Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, working with conservative Christian advocacy group Recover America, is ordering Texas ISDs to remove certain books from school libraries or face legislative disciplinary action. Doing so would reduce the power of local ISDs to govern themselves and the power of parents to determine what their children may or may not read. ISDs and especially parents should be more empowered, not less.
Few issues elicit more emotionalism than questions concerning what children should be taught or allowed to read in the public schools. For example, a few years ago, in Loudon County, Virginia, parents upset over the curricula in the county’s public schools were denounced by the National School Board Association as domestic terrorists and informed by the Democratic nominee for Governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, that they had no right to question what lessons or materials their children were taught. (The NASB subsequently apologized for its histrionics, and while the Biden Justice Department did investigate the NASB’s claims, it never branded anyone in this case a domestic terrorist; moreover, McAuliffe was soundly defeated).
Neither Dan Patrick nor Recover America has exhibited the arrogance or stupidity of the NASB or Terry McAuliffe, who had tried, unsuccessfully, to walk back his remarks in the course of his failed campaign. But should our Lieutenant Governor and Recover America have their way, they will be succeeding in doing what the NASB and McAuliffe sought to do: Reduce the power of parents to determine what their children may read.
Recover America has compiled a list of about 2200 books which it and Patrick deem “vulgar,” “dirty,” and “filthy.” It can be inferred from his comments and those of the Recover America leadership that many of these books may deal with human sexuality in nonjudgmental ways which do not condemn homosexuality, transgenderism, or sex outside of marriage. (Fun fact: One of the most widely banned books in America is a children’s storybook, And Tango Makes Three, about two male penguins raising the eponymous baby penguin). Patrick has ordered local ISDs to remove all these books from their libraries or face a reduction by one letter of their grades assigned by the state government, as well as possible action by the state to take over the ISD.
If it were discovered that a book on Patrick’s list contained language that could not be printed in a family newspaper, Patrick would be more than justified in demanding its removal from ISD libraries. And in fairness to Patrick and Recover America, it must be conceded that Patrick is correct to deny that he does not seek to actually ban any books. After all, he says (correctly), parents and their children have every right to buy and read the books themselves. They simply should not be able to acquire them with ISD help.
Nonetheless, Patrick is overreacting. He is threatening to expand the power of the state government over local ISDs and, worse, to deny parents the right to decide for themselves whether their children may borrow and read the books on his list. Doing so will threaten both the rights and the responsibilities of parents to direct their children’s education and development.
Expanding the power of a central government at the expense of local governments or individual citizens may be welcomed by those who believe bigger government usually means better government, and that politicians and bureaucrats know better than ordinary citizens what’s best for them. But it should be questioned and resisted by those who mistrust big government and support the right of ordinary citizens to live their lives the ways they want to as long as they neither hurt nor otherwise endanger the rights of others. In this particular instance, to resist big government and promote individual freedom, local ISDs should have more authority, with input from parents, to determine what books will be in their libraries. And while parents should have no power to ban books for others, they should nonetheless have more power to determine what their own children may read—or not read.
Texas Senate Bill 13, passed last year, does, in fact, implement a more welcome approach to determining what role parents may play in determining what their children may or may not read. As the website for the Texas Education Agency says, in each ISD “[P]arents have access to the library catalog and can control which library materials their students can access.” Parents are also informed of which materials their children actually access as well.
Should the Lieutenant Governor and Recover America acquire the power to impose their views on what books may or may not be allowed in ISD libraries, they will in effect be expanding the power of the state government over the local ISDs and reducing the power of parents to help guide and direct their children’s education. Moreover, they will set a bad precedent by which someday more liberal officials and allied interest groups may attempt to impose their own values as well. The safest course of action is to let the parents themselves decide what their respective children may read, without interference from those who would otherwise impose their own political or religious values on them.
Malcolm L. Cross has lived in Stephenville since 1987 and taught politics and government at Tarleton for 36 years, retiring in 2023. His political and civic activities include service on the Stephenville City Council (2000-2014) and on the Erath County Republican Executive Committee (1990-2024). He was Mayor pro-tem of Stephenville from 2008 to 2014. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Stephenville Economic Development Authority since 2018, and as chair of the Erath County Appraisal District’s Appraisal Review Board since 2015. He is also a member of the Stephenville Rotary Club, the Board of Vestry of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, and the Executive Committee of the Boy Scouts’ Pecan Valley District. Views expressed in this column are his and do not reflect those of The Flash as a whole.
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