American Censorship & School Libraries Presented by Bill Lukenbill, Ph.D. Professor, School of Information, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas,

American Censorship &School Libraries

Presented by Bill Lukenbill, Ph.D.Professor, School of Information, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712, USA. [email protected]

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Censorship in America: Basic Concepts

The U.S. Constitution and The First Amendment provide for freedom of speech.

The U.S. Constitution is a rigid document—cannot be changed by usual forms of legislation or degrees.

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Censorship in America: Basic Concepts…

Major court censorship rulings and concepts …

Miller v. California 1973, (Established obscenity standards and outlined the following points).

–State-wide community standards must be considered.

–Serious scientific and political concepts are protected.

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–Political views and opinions are protected.

–Work as a whole must be considered, not merely isolated sections.

–Educational materials not necessarily protected.

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Other important principles from high courts

–Local jury rulings can be viewed independently by appeal courts.

–Child pornography has no First Amendment protection.

–“Viewpoint decimation” can be used by appeal courts to test for violation of First Amendment protection.

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–“Viewpoint Discrimination” is based on testimony and other documentation presented to the court as a means of determining whether a board’s action violated First Amendment rights.

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Court Rulings and American Schools

The Fundamental School Library Court Ruling—

Board of Education, Island Trees, New York v. Pico, 1982.

Central question: Can a school board remove books from a school library to promote moral, social, and political values without violating First Amendment rights?

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Court Rulings and American Schools…

Major Issues raised: Motivation of the board; students’ rights to receive information and to learn; and be exposed to controversial ideas.Ruling: Boards of education cannot simply remove books from libraries with good educational cause.

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Court Rulings and American Schools…

Implication: Decisions made by local school boards may violate First Amendment rights and such decisions can be challenged in court.

Implication: Principles stated in Island Trees v. Pico are now applied to other censorship cases by courts, including Internet censorship.

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School Librarians’ Knowledge of Court Rulings

Censorship Research in Texas

Purpose of the Study.

To ascertain the level of judicial knowledge a sample of Texas school librarians held regarding basic U.S. federal court rulings.

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School Librarians’ Knowledge of Court Rulings…

To assess how these librarians perceived their likely behaviors to be regarding their obligations to follow law and act to protect the First Amendment rights of students and to facilitate students’ right to receive information.

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Major findings: Librarians had little knowledge of court rulings regarding school library censorship. However,

librarians supported the principles of Pico and would not feel threatened in having to explain Pico and its implications to their administrators.

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Librarians felt that their administrators would offer support to them in a censorship complaint; but librarians would accept with reluctance an order from their school boards to remove items from their collections.

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Sixteen percent (16%) indicated that they would challenge such orders and present evidence of legal problems that could arise from a removal order; and

only a small minority indicated that they would remove an item without question.

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Significant predictive variables influencing librarians to resist censorship attempts included:

– greater levels of education; advanced types of state certification; greater levels of monetary support for collections; perception about the liberal nature of the local community; judicial awareness of court rulings.

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Conclusions:

This Texas school librarian sample appeared to understand the need to resist censorship and explain to administrators and boards some of the legal issues involved in removing challenged materials from collections; but lacked fundamental knowledge regarding court interpretations of constitutional law.

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American school librarians will be called upon more and more to understand constitutional law and to better assert their obligations under the American Constitution to defend freedom of speech issues within the school library environment.

Documents

American Censorship & School Libraries Presented by Bill Lukenbill, Ph.D. Professor, School of Information, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas,