LINKS
The following links contain useful information related to controversial books in schools. On the internet there are many more links that support an anything goes position and seem to regard a parents right to have control of their child's education as not important. However, some of them discuss parental rights, how to challenge a book, etc. Some provide information on the most challenged books, how a teacher or school system can defend a challenge, etc.
Citizens for Literary Standards in Schools
Focused on books used in the Blue Valley school district (Kansas City/Johnson County area) curriculum. Purpose is "To inform parents and the community about vulgar subject matter (prolific use of obscenities, sexually stimulating passages involving teens, and many other types of morally repugnant content) in required reading assignments." Numerous book excerpts and reviews. Investigates reading difficulty levels, better alternative books, how current graphic and vulgar books do not show up on the AP tests, etc. Extensive detail.
LIBRARY PATRONS OF TEXAS, INC.
Based in Montgomery County, Texas. Committed to keeping the public fully informed of the policies of tax supported libraries that affect the communities they serve. Primary focus is public libraries and extensive homosexual advocacy/content and graphic and explicit books in the childrens and young adult sections. Extensive book excerpts and reviews.
Devoted to stopping the American Library Association [ALA] from pushing pornography in public libraries and school libraries. Shows how the ALA continues to fight internet filters even after their losing the Supreme Court porn filter decision. Shows how ALA policies and actions are endangering children and encouraging deviants and crimes in public libraries. Extensive detail documenting how the ALA promotes pornography. THE ALA, political leftists and social marxists - Helping to get and to keep extreme material in K-12 schools - And wherever else they can!
Oklahomans For School Accountability (OFSA)
Coalition of concerned citizens in Oklahoma involved with numerous school issues from a standpoint of "traditional, conservative American values." Operation Information from OFSA has good book excerpt and review information.
http://users.owt.com/crbatish/
A community effort to keep parents in touch with their public school. Contains a reading list for secondary literature classes of the Richland School District, Richland, Washington with mini reviews. Seven books challenged. No updates for a while.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2000/03/21/export4412.txt
North Country Times article on why censorship is required at times, March 2000
http://www.ohiou.edu/esl/project/freeSpeech/for.html
"Voices for censorship" links >>>in other words organizations that might be against their kids reading Hustler magazine for a English assignment
http://theroc.org/enemies/roc7.htm
Rock out Censorship - Know your enemies; List of pro-censorship forces they are battling. An enemy of your enemy???
http://personal.riverusers.com/~srg/tucson_parents_edu_forum/
ARIZONA PARENTS FOR TRADITIONAL EDUCATION, lots of links
Conservative town hall
Gateways To Better Education, for Christian public School Parents, good links, book challenge info -Excellent
http://www.gtbe.org/schoolbook.html
Gateways to Better Education- Challenging a book in your school
Family Friendly Libraries - Excellent
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03519d.htm
history of censorship from Catholic Encyclopedia
http://www.jefflindsay.com/Education.shtml
webpage against dumbing down of public education with lots of good links
http://members.aol.com/TxtbkRevws/
Conservative review of public school textbooks
http://www.beau.lib.la.us/~edu/Parents.htm
Concerned parents (about education) websites, Louisiana and around nation
http://www.christianpatriot.com/hatch.htm
The Hatch Letter, The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of these United States
http://www.pisd.org/rights.html
One form to inform the school district of your legal rights and remedies
http://www.plainfield.k12.in.us/hschool/webq/webq52/banned.htm
Banned Books Quest, online learning case on banning
Family Research Council; Family, Faith and Freedom
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/9155/
Parents for Improved Education in Fairfax County Public Schools
covers issues related to Public Libraries using public tax dollars to distribute materials to children that are pornographic, obscene, and/or otherwise illegal. Special note is paid to policies of the ALA
http://www.nationalcoalition.org/links.phtml?ID=32
National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families; organization against pornography, lots of conservative links
Kids-in-mind; rates movies for sex, nudity, violence, gore and profanity. I wish someone had a site that was as good for books as this is for movies. For some other sites that rate movies see:
http://www.christiananswers.net/spotlight/
Be sure to check the following two capalert subpages. The second one shows how many PG-13 movies have become "R-13" in the last few years.
http://www.capalert.com/capreports/index.htm
http://www.capalert.com/r-13.htm
http://congress.nw.dc.us/cgi-bin/media.pl?dir=frc
Contact congress and the media
http://www.execpc.com/~presswis/advice.html
Advice for parents concerned about education in dealing with media
American Center for Law and Justice
http://www.txjf.org/parental.html
Texas Justice Foundation Notice of Parental Rights
http://www.soc-um.org/kidlist.html
The K.I.D. (Kids In Danger) List is a database of more than 20,000 website Urls (locations). Each Url promotes, encourages, exhibits, defends pedophilia, or is sexually inappropriate that is not dealing with adult material. It is done through either context or content, some as simple as displaying a pedophile logo on their page. This list has been exhaustively researched, retrieved and verified over many hundreds of hours by two of the leading Child Protection Organizations in Cyberspace: SOC-UM (Safeguarding Our Children - United Mothers http://www.soc-um.org) and CyberAngels Internet Safety Organization (http://www.cyberangels.org), who have joined together on this project in the hopes of increasing child safety online.
http://www.home-school.com/Articles/ThousandGreatBooks.html
Article on books >>> "Today, children's literature is often vulgar, confused, and corrupt. Sometimes it is even sinister. The vices and disorders of the adult world, itself increasingly morally corrupt, are being advanced into childhood, insinuated in families, and pushed at children"
http://www.crossroad.to/text/articles/sgw1196.html
article on The Giver, one of the most challenged books of the 1990's. "Sometimes an exciting story can transmit horrible images and socialistic messages more easily than a history lesson....The Giver fits into the flood of classroom literature that force children to think the unthinkable and reconsider the values they learned at home"
http://www.voicenet.com/~sakossor/Pe3_13.html
Article on the systematic destruction of character in the classroom
http://www.parentsrightscoalition.org/
Parental Rights
http://law.richmond.edu/RJOLPI/Issues/Fall 1998 Education Issue/farris_fin.htm
Parental Rights
parents in New Jersey who believe that organized and informed parents must participate in shaping the education process which determines what our kids are being taught in their class rooms.
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/ecolhome/ecodoc09.htm
excellent article: How congress can protect the rights of parents to raise their children
http://www.classicscentral.com/titles.htm
list of 169 classic books; if high school children were reading more of the books on this list the number of book challenges would drop significantly
California organization whose purpose is to assist those in the battle for religious freedoms, sanctity of life, parental rights and other civil liberties
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=21361
from California public schools article on: Coalition helps kids avoid 'homosexual curriculum'; Group releases comprehensive 'opt-out form' allowing parents to say 'no'
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4076.asp
Christian Law Association site: Rights in public schools. If a particular lesson or activity would substantially burden a student's free exercise of religion, and if the school cannot prove a compelling interest in requiring attendance, the school is legally required to excuse the student from that lesson or activity.
http://focusonthefamily.com/welcome/press/a0022343.cfm
Focus on the Family issues their annual truthful statement on the ALA Banned Books Week. It is no accident that this week was selected by the ALA. It is the time of year that parents find out what books their children are being exposed to in school.
http://www.mind-trek.com/reports/misc/minddest.htm
Are our schools campuses for mind destruction
http://library.northernlight.com/DG19990802010014900.html?cb=0&sc=0
Insight Magazine article; Kids get lessons on explicit sex
http://www.aclu.org/issues/freespeech/bannedbooks_tx.html
Banned and challenged books in Texas public schools 1999-2000. Provides reason for challenge and result of challenge for nearly 200 books. Read this before you make a challenge.
http://www.ala.org/alaorg/oif/top100bannedbooks.html
Top 100 challenged books of the 1990's
http://www.ncte.org/position/right-to-read.shtml
A students right to read from the National Council of Teachers of English who also has lots of info on fighting book challenges including a CD for sale with packaged responses to over 100 book challenges parents might make; see http://www.ncte.org/censorship/ This is a must read
http://www.ncte.org/about/issues/censorship/resources/115785.htm
National Council of teachers of English; How to write a book selection rationale
http://www.drizzle.com/~kathleen/wla/youth.htm
lists of gay, lesbian and bisexual books for beginning readers to young adults
http://www.ncte.org/notesplus/rationales/
NCTE rationales for 6 frequently challenged books
http://rethinkingschools.org/Archives/12_03/cenmain.htm
Reading, Writing and Censorship; article on "Annie on my Mind" a book with homosexuality ordered removed from a high school library
http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/gcarr/courses/bansyl.html
Syllabus of a 1996 University course on banned books. Some links on what is secular humanism and understanding it as a religion
http://www.afn.org/~dks/banned/banned-books-94-95.html
Banned or Challenged books 94/95
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/banned-books.html
Books that have been the objects of censorship or censorship attempts selected from the indexes of the on-line digital library at UPenn
http://www.booksmith.com/censorship.html
anti-censorship
http://www.cnn.com/books/beginnings/9908/places.never/index.html
article by Judy Blume, author of frequently challenged young children's books
http://www.dlapr.lib.az.us/cdt/intell.htm
For intellectual freedom and against censorship
http://www.execpc.com/~dcoy/PEDS/banned.htm
banned book and censorship news, pro ALA/ACLU
http://www.cfac.org/Stories/free_speech.html
Free speech stories
http://borg.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/winter94/CenCONN.html
Anti-censorship article
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/search.html
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/lists.html
UPenn Digital on-line Library
http://home.nvg.org/~aga/bulletin43.html
list of banned books derived from American Library Association
http://www.indiana.edu/~eric_rec/
a project of the U.S. Department of Education and the National Library of Education, with funding from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement
Favorite Teenage Angst books
http://www.southalabama.edu/univlib/picks/full.htm
South Alabama University Library
http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/historical.htm
Historical Fiction Books for Children and Young Adults
http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/departments/policy/pdf/iibra.pdf
Montgomery County, MD
http://familyeducation.com/article/0,1120,1-3396,00.html
familyeducation.com reading and literature
http://paulie.com/blue/BKS/bk16.htm
banned books for sale
http://www.centerforlearning.org/site_map.html
The Center for Learning
http://www.angelfire.com/ga/page451/kidsbooks.html
http://www.angelfire.com/ga/page451/links.html
pro-banned books
http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/yalit.htm
Young Adult Literature : Middle & Secondary English-Language Arts
http://www.aclu.org/siteindex.html
ACLU website, see free speech
http://www.unquietmind.com/banbooks.html
Spoof or parody of "book banners" giving reasons for banning the Bible and Shakespeare.
http://www.chemistrycoach.com/books.htm
Hundreds of things said by famous and infamous people about books
http://www.indiana.edu/~eric_rec/ieo/bibs/censor.html
ERIC database of books about censorship
http://www.dalton.org/libraries/fairrosa/disc/censorship.html
Censorship Discussion Sparked by The Courage of Sarah Noble
http://www.dalton.org/Libraries/Fairrosa/reviews.html
Children's book reviews
http://www3.sympatico.ca/alanbrown/kids.htm
Children's book reviews
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr031.shtml
How to handle and avoid book challenges
http://web.utk.edu/~wrobinso/560_lec_complain.html
How to handle complaints and censorship
http://www.ultranet.com/~kyp/rockbann.html
About a "book banning" in Rockford, IL
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/winter96/pubCONN.html
Article Titled: WHAT JOHNNY CAN'T READ - Censorship in American Libraries
http://www.msoe.edu/~shimek/intelfr.html
Links for intellectual freedom and against censorship
http://www.swcp.com/~ldraper/slim/biblios/draper.html
Intellectual Freedom, Censorship and the Schools - A values conflict; Guide to recent literature
http://www.booksatoz.com/censorship/
An anti-censorship page
http://www.efc.ca/pages/chronicle/whattodo.html
When the censor comes - A guide for teachers, librarians, booksellers and others who disseminate the printed word
http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed315864.html
from ERIC; Censorship of curriculum materials
http://www.misu.nodak.edu/~garness/Engl238controversy.html
Controversial books in literature for children (college class)
http://www.execpc.com/~presswis/resour.html
Education links from PRESS
http://stevencscheer.com/misreadingreading.htm
lecture given at the University of Evansville on September 3, 1997. It admonishes both the right and the left (in that order) for not reading well enough
http://usd230.k12.ks.us/usd230/hs/library/bookreviews.html
Spring Hill High School Book reviews
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/03/23/111213.shtml
Bulletin Board discussion on internet censorship in Utah schools and libraries
http://cela.albany.edu/publication/article/sex.htm
Article on effect of censorship on high school teacher
The Alliance for Parental Involvement in Education; NY
email: pabbis@pabbis.com