Book bans are becoming evermore present in recent years. Over 10,000 books have been banned from schools and their libraries in the past school year alone. By July 2024, the number of book bans had skyrocketed, and it was a record for the most book bans within a school year.

As of April 9, Ohio enacted the Parents’ Bill of Rights (House Bill 8), which allows parents to review the material used in their child’s curriculum and choose to opt them out. House Bill 8 was passed with a 213-208 vote, with a majority of the vote coming from Republicans. In the Solon school district, before House Bill 8, Solon had their own policy on opting students out of school-based material. Superintendent Fred Bolden said Solon will never ban books learned in the Solon school district.

“We have no plans of putting any bans on books,” Bolden said. “The policy that we have regarding instruction materials, and it’s specific on instruction materials, what it says is we have a policy where parents are allowed to review any of our instruction materials, and if they have an objection to them, they can put a request in to say, ‘I would not like my child to use that particular instructional material.’ Then we will provide them with an alternative, but we don’t do blanket bans.”

Bolden said that for Solon to create a system to ban books, there would need to be a change in the policy that they have implemented. Since the Board of Education is policy-driven, there are no plans to rewrite its policies unless a law is created.

Many of the books being challenged around the country tend to lean towards more LGBTQ+ and racial themes. Many conservative and/or Republican families tend to be in favor of censoring certain material within schools. House Bill 8 has been compared to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which disallows teachers to teach about LGBTQ+ topics in Florida.

The end goal of book bans is to prevent children from being exposed to inappropriate matters like excessive violence and sexual topics. Book bans, however, have created a political divide. Parents began to form groups such as No Left Turn in Education and Moms for Liberty to put the rights of their children back into the parents’ hands.

House Bill 8’s lead sponsor, Rep. Julia Letlow, said she believes that for a child to be their best, both the school and the parents need to create a way to work together to aid the student. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy added that the bill not only protects students but also strengthens the control and rights parents have. Whereas, Democratic representatives like Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon have said that the bill does not give parents more rights over their children’s education and creates a Republicanized “one size fits all” policy across the country.

While parents aren’t able to pull their students out of the core curriculum, children can opt out of reading any of the books that are presented to them in class. The question that is now posed is how this affects the teachers who have been teaching these books for decades.

English teacher Vicki Maslo has been teaching books like “The Great Gatsby” and “I Must Betray” for around 30 years. She said the books the English teachers pick out are to help teach certain life lessons.

“I think that all of my books, everything that any of us English teachers do, is always geared towards, again, intellectual exploration and appreciation of literature–where it was, where it is, and how it sits,” Maslo said. “I think that we’re very careful and aware that we want to impact our students at the level that they are at. We’re very careful and very concerned about all of the elements in a room. I just think that removing them, you know, for the sake of a removal would be a difficult thing for teachers.”

Maslo also said that there would need to be multiple changes to her classes if certain books weren’t able to be read in schools.

“I think if I thought my books were going to be banned, first of all, it would take away a significant part of my curriculum,” Maslo said. “Then second of all, I think it would change anything else I would try to substitute.
I would always be wondering, you know, where does it begin and end? It would just make me more nervous, and I’m not sure what I would do. We always want to have open conversations with people. But we do have a job to do, to make sure that we’re still exploring ideas in an open and honest way. And if I can’t do that, I don’t know how I would teach literature.”

Teachers from around America have shared their opinions on the banning and censorship of books in schools online. Some teachers have come out and said that calling the removal of books a ban is harmful to actual bans from the government. These teachers expressed that the removal of books should be compared to a change in curriculum rather than a full ban.

SHS’s Book Club co-presidents, Callie Ament and Ashyln Fitzgerald, think the banning of classic books and certain material will not change a person’s ideology, as they believe ideology is formed within the home.

“I also think [book bans are] highly detrimental, given that a lot of times this book banning is happening in schools,” Ament said. “I think that young adults in middle school and high school are some of the most impressionable, and I think that’s when a lot of children and young adults are trying to figure out who they are and what their beliefs are. And if it’s censored to be a specific way, you’re gonna see, like a resurgence of more polarized politics, and there’s gonna be less discussion and less debate, which is just not going to be great for our democracy in general or the future of our generations in our already pretty problematic political climate that we’re seeing.”

Fitzgerald also said that keeping students from certain books is not censoring the media, but those who are consuming it.

“I think that it’s a form of censorship that we don’t need,” Fitzgerald said. “I feel like it kind of violates the First Amendment rights of just free press and everything. I think a lot of the books that states are deciding to ban are just more like censoring kids and trying to put down the Christian agenda, rather than just keeping education away from the kids.”

Bolden said that students are able to opt out of books, but not the standard curriculum.

“You can’t opt your child out of learning about the author’s theme, and things like that,” Bolden said. “You might be able to opt out of a particular book, but there’s certain content that they have to learn in history. You can’t opt them out of that. But if there’s a particular book, then they would be able to do that. This usually only happens in English, and it happens very rarely.”