David O’Shields, right, chairman of the state Board of Education, delivers his report during a meeting of the board on Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024, while state Superintendent Ellen Weaver, center, looks on. (Abraham Kenmore/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — Seven books must be removed from the library shelves and classrooms of South Carolina’s public schools, while three classics can stay, the state Board of Education decided Tuesday.
The decision was the first time the board considered whether to remove or keep books under a new regulation banning books that contain “sexual conduct.” Board members voted unanimously in line with recommendations from Department of Education staff and a committee that reviewed the books last week.
Instead of waiting for parents to challenge the books locally and appeal districts’ decisions, committee members asked department staff to review 11 total books that had already faced local opposition or came up during public hearings for the regulation.
That created some strife among board members, who said they felt the regulation was meant to create a way for parents to appeal local school board decisions with which they didn’t agree. The state board should stick with that decision and not choose any more of its own books to review, said Board Chair David O’Shields.
“The dissonance is, is it top-down, is it bottom-up, is it both?” said O’Shields, who is also superintendent of Laurens County School District 56.
The goal was to give educators more guidance through example, said board member Christian Hanley, who requested the review as chair of the committee. The staff members who made the list included “1984,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Romeo & Juliet” to assuage concerns that they would violate the regulation, he said.
Teachers have called the rule vague, saying it confuses what they can or can’t use in classrooms. The regulation does not define “sexual conduct” on its own, but instead ties it to a portion of the state’s obscenity law.
Some of the books that board members considered further muddled the waters, some critics said. They pointed to passages of “1984” in which two characters have sex, questioning why that didn’t violate the regulation.
“Voting to retain ‘1984’ creates a vague and unpredictable standard that is impossible for teachers and administrators to meet,” said Josh Malkin, an advocacy director for the state American Civil Liberties Union.
The difference, Hanley said, is that the books pulled from shelves have “multiple, express, extensive, graphic or detailed descriptions of sexual conduct.” Mentioning or referring to sex, as is the case in “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Romeo & Juliet,” isn’t enough to ban a book from shelves, he said.
‘1984,’ ‘Romeo & Juliet’ to be considered under new SC ‘age-appropriate’ book rule
The sexual passages in “1984” are not so descriptive as to violate the regulation, Hanley said, though he added that they come close.
“When reading this book — and I’ve read it more than once — it is almost as if George Orwell anticipated the South Carolina Legislature would pass their definition of sexual content, because he went right up to the line but never crossed it,” Hanley said.
Board members don’t have to read the books they are voting on, which also raised concerns with some critics. Reading the whole thing isn’t necessary, since a single sex scene, regardless of context, would violate the regulation, Hanley said.
“No one needs to read an entire Playboy Magazine cover to cover to determine it contains pornography,” Hanley said.
Agency employees did verify that all the books were available in at least one school library in the state, and they pulled the passages directly from physical copies of the book, said Robert Cathcart, a policy adviser.
Still awaiting a decision is “Crank” by Ellen Hopkins. The committee delayed a vote on it after hearing from people who said the 2004 novel helped them deal with methamphetamine addiction. That was the point of the book, which Hopkins based on her daughter’s struggle with the drug, Hopkins said in a statement.