Educators spend ample time curating a curriculum that is enlightening, informative, and rich in substance, for every grade. As students develop, it is to be expected that the curriculum will also mature, to keep up with the students. By the time students enter high school, current events, sensitive issues and controversial subjects are explored in the classroom. Educators present information objectively and encourage students to develop and defend their individual  opinions on these matters. These topics tend to be political, racial, cultural, and or heavy, and a lot of parents disagree with them being discussed in the classroom labeling them as “sexual”, “innapropriate”, or “depressing”. In addition to parents, politicians, lawmakers, facebook groups, and national advocacy groups have also spoken out against the exposure to books containing the aforementioned topics. However this battle doesn’t just exist in the classroom, it exists in libraries as well, with books being pushed to be taken off of the shelves. This limits what content anyone, but primarily students would have access to, prohibiting them from beginning to unpack the complexities that exist within the human race. This prohibition stunts their growth in areas such as cultural competency and compassion, and can make them feel lonely, and depressed when relatable topics stay hidden, or are intentionally kept from them. Book banning/challenging pushes the development of cultural competency aside; to alleviate the repercussions of book banning the process for banning books should be re-examined and lengthened. This power lies in our libraries! Sign this form to encourage them to lengthen their challenge forms to require those filling them out to take.

I have provided a new proposed sample challenge form that can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i1W_cpUvN5ZImeSPTa1TT2mn3fRgG0N6ULN7f9i23LY/edit?usp=sharing