My experience with the library system of the American Public School program
I would like to begin with some background of my literary experience. I was raised by a mother who did not believe in censoring what I read. I was not allowed to read her very clearly trashy romances until I was 18 (side note, I read much worse smut at 13. Comedy romances are pretty good though). I was basically allowed to get and read whatever I wanted. That's how it was for me.
So, I went from Magic Treehouse in first grade, to middle school novels by the time I was in the third grade. I was a big fan of my older sister's spy novels at the time. I was making leaps and bounds in my reading and language comprehension. And then of course, our schools got too crowded and I was redistricted into a middle school for fifth grade. I was excited at first, I would have access to the books that were in my reading level, right?
Wrong.
First library day rolled around, and we were told we could only check out books that were grade level appropriate for our group. Try telling this to a mousy me who had never been told a book was too mature for me. Me, who went to the library once a week during the summer, and read two to three three-hundred page books in one day, staying up all night because I had to know the ending and it couldn't wait until morning.
So I looked around and found that spy novel I remembered reading in third grade. I tried to check it out, only to be told that it was a middle school book. So I had to put it back, I would then pull several books that I had read before, because I had asked my older sister if I could read them from her book shelf. All too mature for a fifth grader.
I eventually settled with a book trilogy I had read before last summer that I knew I would be allowed to get.
A few weeks later we took that stupid reading level test. I, young, 10ish years old, had the reading level of 14-15 year old. I was supposed to be reading three grades above where I was.
So I, smart boy that I was, talked to my mom, told her everything, talked to the librarians, teachers and the principal to negotiate a way for me to read within my actual level. We suggested permission slips. we got shot down, the middle schoolers were taking the books meant for my age range, meaning we had no books to read.
I read the same series eight times, librarians tried to give me new books but I owned most of the good series, read and reread them long before I had been "of age" to comprehend the stories.
Middle school rolled around and I had begun reading Jules Verne, Sherlock Holmes, and had tried to convince my mother to let me buy a book on the murders of Jack the Ripper when I was 11. (My gram was on board, she appreciated my healthy curiosity in the morbid. my mom? Less so).
So yeah, I learned about the censoring of reading by 10, and at that point I was pissed, I didn't like that, I was never one to be told no on my reading material. So I began reading more than what they would have wanted me to.
Now I'm anti government, and censorship of literature is the largest downfall of man. One of the first thing we learn in middle school is the book burnings the Nazis did in Germany. That was the first thing we learned about, to show that a government was controlling.
AND GUESS WHAT.
Controlling the flow of information is fucking fascist. And we have both challenged and banned books, I have read several. Granted, just because a book has been challenged or banned in some places and or schools does not mean a child want's to read about an infant shoved into a freeze when they're 15. I have read Anne Frank, Over the Cuckoo's nest, Of Mice and Men, When the Street Cars Come Back. Those were required readings, and I hated them, Anne Frank had so much trauma, Over the Cuckoo's Nest was written by a white man in the perspective of a mute Native American man. Of Mice and Men was Ableist and infantilizing of character's with a disability, causing us to feel sympathy before hitting us with the "shoot the man with a mental issue because he's better off dead". When the Street Cars Come Back had, among other things, incest, rape, abuse, infant murder, murdered infant in a chest freezer as black mail.
Now if you want to read these things, go on, you can, I just don't think kids should read on murder and war, death and rape, as a requirement. Do I know what should be implemented instead? Hell no, I'm not a teacher, I'm a college student who likes to write. Kids should read stories that teach them lessons and inspire them to push boundaries, not scare them into conformity.
All this to say, I'm still fucking bitter that my school wouldn't let me read spy novels at the age of 10. Fuck you guys, now I write porn on patreon.
(Plug for the patreon: lemon_yard is the username, go support my gay ass, if you want)
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