Vetting of School Books Done Properly

To the Editor:

I read in these pages – articles, cartoons, and letters -- that the local progressive left has worked itself into a lather over the subject of “book banning.”

If “book banning” were an accurate definition of the process of vetting school library materials – particularly for the youngest of our charges -- I would join them in protest!

But adults watching out for the mentally and emotionally healthy upbringing of our precious children in our public schools is neither “book banning” nor “infringing on their first amendment rights”. We adults don’t allow our kiddos to carry loaded handguns in their school backpacks, either, and that is neither “gun grabbing” nor “infringing on our children’s second amendment rights”.

By definition, our schoolchildren are immature; they have not yet developed the physical, mental, and emotional self-control to handle firearms unsupervised. Nor do they have the maturity to handle alone the near-constant bombardment of coarse language and seduction into perversion that is sadly so pervasive in our current culture. We adults – family, clergy, educators – are responsible for daily walking our children through this minefield, guarding them while we teach them to stand on their own. Our school board in particular has been tasked with preventing the laying of dangerous mines in our school libraries.

In contrast, the progressives seem hell-bent on backing eighteen wheelers up to our school libraries and unloading mental disease mines and F-clusterbombs! Because free speech or something. How about this as a solution: there is nothing except decency, morality and common sense stopping you progressive “it takes a village to raise a child” types from buying this garbage with your own money and ruining the mental and moral health of the children under your influence by feeding it to them. But for all our sakes, I pray that you don’t.

Meanwhile, thanks to the adults in the school boardroom for keeping that explosive garbage out of our public school libraries.

Jeffrey Parker La Grange