The professional approach to book censorship

Books have been the target of censorship for a very, very long time. (A good summary can be found in The history of book bans in the United States, National Geographic, April 24, 2023 and for a world view Bannings and Burnings in History, Freedom to Read.) Attempted book removals in schools and school libraries were always of some concern to me during my 40 year career as a school librarian and library coordinator.

One flare-up happened in 2007 with the publication of the children’s book The Power of Lucky which won the American Library Association’s Newbery Award. The discussion around it led me to think a little deeper about censorship, banning, selection, and professional librarians’ responses to challenges in their libraries In a column called Don’t Defend That Book, August/September 2007. I wrote:

The discussion over the Newbery Award winning book The Power of Lucky flared last spring on LM_Net, the AASL blog and, I am sure, in meetings, phone conversations and e-mails throughout the country. Some librarians went nuts (pun intended) over the author using the word scrotum in this children’s book. 

I found it less upsetting that an anatomically correct word was used in a kiddie book and that book was given a prestigious prize, than that so many professional librarians seem to have lost the fundamental understandings of selection, reconsideration, in loco parentis, and intellectual freedom. Perhaps the controversy was a timely wake-up call at the beginning of this school year that we all need to brush up on some of these concepts. 

What troubles me is that our professional colleagues are trying to defend a single title rather than defending a fair and open process for selecting and retaining any instructional material in our schools. Quite frankly, if a school decides to remove Lucky or any other book from its library or classrooms, so be it. If it decides to block every Web 2.0 resource because it can’t discriminate between MySpace and a professional blog, so be it. If it decides that Zeffirelli's movie Romeo and Juliet not be allowed because it shows a glimpse of Olivia Hussey's breasts, so be it. 

So long as due process has been followed in making the decision…

While I can't imagine the circumstances under which I would do so, I sort of like knowing that as a citizen I can request that ill-chosen materials be removed from my public school. Harrumph!

The column goes on to list what due process looks like.

As a citizen I have the right to my opinions and values about schools should be teaching and libraries should be making available. In fact, a conscientious citizen really ought to think, communicate, and discuss such things.  

What a professional librarian should not do, however, is disregard the fact that diverse values should have a voice and formal means of challenging the inclusion of materials in public schools and libraries. I know, I know, the people on the opposite end of my end of the political spectrum are nut jobs. Actually people at the extremes of either end of the political spectrum are nut jobs.

But written selection and reconsideration policies are societies safeguards against radicals both left and right. Have your opinions about what kids should see and read - but respect the process that puts materials in libraries and keeps them there.

The lesson of advice columns

Dear Abby, dear Abby
My fountain pen leaks
My wife hollers at me and my kids are all freaks
Every side I get up on is the wrong side of bed
If it weren't so expensive I'd wish I were dead
Signed unhappy

Unhappy, unhappy
You have no complaint
You are what your are and you ain't what you ain't
So listen up buster, and listen up good
Stop wishing for bad luck and knocking on wood John Prine

 I have to admit that I am a regular advice column reader and always have been. These include Dear Abby, Dear Ann Landers, Dear Miss Manners, Ask Amy, Ask Carolyn - even columns on health and automotive advice. Like reading my horoscope each day, I immediately forget any advice given.

Personal advice columns too often have this sort of content:

Dear Miss Advice Giver,

My husband and I have been married for 37 years* and he has an annoying habit - he picks his teeth at the table and refuses to discuss it with me. My children are no longer speaking to me and my mother-in-law is mean to me. I am a recovering alcoholic and have ADHD. What should I do?

Confused in New Jersey,

Dear Confused:

Get counseling.

Advice giver

Reading advice columns has made me realize that problems are far more interesting than the solutions for them. I guess I’ve known this for a long time. Many years ago I wrote a blog post on Christmas gifts I would like to bestow on my grandchildren. One of these gifts was:

Problems. Yes, I am giving you lots of problems as a gift. You may be an old man like me before you come to appreciate this package, but it may be the most valuable one you receive. Problems engage our minds. Problems make us creative. Problems (and finding solutions to them) give you self-worth. Problems keep life from getting boring. Problems can make life fun - really! When you put these in your pocket, they may feel like a burden, but they are boosters.

Like many retirees, I get bored on occasion. Is it because I have a shortage of problems in my life? I can just see the fingers rubbing and people saying, “This is a miniature violin playing My Heart Bleeds for You.” Ah, well, I am sure if I am patient, a problem or two will present itself in the not-too-distant future…

*I always wonder why people put up with a spouse’s annoying behavior for 37 years and then suddenly decide to ask for advice.

Good guy AI?

Illustration source: https://www.memedroid.com/memes/tag/terminator

Artificial stupidity (AS) may be defined as the attempt by computer scientists to create computer programs capable of causing problems of a type normally associated with human thought. Wallace Marshall (as quoted by Ray Kurzweil)

Should we as a species be more optimistic or fearful about the rapid evolution of Artificial Intelligence? 

On one of our weekly therapy sessions (AKA hike), a friend and I reflected on how robots and androids and computer programs are portrayed in the movies. It was pretty easy to come up with a list of villainous technologies in films like 2001: A Space Odyssey; Terminator; RoboCop; The Matrix; and Blade Runner. 

But do a search for movies in which tech plays the good guy and the going gets a little tougher. We all love C3PO in Star Wars, the titular character in Wall-E, and Data in Star Trek. Many science fiction movies have robots as supporting characters - often in comedic roles. An interesting character in terms of good or bad is the Samantha character in Her. Perhaps what makes Samantha hard to categorize so simply is that she really does seem emotionally human. But a program as fully good as the Terminator is evil? Good luck finding one.

The media has set us up to be highly suspicious of machines who are as smart or smarter than we are.

I’ve been re-reading Ray Kurzweil’s prophetic book The Age of Spiritual Machines from 1998. Kurzweil begins the book by asking readers to tackle some pretty tough questions about what the press is now bandying about rather flippantly: How do we know we exist? What is consciousness exactly and do other species have it? How does the development of machine intelligence fit into the overall design of evolution?

Less existentially, he demands, we should simply start with the question “How do we actually define intelligence?” That’s more complicated than one might initially think.

Now defining stupidity is not that hard. I’ve completed that task a number of times (See Seven stupid mistakes teacher make with technology), “I use stupid under fairly constrained conditions. To me, a stupid act has a degree of willfulness about it and is serious. Making an error once is ignorance; making the same mistake multiple times is stupidity.” In short, ignorance is doing the wrong thing due to lack of knowledge; stupidity is having the knowledge, but doing the wrong thing anyway.

It may well be that in order for ChatGPT and other AIs to fully be taken as human, there may be a need to build in AS (as Marshall defines in the opening quote of this post). Until then, you can be assured that the Blue Skunk is fully human-produced - due not to its content’s brilliance, but to the dumb ideas it contains. 

The next iterations of AI should be interesting, indeed.