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Banned and Challenged: Restricting access to books in the U.S.

Perspective, ashley hope pérez: 'young people have a right' to stories that help them learn.

Ashley Hope Pérez

Author Ashley Hope Pérez wrote Out of Darkness, which is on the American Library Association's lists of most banned books. Kaz Fantone/NPR hide caption

Author Ashley Hope Pérez wrote Out of Darkness, which is on the American Library Association's lists of most banned books.

This essay by Ashley Hope Pérez is part of a series of interviews with — and essays by — authors who are finding their books being challenged and banned in the U.S.

For over a decade, I lived my professional dream. I spent my days teaching college literature courses and writing novels. I regularly visited schools as an author and got to meet teens who reminded me of the students I taught in Houston — the amazing humans who had first inspired me to write for young adults.

Then in 2021, my dream disintegrated into an author and educator's nightmare as my novel Out of Darkness became a target for politically motivated book bans across the country.

Book News & Features

Efforts to ban books jumped an 'unprecedented' four-fold in 2021, ala report says.

Author Interviews

Banned books: author ashley hope pérez on finding humanity in the 'darkness'.

Attacks unfolded, not just on my writing but also on young people's right to read it. Hate mail and threats overwhelmed the inboxes where I once had received invitations for author visits and appreciative notes from readers. At the beginning of 2021, Out of Darkness had been on library shelves for over five years without a single challenge or complaint. As we reach the end of 2022, it has been banned in at least 29 school districts across the country.

From the earliest stages of writing, I knew Out of Darkness would be difficult — for me, and for readers. I drew my inspiration for the novel from an actual school disaster: the 1937 New London school explosion that killed hundreds in an East Texas oil town just 20 minutes from my childhood home. This tragic but little-known historical event serves as the backdrop for a fictional star-crossed romance between a Black teenager and a young Latina who has just arrived in the area.

As I researched the novel, I imagined the explosion as its most devastating event. But to engage honestly with the realities of the time and of my characters' lives, I had to grapple with systemic racism, personal prejudice, sexual abuse and domestic violence. As I wrote, the teenagers' circumstances began to tighten, noose-like, around their lives and love, leading to still more tragedy. I sought to show the depths of harm inflicted on some in this country without sensationalizing that history. The book portrays friendship, loving family, community and healthy relationships because they, too, are part of the characters' world. Then, as now, young people struggle mightily for joy, love and dignity.

When Out of Darkness was first published, I braced for objections. Would readers recoil from the harshness of my characters' realities? Or would they recognize how the novel invites connections between those realities and an ongoing reckoning with racialized violence and police brutality? To my relief, the novel received glowing reviews, earned multiple literary awards, and was named to "best of the year" lists by Kirkus Reviews and School Library Journal . It appeared on reading lists across the country as a recommendation for ambitious young readers ready to face disquieting aspects of the American experience.

So it went until early 2021. In the wake of the 2020 presidential elections, right-wing groups pivoted from a national defeat to "local" issues. The latest wave of book banning exceeds anything ever documented by librarian or free-speech groups. The statistics for 2021, which represent only a fraction of actual removals, reflect a more than 600% increase in challenges and removals as compared to 2020. (See Everylibrary.org for a continually updated database of challenges and bans and PEN America's Banned in the USA reports for April 2022 and September 2022 for further context.)

These book bans do not reflect spontaneous parental concern. Instead, they are part of an orchestrated effort to sow suspicion of public schools as scarily "woke" and to signal opposition to certain identities and topics. Book banners often cite "sexually explicit content" as their reason for objecting to books in high schools. What distinguishes the targeted titles, though, is not their sexual content but that they overwhelmingly center the experiences of BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people. If you were to stack up all the books with sexual content in any library, the tallest stack by far would be about white, straight characters. Tellingly, those are not the books under attack. Claims about "sexual content" are a pretext for erasing the stories that tell Black, Latinx, queer and other non-dominant kids that they matter and belong. Beyond telegraphing disapproval, book bans serve the interests of groups that have long sought to dismantle public education and shut down conversations about important issues.

Debates about the suitability of reading materials in school are nothing new. These include past efforts by progressives to reorient language arts instruction. Concerns about racist language and portrayals might well lead communities to seek alternatives to the teaching of works like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . But de-emphasizing problematic classics does not generally entail removing the books from library collections. By contrast, in targeting high school libraries, conservative book banners seek to restrict what individual students may choose to read on their own , disregarding the judgment of school librarians who carefully select materials according to professional standards.

Rather than reading the books themselves, today's book banners rely instead on haphazard lists and talking points circulated online. Social media plays a central role in stoking the fires of censorship. Last year, a video of a woman ranting about a passage from Out of Darkness in a school board meeting went internationally viral. The woman's school board rant resulted in the removal of every copy of Out of Darkness from the district's libraries, triggered copycat performances, and fueled more efforts to ban my book.

Book banning poses a real professional and personal cost to authors and educators. For YA writers, losing access to school and library audiences can be career ending. And it is excruciating to watch people describe our life's work as "filth" or "garbage." We try to find creative ways to respond to the defamation, as I did in my own YouTube video . But there is no competing with the virality of outrage. Meanwhile, librarians and teachers face toxic work conditions that shift the focus from student learning to coping with harassment.

But book banning harms students, and their education, the most. Young people rely on school libraries for accurate information and for stories that broaden their understanding, offer hope and community, and speak honestly to challenges they face. As libraries become battlegrounds, teens notice which books, and which identities, are under attack. Those who share identities with targeted authors or characters receive a powerful message of exclusion: These books don't belong, and neither do you.

Back in 2004, my predominately Latinx high school students in Houston wanted — needed — books that reflected their lives and communities but few such books had been written. In the decades since, authors have worked hard to ensure greater inclusion and respect for the diversity of teen experiences. For students with fewer resources or difficult home situations, though, a book that isn't in the school library might as well not exist. Right-wing groups want to roll back the modest progress we've made, and they are winning.

These "wins" happen even without official bans. Formal censorship becomes unnecessary once bullying, threats and disruption shake educators' focus from students. The result is soft censorship . For example, a librarian reads an outstanding review of a book that would serve someone in their school, but they don't order it out of fear of controversy. This is the internalization of the banners' agenda. The effects of soft censorship are pervasive, pernicious and very difficult to document.

The needs of all students matter, not just those whose lives and identities line up with what book banners think is acceptable. Young people have a right to the resources and stories that help them mature, learn and understand their world in all its diversity. They need more opportunities, not fewer, to experience deep imaginative engagement and the empathy it inspires. We've had enough "banner" years. I hope 2023 returns the focus to young people and their right to read.

Ashley Hope Pérez, author of three novels for young adults, is a former high school English teacher and an assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University. Find her on Twitter and Instagram or LinkT .

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Banned Books — Banned Books and the Freedom of Expression

Banned Books and The Freedom of Expression

• Categories: Banned Books Freedom of Expression

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Words: 793 |

Published: Sep 16, 2023

Words: 793 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

The phenomenon of banned books, the implications of banned books, the paradox of banned books, the enduring value of intellectual freedom, conclusion: the unbreakable bond between books and freedom, 1. offensive content:, 2. political or ideological concerns:, 3. religious sensitivities:, 4. social justice and controversial themes:, 5. protecting children:, 1. suppression of free expression:, 2. preservation of ignorance:, 3. cultural impact:, 4. loss of artistic and literary value:.

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Peter DeWitt's

Finding common ground.

A former K-5 public school principal turned author, presenter, and leadership coach, DeWitt provides insights and advice for education leaders. He can be found at www.petermdewitt.com . Read more from this blog .

Banning Books Is Not About Protecting Children. It’s About Discrimination Against Others

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In a recent article focusing on collaboration and developing collective efficacy , Katz and Donohoo write,

Collaboration is an essential ingredient of quality implementation, as it is for most high-quality professional learning. But while collaboration sounds easy, it is anything but. It’s not difficult to put a group of people together, but how do you ensure that being together adds value? And how do you avoid getting mired in conflicts and contradictions?

Katz and Donohoo’s questions are important ones. Our collaborative work should add value. Unfortunately, in conversations with teachers and school building and district leaders, it is apparent that there are numerous conflicts they are experiencing which prevent deep collaboration , and it’s not just due to COVID. It’s actually due to politics and the infiltration of right-wing conservative thinking in our public school system.

Lately, there have been numerous news stories about parents who want to ban books. In a recent story on NBC News , they reported more than 50 percent of the books being banned center around an LGBTQ character and children of color. Coincidence that book-banning is around LGBTQ characters or characters of color? Probably not.

In fact, Harris and Alter write ,

Parents, activists, school board officials and lawmakers around the country are challenging books at a pace not seen in decades. The American Library Association said, “In a preliminary report that it received an “unprecedented” 330 reports of book challenges, each of which can include multiple books, last fall.”

Isn’t it interesting, or rather infuriating, that in the very place that students should be engaged in challenges to their own thinking in order to grow as learners, these people are actively making sure that schools are not able to create opportunities for that thinking? Isn’t it interesting that some of the very groups who yell so loudly about cancel culture are the same people trying to cancel discussions about ideas that come to us through books? If Katz and Donohoo are correct about collaboration and conversation, which they are, where is the added value in banning books?

Pornography Is an Intentional Word

The dumbing down of America isn’t due to watered-down curriculum as much as it is the direct result of parents, leaders, and teachers who choose to ban books because, somehow, they don’t agree with what is written within those books.

In an effort to undermine the quality of the books, governors like Greg Abbot of Texas calls them pornographic . Although I would love to say that Abbott chose his words incorrectly, the reality is that he intentionally chose that word to get parents in his state up in arms. I wonder how many of the books being banned have actually been read by the parents trying to ban them.

Sure, they can read a passage at a board meeting, but have they actually read the whole book?

The interesting thing about reading is that it is supposed to expand our ideas and thoughts, not coincide with our confirmation bias. Books are supposed to inspire us to engage in debate and an exchange of ideas, but too many of these states that are banning books would rather censor the freedom of thought. What are they so afraid of? Isn’t it funny that so many of these parents want to unmask their children at the same time they force a mask on their child’s ability to choose a book for themselves? And they certainly seem to mask what this banning is all about, which is pushing institutional racism in their schools.

This Is Not New

The reality is that this issue is not new. People have been trying to ban books for as long as we have been a country. The sad, and often hidden side of all this is when librarians feel the pressure to self-censor the books made available in a library. They do not feel they will be supported by their principals, so they choose to not purchase books for their libraries that may make waves.

In fact, in this article published by the American Library Association (ALA), Asheim writes ,

But many librarians have been known to defer to anticipated pressures, and to avoid facing issues by suppressing possible issue-making causes. In such cases, the rejection of a book is censorship, for the book has been judged—not on its own merits—but in terms of the librarian’s devotion to three square meals a day. Do not misunderstand me—I am as devoted as any to the delights of the table and a roof against the rain. But these considerations should not be mistaken for literary criteria, and it is with the latter that the librarian-as-selector is properly concerned.

As you can see, censorship has many forms, and it’s not just about the seedy instances you hear while watching the nightly news.

Representation Matters … Even If It Makes You Uncomfortable

Many years ago, Albert Bandura began researching self-efficacy, which is the belief we feel in our own abilities. Self-efficacy is context specific, which means we all have areas where we feel confident and areas where we don’t.

What Bandura found in 2000 is that leaders who feel efficacious double their efforts, but those who do not feel efficacious slacken their efforts. What this means is that when leaders, and in this case parents, feel uncomfortable, they will try to stay away from the conversation as much as possible. This is unfortunate, because the only way to become more comfortable is to engage in conversations that help build understanding.

So many people seem to be running away from the very conversations that we should be running toward. But they probably know that already. They don’t want to understand it, nor do they want their children to understand it, which is why they want to ban it. Whether we are conservative, liberal or somewhere in between, we should see representation in the books offered at school. If we are Black, brown or gay, we should see ourselves represented in books. It’s our choice whether we want to check them out or not.

Book banning is a weak response to ideas that scare us. Are the people banning books the same ones that yell from the rooftops that there should be less government involvement in decision making, and yet they want to ban books for others without giving those people a chance to choose for themselves? In states where books are being banned, there should be more and more people who are speaking up against censorship. Kats and Donohoo are right that collaboration within schools is difficult and sometimes complicated. It seems that collaboration within school communities is probably even more complicated.

All in all, the sad reality of all this is that censorship and book banning will definitely work. Too many teachers and leaders do not feel efficacious enough to speak up against these loud censoring parents because they love their jobs and students too much to risk losing their job and students. At some point, though, oppression and ignorance should not be allowed to win this battle.

The opinions expressed in Peter DeWitt’s Finding Common Ground are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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A Case for Reading - Examining Challenged and Banned Books

• Resources & Preparation
• Instructional Plan
• Related Resources

Any work is potentially open to attack by someone, somewhere, sometime, for some reason. This lesson introduces students to censorship and how challenges to books occur. They are then invited to read challenged or banned books from the American Library Association's list of the most frequently challenged books . Students decide for themselves what should be done with these books at their school by writing a persuasive essay explaining their perspectives. Students share their pieces with the rest of the class, and as an extension activity, can share their essays with teachers, librarians, and others in their school.

Featured Resources

T-Chart Printout : This printable sheet allows students to keep notes on parts of books that they believe might be challenged, as well as supporting reasons. Persuasive Writing Rubric : Use this rubric to evaluate the organization, conventions, goal, delivery, and mechanics of students' persuasive writing. The rubric can be adapted for any persuasive essay. Persuasion Map : Use this online tool to map out and print your persuasive argument. Included are spaces to map out your thesis, three reasons, and supporting details.

From Theory to Practice

There are times that the books that are part of our curriculum are found to be questionable or offensive by other groups. Should teachers stop using those texts? Should the books be banned from schools? No! "Censorship leaves students with an inadequate and distorted picture of the ideals, values, and problems of their culture. Partly because of censorship or the fear of censorship, many writers are ignored or inadequately represented in the public schools, and many are represented in anthologies not by their best work but by their ‘safest' or ‘least offensive' work," as stated in the NCTE Guideline. What then should the English teacher do? "Freedom of inquiry is essential to education in a democracy. To establish conditions essential for freedom, teachers and administrators need to work together. The community that entrusts students to the care of an English teacher should also trust that teacher to exercise professional judgment in selecting or recommending books. The English teacher can be free to teach literature, and students can be free to read whatever they wish only if informed and vigilant groups, within the profession and without, unite in resisting unfair pressures." This is the Students' Right to Read. Further Reading

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

• 1. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
• 2. Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.
• 3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
• 4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
• 5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
• 6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
• 8. Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
• 11. Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
• 12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).

Materials and Technology

• Selected books as examples (from the most frequently challenged books list)
• Example Family Letter
• Persuasion Map
• Book Challenge Investigation Bookmarks
• Persuasive Writing Rubric

Preparation

• Because this lesson requires that students read a book from the ALA Challenged Book list, it’s a good idea to notify families prior to starting the assignment. See the example family letter for ideas on how to notify families.
• Bookmark the websites listed as resources to refer to throughout the lesson.
• Compile grade-appropriate books for students to explore using the Challenged Children's Books list .  Talk to your librarian or school media specialist about creating a resource collection for students to use in your classroom or in the library.
• Copy T-Charts and/or bookmarks for students to document passages as they read.
• Test the Persuasion Map on your computers to familiarize yourself with the tool.

Student Objectives

Students will:

• be exposed to the issues of censorship, challenged, or banned books.
• examine issues of censorship as it relates to a specific literature title.
• critically evaluate books based on relevancy, biases, and errors.
• develop and support a position on a particular book by writing a persuasive essay about their chosen title.

Session One

• Display a selection of banned or challenged books in a prominent place in your classroom. Include in this selection books meant for children and any included in the school curriculum. Ask students to speculate on what these books have in common.
• Explain to the students that these books have been "censored."  Ask students to brainstorm a definition of censorship and record the students' ideas on the board or chart paper. When you have come up with a definition the group agrees on, have students record the definition.
• Brainstorm ways in which things are censored for them already and who controls what is censored and how. Examples include Internet filtering, ratings on movies, video games, music, and self-censoring (choosing to watch only 1 news show or choosing not to read a certain type of book).  Discuss circumstances in which censorship would be necessary, if any, with the students.
• Provide the students’ definitions for challenged books as well as banned books. (Share these American Library Association definitions: “A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials.”)
• After the students have seen the ALA definition, have the students “grow” in their own definitions. Ask them to revisit their definition and align it with the one presented by the American Library Association.
• Invite the students to brainstorm any books that they have heard of that have been challenged or banned from schools or libraries. Ask them if they know why those books were found to be controversial.
• Students should then brainstorm titles of other books that they feel could possibly be challenged or banned from their school collection.  Allow time for students to share these titles with their classmates and offer an explanation of why they think these titles could possibly be challenged or banned.
• Share with the students a list of banned books .
• Did they find them to be entertaining, informative, beneficial or objectionable?
• Can they suggest reasons why someone would object to elementary, middle school or high school students reading these books?
• If desired, complete the session by allowing students to learn more about Banned Books Week , additional challenged/banned books, and cases involving First Amendment Rights.

Session Two

• From a teacher-selected list of grade-appropriate books from the Challenged Children's Books list , have groups of students select one of the books to read in literature circles, traditional reading groups, or through read-alouds.
• As the students read, ask them to pay particular attention to the features in the books that may have made them controversial. As students find quotes/parts of the book that they find to be controversial, they should add them to their T-Chart , along with an explanation of why they think that this area could be controversial.  On the left side of their T-Chart , they will list the quote or section of the book (with page numbers); on the right side of the T-Chart , they will write their thoughts on why this area could be seen as controversial.
• You may also choose to invite the students to use bookmarks (in addition to or instead of the T-Chart ) , so they can record page numbers and passages as they read.

Session Three

• After the students have completed the reading of their book, have a group or class discussion on the students' findings that they recorded on their bookmarks or T-Chart .
• Next, explain to students that they will be writing a persuasive piece stating what they believe should be done with the book that has been challenged. If students read the book in groups, they could write a team response.
• Share the  Persuasive Writing Rubric to explore the requirements of the assignment in more detail and allow for students' questions about the assignment.
• Demonstrate the Persuasion Map and work through a sample book challenge to show students how to use the tool to structure their essays.
• Provide students with access to computers, and allow students the remainder of class to work with the Persuasion Map as a brainstorming tool and to guide them through work on their papers.  If computer access is a problem, you may provide students with print copies of the Persuasion Map Printout .
• Encourage students to share their thoughts and opinions with the class as they work on their drafts.  Students should print out their work at the end of the session.

Session Four

• Invite students to share their persuasive pieces with the rest of the class. It is their job to persuade teachers, librarians, or administrators to keep the book in their collection, remove the book from their collection, or add the book to their collection.
• For an authentic sharing session, invite parents in for a panel discussion while the children present their thoughts and opinions on the matter of challenged and banned books.
• Students can discuss the books after each presentation to draw conclusions about each title and about censorship and challenges overall.

Concerned Parent The concerned parent is interested in how controversial materials affect school children. The concerned parent wants to maintain a healthy learning environment for students.   Classroom Teacher The Classroom Teacher needs to select books that will both match the interests of the students and also meet the requirements of the curriculum. The Classroom Teacher needs to listen to the parents, and also follow the rules of the school.   School Library Media Specialist The School Library Media Specialist selects library materials based on the curriculum and reading interests the students in the school.   School Lawyer The School Lawyer is concerned about how the students’ civil liberties would be affected if the School Board decided to ban books.

• Students can elicit responses and reactions from peers, teachers, administrators, librarians, the author, and parents in regards to the particular book they are researching. Ask students to focus on the appropriateness of the book in reference to an elementary school collection.  
• Discuss Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico and how after the decision from that court case public school districts around the country developed policies concerning book challenges in elementary, middle, and high school libraries.
• Students can play the role of the librarian and decide where a challenged/banned book should be shelved. For example, the challenged book may be a picture book, but the “librarian” might decide that the book should instead be shelved in the Teacher Resource Section of the library. An alternative for Sessions Three and Four for this lesson plan is to ask students to write persuasive essays explaining where the book should be shelved and why it should be shelved there.

Student Assessment / Reflections

• As students discuss censorship and challenged/banned books, and as they read their selected text, listen for comments that indicate they are identifying specific examples from the story that connect to the information they have learned (you should also check for evidence of this on their bookmarks or T-Chart ). The connections that they make between the details in the novel and the details they choose as their supporting reasons for their persuasive piece will reveal their understanding and engagement with the books.
• Monitor student interaction and progress during any group work to assess social skills and assist any students having problems.
• Respond to the content and quality of students’ thoughts in their final reflections on the project. Look for indications that the student provides supporting evidence for the reflections, thus applying the lessons learned from the work with the Persuasion Map .
• Assess students’ persuasive writing piece using the rubric .
• Calendar Activities
• Professional Library
• Student Interactives
• Lesson Plans

Students brainstorm reasons why certain books might have been banned and discuss common reasons why books are challenged.

Students adapt a Roald Dahl story to picture book format and share their books and add them to the classroom library. Additionally, they compare a book version and film version of one of Dahl's works.

Bring the celebration of reading and literacy into your classroom, library, school, and home all year long.

The current edition of The Students' Right to Read is an adaptation and updating of the original Council statement, including "Citizen's Request for Reconsideration of a Work."

The Persuasion Map is an interactive graphic organizer that enables students to map out their arguments for a persuasive essay or debate.

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• Kindergarten K

Argumentative Essay: Should Books Be Banned In Schools?

Did you know that over the past 25 years books were commonly banned because they had offensive language? Well, the technique of banning books has been widespread ever since the late 18th century. Many concluded that certain books should be banned in school systems. This is extremely important because books can develop children’s mindsets and help them adapt to the world around them. Banning books is necessary since they provide inappropriate content that can influence bad behavior, books can be distracting on school grounds, and parents might want to introduce their kids to specific subjects at a certain age or time.

The first reason why certain books should be banned from schools is that books can be a negative influence on students. This is evident since books expose students to content that is inappropriate. To further prove this statement, the American Academy of Pediatrics has found that exposure to violence in media, including in books, can impact kids by making them act aggressively and desensitizing them to violence (Pro 2). Furthermore, books can be a negative to young students since they can be influenced easily.

In addition to this topic, books should be banned since they can be distracting on school grounds. Students will be distracted with inappropriate content on school grounds which will affect their education. Jenni White states, “numerous studies on the use of the graphic material by students indicate negative psychological effects” (Pro 2). Books can be distracting to younger audiences; it makes a huge impact on their overall look on the world. Hence, books should be banned because it will be distracting to young audiences.

The last reason why books should be banned is that parents might want to introduce their child to a topic at a certain point in their life. Parents should take responsibility for their child and help them grow and prosper. This is proven by ProCon.org, it further states, “if books with inappropriate material are available in libraries, children or teens can be exposed to books their parents wouldn’t approve of before the parents even find out what their children are reading” (Pro 1). In consequence, books can expose children to material their guardians aren’t ready to introduce them to yet.

Others argue that books can be educational and give students creativity. Overall, I believe that the content certain books provide will expose young minds and cause a more devastating impact. The National Coalition against Censorship says, “even books or materials that many find ‘objectionable’ may have educational value, and the decision about what to use in the classroom should be based on professional judgments and standards, not individual preferences”(Con 1). To argue this statement, I believe that students should have the right to choose which book they want to read, but there should be an age restriction that can divide these books since their minds are still developing.

In conclusion, books can definitely be harmful for younger audiences and can affect them in the long run. These harmful books can influence their bad behavior, be distracting to their education, and can limit conversations about certain subjects between parents and their children. To conclude the points stated previously, books should be banned in schools.

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The Mostly Persuasive Logic Behind the New Ban on Noncompetes

By Peter Coy

Opinion Writer

The Federal Trade Commission used two very different rationales to get to its near-total ban this week on noncompete agreements. One of them is a no-brainer. The other is provocative but not completely obvious. I guess I’d call it a brainer.

As you may have read, the F.T.C. commissioners on Tuesday voted 3 to 2 on a final rule against noncompete clauses in employment contracts, which limit the ability of an employee to quit and immediately go work for a rival. The commission determined that they are an “unfair method of competition.” The rule takes effect 120 days after its publication in the Federal Register, unless a court blocks it before then.

The easy prong of the ban for the F.T.C. to justify is the one that applies to nurses, hairdressers, truck drivers — actually, every kind of worker except for senior executives. For 99 percent of the American work force, the F.T.C. said, requiring workers to sign noncompete agreements as a condition of employment is “coercive and exploitative conduct.”The agency’s 570-page ruling cites articles in The Times and The Wall Street Journal in which workers came forward to say, in the F.T.C.’s words, that noncompete agreements “derailed their careers, destroyed their finances, and upended their lives.” I agree. I wrote a piece in 2021 titled , “Why Are Fast Food Workers Signing Noncompete Agreements?”

But the “coercive and exploitative” rationale doesn’t work for senior executives, who aren’t so easy to coerce or exploit. They’re more likely to have lawyers look over contract offers. They typically have some power in the employment negotiation and know how to use it. Many won’t sign a noncompete agreement unless they get something in return, such as a sweetened pay package.

The F.T.C. defined senior executives as people earning more than $151,164 per year who are in a “policy-making position,” and estimated that fewer than 1 percent of workers meet the description. Under the rule, existing noncompetes for senior executives can remain in force but most new ones are banned. The rule doesn’t apply to clauses that are related to the sale of a business.

For noncompetes involving senior executives, the F.T.C. fell back on another argument, which is that the agreements are “restrictive and exclusionary conduct” that harms competition in product, service and labor markets. (The F.T.C. says that this second argument also applies to other workers, but for them I think it’s overshadowed by the “coercive and exploitative” argument.)

This is a bit subtle. It requires you to think of the employer and the senior executive as being in cahoots rather than fighting each other. Together they cook up a noncompete that rewards the executive for agreeing to deprive other potential employers of her or his talents, and depriving the customers of those other companies of potentially better products and services. In economists’ terms, noncompete signatories are “maximizing their bilateral surplus” at the expense of others.

The logic is that the company that can’t hire the executive might have better growth prospects, so holding it back is bad for society as a whole. Or, after leaving the old employer, the executive has to be (wastefully) inactive for six months or so to wait out what finance people call the garden leave. Or the new employer has to pay a large sum to buy out the noncompete clause — again, socially wasteful.

“There can be sizable gains from restricting these contracts,” Liyan Shi of Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business wrote in a 2023 article in the journal Econometrica.

As I said, this is an interesting and even persuasive argument. But it’s not simple to make.

“If this becomes the approach,” Sean Heather, the senior vice president for international regulatory affairs and antitrust at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, asked me, will any contract that doesn’t take into account the interests of third parties be “no longer viable?”

Charles Tharp, a professor of the practice at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, said that while banning the noncompete might benefit a future employer, it harms the current employer, so there’s no net benefit; it’s a wash.

But two other economists I contacted disagreed with Tharp and Heather. Evan Penniman Starr, an associate professor at the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business who is an expert on noncompete agreements, wrote to me that governments shouldn’t always put third parties first, but shouldn’t ignore them either, citing smoking bans to protect third parties from secondhand smoke. As for Tharp’s point, he wrote, “If match quality is higher at the subsequent firm, it is not a wash. It’s an efficient move that would destroy value if it wasn’t made.”

Sandeep Vaheesan, the legal director of the Open Markets Institute, emailed me that companies could still retain senior executives through higher pay packages and fixed-term contracts. Noncompetes are a “stick,” he wrote. “Public policy should encourage employers to use carrots instead. The F.T.C. noncompete ban does exactly that.”

Vaheesan also sided with the F.T.C.’s argument that companies have other ways to protect themselves when a key employee leaves, such as trade secret protection and agreements that prohibit people from soliciting customers of the companies they used to work for.

There’s precedent for taking into account the interests of third parties, Starr told me. He cited an American Bar Association model rule on professional conduct , which forbids restricting attorneys from working elsewhere, not only because it harms the attorney but also because it “limits the freedom of clients to choose a lawyer.”

The strongest evidence against noncompete agreements is that Silicon Valley has thrived even though — or maybe even partly because — the state of California has long banned noncompete agreements in most circumstances, under a law passed in 1872. The prohibition does not seem to have discouraged companies from sharing valuable inside information with employees who might leave. And it has enabled the germination of ideas as people flit from company to company like pollinating honeybees.

“Noncompetes are a pain in the neck for us,” Dr. Stephen DeCherney, who is the chair of New York-based Helios Clinical Research, told me. “Overall I won’t be sorry to see them go.”

Still, this is going to be messy for a while. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has filed a lawsuit against the F.T.C. to block the rule, arguing that the agency doesn’t have the power to issue such a ban and that even if it did, a categorical ban isn’t lawful. Eugene Scalia, who was President Trump’s secretary of labor for a year and a half, also filed a lawsuit, this one on behalf of Ryan LLC, a tax services firm in Texas whose chief executive, Brint Ryan , is a Republican donor who has advised Trump.

Even if the F.T.C. wins on the legality of its rule, enforcing it is going to be tricky. Let’s say a company gets rid of its noncompete clause, but it imposes a nondisclosure agreement that’s so broad and strict that it “has the same functional effect” of preventing someone from taking a job elsewhere. According to the F.T.C., “such a term is a noncompete clause under the final rule.”

Arguing over what’s “the same functional effect” is going to keep a lot of lawyers busy. Same for nonsolicitation agreements and trade secret protection. “‘You can’t work for a competitor for a year’ is a pretty clear rule; ‘you can’t use our secrets at a competitor’ will mean more lawsuits,” Matt Levine, a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, wrote Wednesday.

I admire the F.T.C. for looking at the entire economic landscape in evaluating the pros and cons of noncompete agreements, not just the interests of the employer and employee. It’s a bold step, though.

The Readers Write

You wrote that most right-to-work laws were passed in the 1940s and 1950s, when Southern states were solidly Democratic. True, but in the ’60s after the passage of the Civil Rights Act the Southern Democrats were wholly absorbed by the Republican Party. Right-to-work is an anti-union strategy implemented by the same power elite that discouraged workers in this most recent vote. Their failure is significant. When Southerners start thinking for themselves, I view that as a hopeful development.

Rebecca Bartlett Brattleboro, Vt.

I’m a 47-year union member enjoying my retirement with an old-fashioned, union-negotiated pension and lifetime medical coverage. As those Volkswagen workers told you, to a certain degree, it doesn’t matter who the president is when it comes to what union members are paid. But it does matter to all employees who the president appoints to critical agencies such as the National Labor Relations Board, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and many more. Those agencies have real day-to-day impact on workers’ lives and futures.

Jim Griffin King George, Va.

Concerning your newsletter on Donald Trump’s economic agenda: He is clearly advocating an isolationist strategy. One does not have to look far to see that isolationism is a dead-end street. Is there anything to love about North Korea’s economy? How about Brexit?

Bob Kerst San Francisco

Quote of the Day

“Got no diamond, got no pearlStill I think I’m a lucky girlI got the sun in the morning and the moon at night”

— Irving Berlin, “I Got the Sun in the Morning” (1946)

Peter Coy is a writer for the Opinion section of The Times, covering economics and business. Email him at [email protected] . @ petercoy