Why are any schools allowing this in their libraries?

[tabbycatstripy]

There was a mini scandal over a Catholic school in Southwark last month, with complaints to the Archbishop from a Tory MP (Eliot Colburn), after an invitation to a writer to come and promote his books and talk to the kids was withdrawn because his books were judged by the diocese to be ‘outside what is permissible in a Catholic school’. Complaints were made to Ofsted, the governors were dismissed by the diocese, and apparently the HT, who wanted the visit to go ahead, was at odds with the church.

So far so normal.

Twitter then went crazy in support of this writer, saying the books were lovely, fun, inclusive, with hardly any sexual content, and it was all so homophobic.

Anyway, I just saw an extract from the book:

twitter.com/dolphinmaria/status/1503490597931339785?s=21&t=0ZURhjXM1Ln6esoraw6Ilw

Why does a Tory MP (or any adult) think this content is suitable for adolescents?

Why is any librarian placing books in KS3 collections that talk this explicitly about (and trivialise) anal sex, oral sex, and porn?

Should children learn about the Holocaust?

Crikey, who asked this? I missed it. I fail to see what it has to do with the issue.

What would you consider to be 'a balanced way', @RhubarbCrumbled?

What factors go into creating 'balance'?

I wonder that too, Math. What are we ‘balancing’?

Because when I read ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ it suggests to me that safeguarding is paramount. All staff have responsibilities to report any concerns relating to safeguarding, and encouraging children to behave in sexually inappropriate ways is a CSE red flag.

I believe exposing children to a casual presentation of oral sex, anal sex and porn, so they can ‘learn about those things’ in Y7 or Y8 - whether for the purposes of teaching about homophobia or not - is encouraging them to behave in sexually inappropriate ways.

Not seen the whole thread but I had an email from Scholaristic the school book club advertising Gay Club but I couldn't see any content. The screenshot doesn't look age appropriate.

If you think that the passage in the tweet is validating or endorsing the insults you really are not reading it properly.

My reading comprehension skills are fine thanks. I'm not so sure about yours though, since you seem to have missed the fact that I ws very clearly objecting to schools endorsing the language, not claiming that schools (or the book) were endorsing insulting people.

As other posters have pointed out, it is perfectly possible to talk about homophobia without using homophobic slurs or describing sex acts in offensive ways.

@mathanxiety

Should children learn about the Holocaust?

Yes, around age 14 it is developmentally appropriate to learn about the Holocaust.

Before that, no.

It's too easy for younger children to identify only with the victims and to believe themselves completely incapable of ever perpetrating evil. At age 14 they are capable of grappling with the idea that they too might have cheerfully joined the Hitler Youth and gone on to the SS.

The whole point of Holocaust education is to remind society that it was perpetrated by ordinary people who appeared out of all walks of life and in far too many cases disappeared back into society.

The Holocaust serves to remind us that we could all have been the camp guards and to beware of getting swept up into evil. It is supposed to teach us how to recognise the evil, to stop ourselves from being seduced by slogans, by exceptionalism, by the lie that there are superior and inferior beings.

That's a an interesting point, and I wonder if it doesn't account for some of the problems we see now in places like universities - the students have never really grappled with the banality of evil because of the way they have been taught.

Anyway, I think school libraries have quite a different remit than public libraries. A public library needs a very wide collections policy and parents are the ones responsible for watching what their children read there. A school library is standing in the role of the parent and is therefore required to be far more conservative and consider what the views of all the parents might be without privileging some over others. Which will tend to mean a collection that is less focused on socially contentious issues all round.

I would expect that any school with a particular philosophical perspective, be it a Catholic, Jewish, Steiner, or humanistic school, would avoid books in particular that were not in line with that viewpoint.

I wonder if it doesn't account for some of the problems we see now in places like universities - the students have never really grappled with the banality of evil because of the way they have been taught.

I do believe there is a link.

If the Holocaust is presented as a list of horrific crimes committed by Germans at a certain time and in a certain place, no useful lesson will be learned, and "Never Forget" will be a phrase that means 'Never forget how horrible the Germans were back in the 1930s and 40s'.

The whole point to effective Holocaust education is to realise how painfully few people stood up for the Jews and the other victims. From there it's necessary to delve into areas like media, general conversation, and themes of identity, personal responsibility, and personal moral codes. It's necessary to do some personal inventory of beliefs and assumptions about others, and to underline that the chances are high that there are many people in every society holding views that only need a little tipping in a certain direction for the evil to be repeated, and to explore how the tipping happens. Kids have to take a long, hard look at themselves and start paying attention to all that goes on around them.

To tackle homophobia it's necessary to examine the beliefs of the perpetrators and the onlookers too, to take them apart and examine the components, to ask why people engage in it - what they are saying about themselves, why they feel the need to say it. Same goes for misogynistic 'banter'. And the same goes for those who hear it and stay silent. All of the interpersonal communication and the silence around these themes is a form of self identification, a form of tribal identification. Why is this felt to be necessary?

‘To tackle homophobia it's necessary to examine the beliefs of the perpetrators and the onlookers too, to take them apart and examine the components, to ask why people engage in it - what they are saying about themselves, why they feel the need to say it. Same goes for misogynistic 'banter'. And the same goes for those who hear it and stay silent.’

And there are loads of creative ways you can engage in these discussions with kids. You might enact scenes of ostracism and then have breakout groups for talk. You might approach it through questioning. You might do it in media studies and approach it through TV. You might do Q&A with ‘characters’ from different points of view in a situation that commonly happens at school.

But you don’t need the sex talk.

This may have been covered, but surely people are aware that school librarians are highly trained individuals who have the power and ability to restrict who borrows which books? Our school library has books that are for Y9+ and some that are Y11+
The book quoted in the OP presumably isn’t for 11 and 12 year olds, so I don’t know why OP made such a thing about 11 year olds reading it? I can think of many very adult books that are on A level courses, for example, that will be sitting in the school library. I wouldn’t really want my daughter (11 years old) reading ‘Birdsong’ or ‘Glengarry Glenross’ but I’ve taught both at A level. Can think of plenty more too. A school library isn’t supposed to be like CBeebies.

Unfortunately not all schools have the luxury of a trained librarian.

Not trying to be obtuse, but who checks the books out if there isn’t a librarian? And huge training wouldn’t be needed to, say, prevent a Y7 checking out a book labelled Y9+ would it? 🤷‍♀️

Who puts the label on the book?

Well, by that logic, who buys the book?

I don’t like the ‘highly trained individuals’ argument. Teachers are highly trained individuals. Doctors are highly trained individuals.

They still make errors. This one seems to be an error, and no, I have no idea of it being restricted (in the school we are talking about) to older students. As far as I am aware the argument was that this was a ‘fun and inclusive book’ and that it had ‘very little sexual content’. The nature of the sexual content was played down, so I am not going to put my trust in ‘highly trained individuals’, because I’ve already seen many of these people downplaying this content online, demonstrating (at least to me) bad judgment.

Are you suggesting though, OP, that there should be no books in the school library that are not suitable for 11 year olds? Where does that leave the 6th formers?

@WeRTheOnesWeHaveBeenWaitingFor

I agree. I have a young acting 11 year old and this would be extremely inappropriate for her.Why normalise this language and push it on kids? I’m sure the rest of the really good anti-homophobic content would be useful for her age range. Her best friend has received a lot of homophobic bullying for not confirming to gender norms and I am absolutely certain that no one has ever said anything remotely that sexualised to him. It should be KS4 and above. Parents can buy it if they think their child is mature enough but mine isn’t.

No-one has suggested that this book should be pushed at 11 year olds. That is why talking about 11 year olds in this context is really quite dishonest. School librarians are more than capable of taking effective steps to ensure that inappropriate books are not read by younger pupils.

Of course not. In all schools I’ve worked in there has been a separate KS5 library, and the younger children don’t use it. I have no reason to think this book is being marketed in that way, and every reason (from this thread) to think there are plenty of people who don’t appreciate why it would be an issue for 11-12 year olds to read this content.

‘No-one has suggested that this book should be pushed at 11 year olds. That is why talking about 11 year olds in this context is really quite dishonest.’

That isn’t true. I’ve seen the fall-out from this on Twitter with hundreds of people saying the book has ‘barely any’ sexual content and is beautiful, fun and inclusive, and they see absolutely no issue with it, and they can’t understand any of the concern.

‘School librarians are more than capable of taking effective steps to ensure that inappropriate books are not read by younger pupils.’

We can’t go down the X group is more than capable route. Some professionals aren’t capable. That’s why we have safeguarding laws and policies - to regulate what they can do and what they can’t do.

The only reason all those people on Twitter are gushing about this particular book is because it’s been flagged up by the outraged. How ironic.

‘The only reason all those people on Twitter are gushing about this particular book is because it’s been flagged up by the outraged. How ironic.’

‘The outraged?’

It’s language like this that causes the concern. There are many people who shouldn’t have responsibility for deciding what is appropriate for kids, and it’s because they don’t know themselves. They say things like ‘the outraged’ in response to young teenagers being handed highly sexualised materials.

The rest of us spot them from this language.

Well, I’ve always worked in schools and have never come across a specific KS5 library. In any case, there will be books suitable for Y10 and Y11 that aren’t suitable for Y7. It’s a sliding scale, surely. You can’t bowdlerise everything.

We can’t go down the X group is more than capable route. Some professionals aren’t capable. That’s why we have safeguarding laws and policies - to regulate what they can do and what they can’t do.

That is the route to madness. If we can't rely on school librarians so we have to prescribe exactly what they do, then by the same token we can't rely on school teachers like you, OP, and must prescribe every word that is said in lessons. Ditto nursery workers, health professionals, lawyers, police, judges, firefighters ...

OP have you followed the link you yourself posted? It takes you through to some very outraged people. Many of them outraged in very, very homophobic ways about the promotion of the ‘homosexual lifestyle’. They’re not upset like you, about the word ‘come’ or ‘porn’; they’re rampantly homophobic, and I will mock their outrage, if you don’t mind!

‘That is the route to madness. If we can't rely on school librarians so we have to prescribe exactly what they do, then by the same token we can't rely on school teachers like you, OP, and must prescribe every word that is said in lessons. Ditto nursery workers, health professionals, lawyers, police, judges, firefighters ...’

You are mixing up the pre-emptive measures and the responsive measures. We do generally have a level of trust in professionals. But we acknowledge that that trust can sometimes be misplaced, and we have policies that we put in place to try to guard against that. But no policy on its own will do that. You need responsive measures when people get things wrong (which they will, in all the groups you just mentioned).

My concern with the argument you are making is that it doesn’t only call for a degree of trust before something occurs that throws that trust into question. It asks me to place my faith in their professionalism afterwards as well.

And no robust approach to safeguarding should do that.

“Trust him, he’s a priest.”

“Trust him, he has an OBE.”

“Trust her, she’s a professor.”

No. We need a healthy skepticism about people in authority. Sometimes they aren’t trustworthy.

‘Many of them outraged in very, very homophobic ways about the promotion of the ‘homosexual lifestyle’. They’re not upset like you, about the word ‘come’ or ‘porn’; they’re rampantly homophobic, and I will mock their outrage, if you don’t mind!’

That’s fair. I mock the homophobic as well. But it’s not true to say the only reason people are gushing about the book is because some people have been homophobic about it. There are loads of people who don’t see this language as an issue for young teens, including on this thread.