The Pennsylvania Senate on Tuesday voted to advance legislation that ostensibly aims to give parents more insight and control over what their children read in school. But opponents have vigorously argued that the measure amounts to a de facto book ban and an unnecessary effort to exclude content by and for marginalized communities.
Senate Bill 7 passed 29-21, with state Sen. Lisa Boscola (D-Northampton) voting with the Republican majority. It would require schools to identify sexual content in curriculum, materials and books, create an opt-in policy to notify parents of sexual content by including a list of book titles on a form, allow parents to review materials and require parents to provide direct consent for their children to access or provide access to sexual content. advanced by the Senate Education Committee last week.
The bill’s lead sponsor, Sen. Ryan Aument (R-Lancaster), has been working on similar legislation since 2021 and has insisted that SB 7 is not a book ban, an argument he repeated on the Senate floor Tuesday.
“We are not seeking to ban books and we are not seeking to censor any group,” Aument said. “We are simply seeking to empower parents to make decisions about their own children, not anyone else’s. You only have to look at local school board elections and local school board meetings across the commonwealth to see that this is an issue that concerns many parents.”
Aument said he took a “thoughtful approach” to crafting the legislation. “We listened to families. We listened to school administrators, teachers and librarians. And we worked hard to craft a proposal to make sure that all parties felt heard and respected,” he said, adding that the result was a proposal that closely resembles legislation recently passed in Virginia.
School districts struggle to implement recent rules on sexually explicit books
State Sen. Amanda Cappelletti (D-Delaware) said SB 7 is a book ban. She called it part of a “staggering and growing trend of censoring books in schools and libraries” and a “direct attack on the right to read and our freedom of speech.”
Cappelletti said the “extremely vocal minority” pushing for book bans fail to see a “glaring” reality.
“We all like to believe that every child grows up in a family that loves them and values them for exactly who they are. We know that’s not true, unfortunately,” she said, adding that many children need support and information outside their families that can often be found in books.
“The children who need books that explore gender identity and sexual orientation are most likely those whose parents deny them and their communities the right to learn from those books,” she added. “Exploring relationships, sex, and love are some of the most difficult and rewarding hurdles we will face in life. We need the right education and materials to ensure people can explore these spaces safely and with the right knowledge to engage compassionately with the world around them.”
Sen. Nikil Saval (D-Philadelphia) said the bill is not specific enough in its definition of what is “explicit,” and warned that its current language could exclude literary works such as Milton’s Paradise Lost, St. Augustine’s Confessions and the Song of Songs, all of which contain explicit references to sexuality. He noted that Paradise Lost is one of 150 books recently removed from shelves school district in Orlando, Florida.
“The experience of many states that have adopted similar laws shows that these prejudicial distinctions cannot be so easily made, even though this bill attempts to do so clumsily and poorly,” Saval said. “Let us be clear and clear about what this bill, if passed, would do. The standards of liberal education that our founders fought for would be decimated. SB 7 would destroy the educational system it purports to uphold.”
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Boscola, who broke with the Democrats and voted for SB 7, said she worked with Aument on a previous version of the bill, which she voted against, and believes the latest version is clearly better.
“Senate Bill 7 strikes a needed balance between parental control over a child’s exposure to sexual content,” Boscola said. She added that school boards are in the impossible position of having to make decisions about books by holding meetings where parents show up to protest, and which are becoming increasingly heated.
“There are groups that want to ban all books that have even the slightest reference to sexual content. And groups on the other side that think all sexual content is OK,” she said. “The General Assembly needs to lead. It needs to establish state policy that balances these radically different perspectives of parents on both sides of this issue. We can’t leave it up to 500 different school boards.”
Sharon Ward, senior policy adviser at the Education Law Center of Pennsylvania, said the state already has sturdy protections in place and SB 7 would further encourage book bans at the school district level.
“The bill would take teachers away from their students by requiring them to search through thousands of volumes to find a single word or phrase that might offend a parent, regardless of the book’s merit or popularity, ignoring two decades of court decisions that have rejected this form of book banning.” Ward wrote in an email to the Capital-Star.
Senate Bill 340, sponsored by state Senator Doug Mastriano (R-Franklin), requires school districts to post on their websites a link or title of each textbook used in schools, the course syllabus and the state academic standards for each course.
Several Democrats opposed SB 340, saying it was unnecessary. Sen. Art Haywood (D-Philadelphia) cited several school district policies that already allow parents to review reading materials. “School districts already provide parents, guardians, or students with significant input into the materials in the library and the curriculum,” Haywood said.
Similar curriculum-focused legislation was approved by the Senate and House of Representatives in 2021, but ultimately vetoed by Governor Tom Wolf.
Sen. Jay Costa (D-Allegheny) called SB 340 “an example of a solution in search of a problem with political motivations behind it,” adding that it would only serve to add more mandates to already overburdened school districts.
Mastriano said there was “nothing nefarious or political” behind the legislation. “It’s definitely “something we need to do to build trust with parents,” he said.
SB 340 passed along party lines, 28-22.
Growing number of book bans in the country
Above In the last few years there has been an unprecedented wave of book bans and censorship introduced by parents and right-wing groups. Many prohibitions It began at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 and was part of the frustration over mask mandates and online learning that ultimately led to the politicization of school board meetings.
US House Republicans Attack ‘Obscene’ Books in School Libraries
The U.S. House of Representatives Education and Workforce Committee held a hearing last week on whether certain books with LGBTQ+ content should be removed from public school libraries. Jonathan Friedman, director of free speech and education programs at PEN America, said during the hearing that the organization has been conducting research on book banning “off and on for about 100 years as the problem has grown.”
He said that three or four years ago, “there was nothing like this on the scene. Something has changed. A movement encouraging people to try to censor information and ideas.”
Between January 1 and August 1, there were 695 attempts to censor library materials and 1,915 objections to specific titles in U.S. public, school, and academic libraries. According to Office of Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association.
This reflects a 20% boost from 2022, which set the previous record for book challenges since the ALA began collecting data more than two decades ago. According to the ALA, the “vast majority” of challenges were for books written by or about an LGBTQ+ person or a member of the LGBTQ+ community.
‘It’s a question of censorship’: Lawmakers, experts discuss the impact and consequences of book bans
“The Pennsylvania Senate today approved two bills that needlessly impede student learning and place onerous burdens on teachers and school librarians,” Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) President Aaron Chapin said in a statement Tuesday. “These bills are completely unnecessary burdens on teachers and school librarians who are overworked and underpaid.”
PSEA, a subsidiary of the National Education Association, represents approximately 177,000 busy and retired teachers and school staff, student teachers, higher education staff and health care workers statewide.
Chapin, who is also a high school teacher in the Stroudsburg Area School District, added that such rules would further discourage teachers from taking jobs at the Keystone State.
“We need to stop blaming hard-working teachers for indoctrinating kids,” he said. “If you want another example of why Pennsylvania continues to struggle with a teacher shortage, here’s Exhibit A. We don’t need sweeping state laws on issues that are dealt with locally every day.”
Both bills will now go to the House of Representatives, where Democrats hold the majority.
