Streeter: Somerset County’s school board wants to make your kids ignorant

You know the axiom that you are what you eat? As an avid enthusiast of words, I believe you’re also what you read. As a Gen Xer, I can tell you my cohort would be far less smart, interesting, worldly and informed had our access to literature been banned by our schools.

Weirdly, that’s the future some on Somerset County’s MAGA-aligned school board want as they consider barring students under 18 years old from reading young adult books in school libraries.

Why? I think they want your kids to know less, ask fewer questions and have less access to information countering narrow beliefs.

You know. Be ignorant.

“I ask, ‘What are you interested in?’ You’re going to find a friend in there,” said Liza Skinner, a library/media specialist at Edgewater Elementary in Anne Arundel County. “I believe that my job is to connect you to as many friends in the library as possible. What happens when you don’t allow those friends in the room? And if we don’t allow that opportunity, what kind of world are we creating?”

We are creating children who will have trouble identifying with those not just like them. Don’t forget that some modern religious leaders view empathy as a sin, meaning caring about others is bad.

Not embracing the stranger? That’s not what Jesus would do.

School librarians are vital to shaping the next generation of thinkers and citizens. I would not be writing this column had I not made a cute nuisance of myself at the Northwood Elementary School media center and, later, cheerfully pressured the professionals at the Enoch Pratt Free Library’s Northwood branch, who scrambled to find new recommendations after my sister and I plowed through the summer reading list in two weeks.

I was trusted to explore within that school-approved list, forming new ideas and interests. Skinner noted that books and topics within a school’s class curriculum deal with some of the same subjects that the Somerset board decries, like violence. My kid’s sixth-grade class read an adaptation of “The Odyssey,” which centers so much on death and war.

So why can’t kids find their own texts on those topics? The books in question, if restricted, might include “The Diary of Anne Frank,” “To Kill A Mockingbird” and “Wuthering Heights,” some of which are messy, violent, psychosexual and mention race, class, gender and war. Don’t we want our children to be versed in these topics to be able to debate them?

Oh, I’m sorry. Some of y’all don’t.

A lot of the argument comes down to semantics. Critics have latched onto the term “young adult,” interpreted as age 18, which many but not all students reach in 12th grade, their last year in high school. Young adult, or YA books, though, generally span much younger in readership.

It’s like how Gen X was aspirationally reading Seventeen magazine at 13, while actual 17-year-olds were already reading Glamour and Cosmopolitan.

“Twelve to 18-year-olds are learning about the world, about themselves,” Skinner said.

The Somerset board is also being weaselly about the definition of “ban.” They say the books in question are just available only to the oldest possible students.

You can’t fool me. I was educated by Kevin Bacon’s Ren McCormack leading a renegade Midwest prom and thwarting book burners in “Footloose.”

As a Gen Xer, I read a lot of books either available in class or in school libraries that featured kids my age, like “The Outsiders” (which had themes of class, gang violence and orphanhood), “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” (menstruation, changing bodies and religion), and “To Kill A Mockingbird” (race and social justice). In the YA section at the public library, we stumbled on bat-crap crazy fare like “Flowers In The Attic” (child abuse, incest and what-the-effery).

Would I want my kid to read that book without preparation from me? No. Do I want it banned? Of course not. I want him to learn about the depths of abuse and danger while explaining that he should in no way ever, ever be involved in situations like that. It’s a cautionary tale, not a how-to.

Having a good set of available books is crucial as kids get older, Skinner said, and become more socially autonomous. “Kids who were readers tend to dwindle, a pastime they don’t do anymore. You have to give them a reason to pick up books.”

She added that the endangered text “The Outsiders,” written by 15-year-old S.E. Hinton, practically started the YA genre. When I read that book in eighth grade at Hamilton Middle School, it temporarily became my entire personality, not only because it spoke to me as a kid transforming into a teen, but because the 1993 Brat Pack movie ignited my interest in misunderstood rebels who just needed a chance.

School libraries don’t force choices on kids, but rather make it “a personal choice. That’s how we create the independent reader,” Skinner said. “How do you have better readers without any opportunities to read things they’re going to enjoy?”

I am now the parent of a middle schooler who does not have the rabid interest in reading that I had at his age, but will pore over topics he’s interested in, like baseball or conflict. This is the kid who wanted to leave a Chesapeake Shakespeare Company production of “Hamlet” until he realized that almost everyone dies at the end. Now he knows the Bard, because he was exposed to it.

Here’s the thing: If you don’t want your kid reading “Harry Potter” or “Percy Jackson,” then don’t let them. How arrogant are you to believe you can control what others’ kids can discover?

“These are formative years to discover those stories in the world,” Skinner said. “We are denying important literature that helps them understand at a crucial moment for them. It increases empathy. We always need more empathy, especially right now. We are stripping personal choice.”

And we don’t want to strip growing Americans of their personal choices, do we? Do you?