Why are we pushing explicit books on elementary students?

OPINION:

It has become increasingly clear that objectively offensive materials and even outright pornography can be found in some of our schools in Utah.

I’ve been told by a few legislators that they are barred from publicly presenting these graphic and offensive images in legislative meetings. When a local activist texted some of them to a lawmaker who was not supportive of their removal from school libraries, the legislator threatened legal action against the sender because of the offensiveness of the images.

Now, we’re finding that Scholastic Books, the largest publisher of children’s books, has begun marketing these types of publications to children. And I’m not sure it’s completely new. Many of us became aware only when several librarians and authors criticized Scholastic on social media because these sexually explicit books had been included in an optional section for book fairs at elementary schools rather than as part of the standard offering.

Scholastic claims it has had to do this because of state laws that apparently seek to protect children from sexually explicit material. In the eyes of these librarians and authors, this makes Scholastic subject to unjust government censorship. Many of these same people would tell you that “hate speech” obviously needs to be banned, so I don’t need their lectures on the First Amendment.

In 2022, Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory passed a bill (HB 374) that provides a process for books to be reviewed and removed from school libraries when they contain material inappropriate for minors. Unfortunately, this process hasn’t worked as well as many would have hoped.

This became starkly obvious one day as I sat in a legislative committee hearing where a couple of districts were asked to come and present how they have been implementing this new law. I was aghast as I sat there, listening to a student who spoke during his district’s explanation time and presumably at the invitation of district officials to complain about how this bill would strip him of his First Amendment rights. The bill had already passed, and the entire point of those presentations was for the district members, who had a lot of parent complaints from what I understand, to be held accountable for applying the law.

Maybe rather than spending so much time, energy and effort defending sexually explicit materials in schools, the administrators could have worked to ensure that their students were more civically literate. One can hardly blame the student in such a situation, as it is obvious the education system has, in many regards, failed at what most Americans believe is the actual purpose of public education. And this is where, for me, the discussion gets interesting.

I’ve long held that it is impossible to work toward the reform that many of us implicitly understand is necessary on so many different fronts until we are able to come to an agreement on the ultimate goal of any of it. The waters were so horribly muddied with the slogan “hope and change” that it should serve as a warning to all of us who believe that the fundamental transformation that slogan preceded has left our country worse off than before.

This is precisely why it is so important to determine the actual purpose of any act of government before any other discussions should even take place. Otherwise, we’re just spinning our wheels, or worse, we’re driving backward and don’t even know it.

I tend to agree with something similar to the words of George Washington in his Farewell Address, given not long before he completed his second presidential term in 1796: “Promote … institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.”

Enlightenment. Not sex acts. Seems pretty simple to me.

• Carolyn Phippen is a candidate for U.S. Senate in Utah. She is a wife and a mother of five boys, residing in Draper, Utah.