Room for Everyone

A few weeks ago I was answering phones for my library system. A man called, wanting to know how he could learn the titles of books being read at Toddler Storytime in advance, so he could screen them. To paraphrase from memory, he said something along the lines of, "Given the current state of affairs, with the political situation being what it is, you never know what ideas others might try to expose your children to. I'd like to know in advance so I can be sure none of the books have messages that might hurt my children."

I explained that we don't share that information ahead of time. We're a large system with many people doing storytime, and each person picks their own books. He asked who is responsible for vetting what they pick, who makes sure the books they choose are appropriate. I said no one vets them, that we train our people well and trust their judgment. He said he doesn't trust anyone he hasn't met, so he doesn't feel he can trust us. In summary; the conversation was longer than that. He was polite and cordial and ultimately accepted my answers, that we would have to agree to disagree.

Today, the person who does the Toddler Storytimes in my building (we have 14 locations) said she had the same question in person at her storytime this morning, a caregiver asking if in the future she might be told the titles being read in advance. She was a nanny, and my caller said his kids were attending with a nanny, so it might have been the same parent inquiring through her. However, I shared the essence of my call with colleagues and others said they've had the same question recently from different library patrons. It seems to be a concern growing among a certain segment of the population, not trusting librarians to expose their children to "appropriate" books.

This falls right in line with a widespread trend, both locally and nationally, a growing movement to censor schools, teachers, and librarians and to tightly control what children have access to. Rigidly enforce access to a very narrow worldview that denies even the existence of anything they don't approve of. No LGBTQ. No race relations or racism. No divorced parents. No religions beyond Christianity. Nothing uncomfortable, nothing that challenges their worldview simply by being. They want a world that is homogenous and monolithic, believe anything that doesn't conform is deviant and wrong, and don't want their children to even know difference exists. There are some recent examples later in the post.

I adamantly, vehemently disagree, of course, with both their value system and their approach to children and books. But I can understand the point of their strategy, of their attack. Because books build empathy. Stories build empathy. The act of reading--or listening to--a story from a book creates connection with characters who are not you, understanding for the experiences, feelings, perspectives, and shared humanity of others. It is innately social and broadening.

In recent post You Are a Group Project, I shared thoughts from Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman (for instance; many other posts have similar thoughts from other sources). His premise is that people are basically good. His research has led him to conclude that people are instinctively cooperative and social, well-intentioned and compassionate, and most interested in the general well-being of everyone. He also admits that people are naturally tribal and xenophobic, cooperative with their in-group while hostile to out-groups. The solution, extensive research shows, is more contact with others. Contact with others leads to the discovery of commonalities, of shared humanity, and breaks down barriers to move others from "out-group" to "in-group."

Books are a form of contact by proxy. Readers come into contact with characters. Seeing them, hearing them, spending time with them helps readers understand them more fully as human. It undermines the instinct to dehumanize them. Bregman writes:

Contact engenders more trust, more solidarity and more mutual kindness. It helps you see the world through other people's eyes. Moreover, it changes you as a person, because individuals with a diverse group of friends are more tolerant towards strangers. And contact is contagious: when you see a neighbour getting along with others, it makes you rethink your own biases.

Stories create contact with characters, so that paragraph could be rewritten:

Reading engenders more trust, more solidarity and more mutual kindness. It helps you see the world through other people's eyes. Moreover, it changes you as a person . . . makes you more tolerant towards strangers [and] makes you rethink your own biases.

All reading and stories do that. About all characters. It is inherent to the process.

So, of course, social and political identities that are based on a narrowly defined in-group that stands in opposition to others cannot allow itself contact with those in out-groups, nor can it allow members to read stories by or about those others. The group's identity is defined in contrast to those others, who must be considered deviant, wrong, and lesser for the identity to hold. Not human in the same way they are. A threat. Admitting those others as equally valid and fully human threatens the group identity. Reading stories that humanize them is a threat. So they don't want their children exposed to stories that validate the experiences, feelings, perspectives, and shared humanity of those they consider out-group.

And, so, parents are starting to ask to know in advance what books are being read in storytimes so they can make sure no characters they consider "wrong" are presented as acceptable to their children. They want to ban all books from schools and libraries that humanize those they consider unacceptable.

Of course, the reason I am a librarian, a pusher of stories, is because I believe in the power of books to create more contact and bring us closer to eliminating out-groups entirely. I believe in the humanity of everyone, and think more books and more stories will help us all appreciate each other more. The very existence of storytime is counter to the aims of those parents. Simply by being about the act of reading stories, it is innately about creating contact and building empathy. Storytime can't accomplish what they want because its nature is counter to their goals.

The colleague who told me about the nanny's question wondered if we might consider the request by finding a middle ground, maybe having the titles available at the public service desk so caregivers can see them before heading into the storytime room. I said I am strongly biased against it, but to be fair it's a discussion we could have with the larger, system-wide group.

I also explained that I think it is the wrong approach for parents with concerns. On top of reading being naturally empathetic, it also always exposes children to values of some sort. There is no such thing as a book without values. All stories convey some sort of sense of right and wrong. Even the simplest picture books.

The importance of being able to recognize emotions, for instance, or letters or numbers. Respecting parents. Loving family. Solving conflict with friends. Making new friends. Working hard. Listening to others. Being patient, persistent, brave, kind, etc. Loving yourself. Solving problems. Enjoying life. The value of being silly. Doing hard things. Expressing yourself. Connecting with nature. I could go on.

Every book conveys values. Every storytime, no matter the books, will present values to children. Parents can't avoid it. They shouldn't avoid it. What they should do is talk about the stories with their children after and bring up the values communicated if important. Talk about why their family has different values, if relevant. Don't deny different values, discuss them. That's how we learn to get along in the world with others.

Because all books convey values, I admit that the books I select to share convey my values. It's unavoidable at least a bit. I would admit it to a parent who asked, and would encourage them to talk to their children about differences they see between my values and theirs. But the differences aren't the explicit, potentially inflammatory ones that parents like that caller are probably worried about. I avoid choices with same-sex parents and about the history of slavery, for instance, because I know they would be obviously, immediately controversial. I do attempt to be harmonious as much as possible. Instead, my values come through in subtler ways.

I told my colleague I was a little worried earlier this week I might get complaints when I read Room for Everyone by Naaz Khan. It's about a boy in Zanzibar taking a minibus trip with his dad to the beach. The dala dala (minibus) keeps stopping on the way to pick up more and ever more passengers--it's a counting book, so one person the first stop, two the next, all the way through to ten. The dala dala is crowded from the beginning, and each stop Musa complains to his Dada that there is no room, but they find a way to make it work. Arabic (or Swahili; someone else has the book checked out now, so I can't doublecheck) words are sprinkled throughout the story.

I was most worried because, at the end of the story, when the dala dala arrives at the beach, Musa exclaims, "Alhamdulillah!" which is an Arabic term for "praise God," most often used by Muslims. I thought it possible someone Christian would be uncomfortable with the mention of God from a different language and religion. But the story also creates contact with Musa and a variety of people from Zanzibar, humanizing them through connection with their everyday experiences. And it teaches the importance of accepting all types of people--even ones with stinky chickens and fish--and giving up some of our own space and comfort to make room for them. Through most of the book Musa complains, but by the end he is the most welcoming rider toward fellow travelers needing a ride. He has learned the lesson. It is a book full of values that some might object to.

I happened to have next week's storytime books in front of me as we talked, and I also pointed out A Mouthful of Minnows by John Hare. In it, an alligator snapping turtle ends up deciding not to eat the minnows swimming around inside his mouth--and he even saves them from another predator by the end--because he spends so much time observing them while they gather that he develops empathy for them. He has enough contact that they stop being prey, no longer other or out-group but in-group. The contact "humanizes" them. On its surface it seems a simple enough story about friendship with a happy ending, but it is loaded with values that make explicit what the very act of reading accomplishes regardless of the story. It's a story about the power of stories, in a way.

These are two obvious examples--though I think it's telling they were right in front of me and I didn't have to go looking to find them--and most of the books I read in storytime have more subtle values. Nevertheless, even the silly ones have messages of some sort at their core--whether I want one or not--and the act of partaking in the reading of the book does its own shaping regardless of the story's content. (And, I should mention, that almost all picture books emphasize kindness in one way or another.) There is no such thing as a value-free storytime. Concerned parents shouldn't try to control what's being read, but should engage with it, consider it with their children, and talk about what they agree and disagree with.

Now some related things that have come across my feed recently.

First a video from Hank Green of the vlogbrothers, I'm Changing the Way I Think About Politics.

The thrust of this video is that our focus on the national level paints all politics in black-or-white, diametrically opposed options, when reality is much murkier and more complex. Focusing on local politics and local politicians, on your community and neighbors, on people you can actually get to know in all their complexity, gives you a much more realistic, personal, and less extreme understanding of how we can actually manage to make things work together. Some excerpts that I've transcribed:

We can only really tell ourselves simple stories when we don't let a lot of data in. Now, I understand not letting a lot of data in, it's very complicated and we want to tell simple stories so that people will believe the thing, but these simple stories are starting to rend . . . rend!

And, in reference to the local politician he is supporting, who has spent countless hours traveling all over their district having conversations with many constituents:

What those conversations are telling her is that people are a lot more complex than they get credit for. And that seems wrong to me. But her perspective is actually backed up by the research, which shows that people see themselves as being pretty 60/40 on stuff but they see their opponents as being very 100/0 on everything. But, in fact, there's a lot of stuff that doesn't fit into broader narratives. And because it doesn't, we just don't ever think about it or talk about it.

That true fact feels unintuitive to me, but it feels intuitive to Monica, because she's the one out there doing the work. That is why we hire other people to be our leaders. Because they get to know more about this than we ever will so that we can focus on doing the other thing.

The problems are very vague, but this country is messy and it is led in a lot of different ways. And the ballot that I get is a local ballot with local things on it.

That 60/40 vs. 100/0 is so common and characteristic, it is known as a cognitive bias or logical fallacy called the Fundamental Attribution Error. Roughly, we understand ourselves as dealing with lots of factors, situations, and motivations, while we see others in very simple, judgmental terms. As McCombs School of Business puts it:

The fundamental attribution error is the tendency people have to overemphasize personal characteristics and ignore situational factors in judging others’ behavior. Because of the fundamental attribution error, we tend to believe that others do bad things because they are bad people. We’re inclined to ignore situational factors that might have played a role.

For example, if someone cuts us off while driving, our first thought might be “What a jerk!” instead of considering the possibility that the driver is rushing someone to the airport. On the flip side, when we cut someone off in traffic, we tend to convince ourselves that we had to do so.  We focus on situational factors, like being late to a meeting, and ignore what our behavior might say about our own character.

For example, in one study when something bad happened to someone else, subjects blamed that person’s behavior or personality 65% of the time. But, when something bad happened to the subjects, they blamed themselves only 44% of the time, blaming the situation they were in much more often.

So, the fundamental attribution error explains why we often judge others harshly while letting ourselves off the hook at the same time by rationalizing our own unethical behavior.

That's what we do in politics. We demonize people based on their party affiliation or candidate or position. The solution? Contact. Getting to know people. Getting out at the local level and having lots and lots of conversations with lots of different people to understand all the complex factors impacting their situations. Empathy allows us to see that they, too, are 60/40.

I want to share most of the latest weekly message from Homelessness Training by Ryan Dowd, which he sends out in a weekly email and social media post (see more at Empathy Works: Respect, Dignity, Humanity):

From I Went to See Yoda

Years ago, late at night after everyone at the shelter had gone to bed, Sister Rose Marie told me THE secret.

And I didn’t understand.

She told me that the entire philosophy underpinning the shelter and her life’s work (and mine) was based on the idea that people are basically good.

Everything, she said, flows from this one truth.

At the time I was too embarrassed to admit that I didn’t understand.

With the humility that comes with being a middle-aged apprentice, though, I finally just asked her to explain.

I will do my best to pass on the wisdom that was passed to me…

People are basically good.

That doesn’t mean that people always do the right thing.

(Actually, most people do the right thing most of the time. That isn’t what this means, though.)

It means this:

Each person is of intrinsic value and worth, by virtue of nothing more than their humanity.

(Note: Some religions explain this by saying that we are all made in the image of God.)

Our value is irrespective of who we are or what we do.

Do you believe that?

Do you believe that EVERY person is of incalculable value?

Do you really, I mean REALLY, believe that?

Do you believe that each homeless person, and every drug addict and all convicted criminals and Donald Trump and Joe Biden and Brad Pitt and Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Paris Hilton are all of inherent value and worth?

That is the essence of the philosophy that has guided my life.

And here is why it is the center…

If each person is of inherent value, then:

• We must care when someone has no food.
• We must act when someone has no shelter.
• We must do something when someone lacks healthcare.

It calls us to meet peoples’ basic needs because there is no dignity in deprivation.

But it also calls us to justice, because:

• Injustice strips the oppressed of their humanity.
• Injustice corrodes the humanity of the oppressor.

I think that last one is my favorite because it is so counterintuitive.

If EVERY person is of inherent value, then that includes those who oppress others.

When we stop their oppression, we increase the humanity of both oppressed AND oppressor.

So, here is my challenge to you:

For the next hour, every time you see someone think to yourself “That person is of inherent value.”

Make sure you do it when you see someone you don’t like. That is where this exercise can change your heart.

It is such a simple concept: The inherent value of humanity.

And entire social movements have been built on its truth.

Empathy is the answer.

Do your best to never dehumanize another. Accept their experiences, feelings, and perspectives as valid and valuable. Different than yours, maybe something that would be wrong for you, but still human and real. Then try to make the world a place where they're treated accordingly.

A few relevant news articles that have come across my feed recently (I'm sure I could find many more if I went looking):

Michigan GOP Candidate Tudor Dixon Wants a New Book Ban: No Divorced Characters

Of course, as any educator worth their degree would tell you, this is exactly backward. We don't read books to learn only about our direct experience, but to expand our horizons and learn about the larger world. Dixon's daughter surely has classmates and friends with divorced parents. It's unlikely any child psychologist would say that the best for her is to remain ignorant about their experiences. Frankly, Dixon's unwillingness to explain the reality of divorce to her daughter sounds like it's about Dixon's own level of discomfort, not about the best interests of her child. Books are an excellent way to help kids learn these crucial lessons about the lives of people who aren't exactly like them.

This isn't just conjecture. Psychological research has shown time and again that reading, especially reading fiction, can increase empathy and make people more considered thinkers. A novel, even (or sometimes especially) one written for children, can help us walk at least a few feet in someone else's shoes. Which may be exactly why an authoritarian like Dixon feels so much fear and hostility toward books. As she herself explained, the book her daughter read offered a glimpse of a life unlike her own. It seems very much as if actually thinking about how other people live — and perhaps having feelings about it — wasn't an experience Dixon especially wanted her daughter to have.

Unfortunately, Dixon has a lot of sympathy in this, at least among Republican voters. New polling from the Pew Research Center illuminates how drastically different Republican and Democratic parents feel about the purpose of education. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida may claim that Republicans oppose "indoctrination," but the Pew data suggests the opposite is true: Republican parents are far more likely to demand that schools forgo actual education in favor of training kids to hold close-minded and blinkered views, and to censor factual information that might contradict what parents want to believe, no matter how unhinged or disconnected from reality. 

The two big questions Pew used to measure authoritarian, truth-hostile attitudes in parents were about gender identity and the long-standing impacts of slavery on American society. On both, strong majorities of Republicans insisted that schools should conceal facts from students in order to impose the ideological preferences of the right. Only 9% of Republican parents agreed that students should be allowed to learn that trans people exist. A whopping 66% of Republicans disagreed that schools should teach that the legacy of slavery still affects Black people today. In addition, while a majority of parents overall believed that schools should not lead students in prayer, nearly six in 10 Republican parents supported mandatory prayer in school.

This is my local area, though my district doesn't vote on them:

An Election for Kansas State Board of Education Is the Biggest Race You Don't Know About

It’s hard to find an issue that has divided people the way education has over the last few years – fights over COVID-protocols in schools pitted parents against each other and school administrators.

Those conflicts reached a fever pitch when debates began over how race and LGBTQ issues are handled in schools, and what role parents and the government should have in school curriculums.

Suddenly, school boards – once relatively anonymous governing bodies – are at the center of heated controversy. The Kansas State Board of Education is no exception. . . . 

The two candidates disagree on hot-button issues like who controls school curriculums and how to discuss mental health in schools.

And this is a very long, in-depth report on the larger picture:

The Right-Wing Mothers Fuelling the School-Board Wars

Moms for Liberty claims that teachers are indoctrinating students with dangerous ideologies. But is the group’s aim protecting kids--or scaring parents?

The school board is an American institution whose members, until recently, enjoyed visibility on a par with that of the county tax collector. “There’s no glory in being a school-board member—and there shouldn’t be,” Anne McGraw, a former Williamson County Schools board member, said on a local podcast last year. Normally, the district’s public meetings were sedate affairs featuring polite exchanges among civic-minded locals. The system’s slogan was: “Be nice.”

Educators and policymakers have long believed that public education should operate independently of political ideology. As the magazine Governing put it last year, “The goal of having nonpartisan elections is not to remove all politics” but “to remove a conflict point that keeps the school board from doing its job.” For people who target school boards, conflict has become a tool. In Texas, a PAC linked to a cell-phone company which recently funded the maga takeover of several school boards paid for an inflammatory mail campaign blaming a classroom shooting on administrators who had “stopped disciplining students according to Critical Race Theory principles.” In August, during a panel at cpac, the gathering of conservatives, the former Trump official Mercedes Schlapp warned that, though Republicans were focussed on federal and state elections, “school board elections are critical.” The panel’s title, “We Are All Domestic Terrorists,” derisively referred to recent instructions from Attorney General Merrick Garland to the F.B.I. for devising a plan to protect school employees and board members from threats of violence.

Joining Schlapp onstage was Ryan Girdusky, the founder of the 1776 Project pac, which funnels money to G.O.P. candidates in partisan school-board races. Girdusky boasted that, in 2021, his pac “did fifty-eight elections in seven states and we won forty-two.” Girdusky said that his goal this year is to boost at least five hundred school-board candidates nationwide. He urged the audience to “vote from the bottom up—go from school board and then go all the way up to governor and senator, and we’ll have conservative majorities across the entire electorate.” . . . 

Wealthy suburbs are some of America’s purplest districts, and winning them may be key to controlling the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. Anne McGraw, the former Williamson County Schools board member, told me that the advent of Moms for Liberty “shows how hyperlocal the national machine is going with their tactics.” She observed, “Moms for Liberty is not in Podunk, America. They’re going into hyper-educated, wealthy counties like this, and trying to get those people to doubt the school system that brought us here.” . . . 

Instead of putting forth a platform, the Republican Party has tried to maintain power by demonizing its opponents and critics as sinister and un-American. In the lead-up to the midterms, the G.O.P.’s alarmism about critical race theory has accompanied fear-mongering about L.G.B.T.Q.+ teachers being “groomers.” Conservative media aggressively promote both campaigns. From Fox News to the Twitter account Libs of TikTok, the messaging has been consistent: many public-school teachers are dangerous. . . . 

School-board service, which is time-consuming and can be tedious, requires diplomacy, a breadth of knowledge, and the ability to make complex, well-informed decisions. . . . 

Moms for Liberty had been broadening its campaign against Wit & Wisdom and was now targeting reading materials available in school libraries . . . 

Not mentioned in the article but one of the newest targets under attack is social and emotional learning, or SEL.

We define social and emotional learning (SEL) as an integral part of education and human development. SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.

SEL advances educational equity and excellence through authentic school-family-community partnerships to establish learning environments and experiences that feature trusting and collaborative relationships, rigorous and meaningful curriculum and instruction, and ongoing evaluation. SEL can help address various forms of inequity and empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and contribute to safe, healthy, and just communities.

Understanding, cooperation, and harmony do not seem to be their goals, only conformity and censure.

Looking for inspiration, I recently decided to revisit a set of books from a few years ago, the Tiny Book of Tiny Stories trilogy. This spread jumped out to me this reading:

I like the way it illustrates that the same actions don't always have the same consequences, depending on identity and circumstances.

One day before breakfast, an

orange rolled off the counter

and escaped its fate, bounding

happily through the kitchen door.

Filled with hope,

the egg followed.

Equality and Equity are not the same.

This is a little off topic, but I want to share. Last month at my library we asked kids (well, anyone, but it was in the kids section) to draw "who they become when they read." The responses kept coming and coming, literally hundreds, enough to fill our entire wall. Some were scribbles by the youngest patrons, some were artistically skilled, and many were somewhere in between. Here's a small, small sample.

Such a variety of styles, personalities, and thoughts. A diverse group of responses. On display for everyone to see. A small bit of personal expression and contact.

The idea that people are basically good, that each person is of intrinsic value and worth by virtue of nothing more than their humanity, applies to children and parenting as well.

How to Change Your Kid's Behavior, According to the Host of a Hit Parenting Podcast

Rather than using timeouts and consequences to change a child's behavior, parents should make an effort to understand why their kid is acting out in the first place.

To do that, says Kennedy, parents have to assume their child is inherently "good inside" – that they have good intentions and want to do the right thing. This mindset can help parents avoid making assumptions about their child's character — and focus their attention instead on unpacking the root reasons of the behavior. Doing so, she says, creates an opportunity for parents to show validation and empathy to their child and encourage their personal growth. . . . 

When I don't operate from that foundation, it's easy to put frustration, anger and judgment in the driver's seat and think, "What is wrong with my kid? Do I have kids who are never going to get along?"

The idea of "good inside" [helps parents] see the identity of our kid as separate from a descriptor of a behavior. . . . 

And instead of disciplining the kid who's hitting, which is what my instinct would be as a parent, your approach is to actually connect with that child. To you, that means making an effort to understand what's going on and help them feel confident, capable and worthy. What does that look like in the real world?

So let's stay with the hitting example. A "connection-first" experience [from a parent would be like]: whoa, it's clearly not OK to hit and also I have a good kid. He's struggling. I should connect to him. [To do that], I'm going to look at my son and say, "You're having a hard time. I'm here. We're going to figure it out together." I am connecting to the kid having a hard time.

Be Curious, Not Judgmental

Somewhere in this vast universe, there grows a boy.

And somewhere in this boy, there grows a vast universe.

---

Update added 11/8 - This just came across my feed. I thought about keeping it for another post, but it fits too perfectly to not include here. A late addition:

Book Banners Are Weaponizing Legitimate Resources

Part of the reason these book banning attempts are spreading so far and so quickly is because they share lists online, such as in Facebook groups or shared Google Drive folders, making it easy for a book being banned in Montana today to pop up in a California school board meeting the next day. They share images, rhetoric, out-of-content quotations, and other fodder for the fear machine, and it seems to only collect more targeted books as it goes. . . . 

There’s a big difference between trying to find the right books for your individual kid(s) and making that decision for all kids and parents. It’s not exactly “parental rights” when families no longer have the ability to make the decision of whether their kid can read that book, because it’s been taken off the shelf and denied to everyone.

One of the strategies book banners are using that makes me nervous is that they are weaponizing resources that were never meant to defend book banning. . . . 

Even worse, resources that were specifically made to help teachers and parents find diverse books for kids are being weaponized in this way. In Central York School District (PA), the school board took resources that were made for teachers to address racism and banned every title on it. . . . 

Book banners are searching out lists online that are aimed at finding good sources to teach age-appropriate sex ed, or lists of books starring Black main characters, or lists of LGBTQ-friendly picture books, or lists of books to teach social-emotional learning — and they’re using these resources as book banning target practice. . . . 

Recently, I voted in my local school board election. A whole slate (usually school board members here run individually) was running that aligned themselves with book banners and other regressive school board policies. . . . 

I have made many of that type of list myself.