side. Thrilled, I entered both birds in my “life list” on the Merlin bird-watching app on my phone.

A great blue heron stands in the shallow water near the shore of Crandall Park pond on Friday.