Westminster’s librarians aren’t just looking for sexual sleaze from the Young Adult fiction genre. They are also happy to provide antiracist materials, such as Ibram X Kendi’s Antiracist Baby book. Unlike the music of Handel or the books of white, Western writers, Kendi’s books are received and distributed uncritically. Why? Because they fit the narrative, It isn’t about skin color at all; it’s about worldview.
Kendi’s leftism–along with the leftism of pornographic books on library shelves–is on point with the enlightened Marxist worldview of Westminster’s leadership. However, we must also hold the librarians accountable for their failure to curate the library responsibly.
Westminster’s librarians are not librarians at the local public library. They are accountable to parents who put their kids at school all day and hope they aren’t going to get groomed through a pornographic novel or get trained through activist books.
Parents do want their kids to have access to research materials, source documents and good literature, even those from viewpoints that differ form our own. However, Westminster is now using the popular excuses of “reading diverse viewpoints” or “seeing themselves in literature” as a giant umbrella to cover a pile of poorly-written, trashy, activist-minded books.
Excluding materials that are gratuitously sexual, radical and ill-conceived is consistent with the school’s Christian mission, and it also is the what most parents do in their own homes. Not everything is OK to jump on, even if it “gets kids moving.” Not every food is ok because it “gets kids eating.” Using this same logic, not every book is OK just to “get kids reading.” This is common sense, and Westminster, for all its purported scholarship and wisdom, seems to lack it.
Objecting to trashy books usually draws the accusation of “book banning,” Curating a private school library with wisdom is not book-banning. It isn’t preventing the publication or distribution of that book to the public; it is merely refusing to spend money on it and place it in a library used by K-12 students. If you want your child to read Gender Queer, you can get it from a public library, or better yet, order it. Is that a problem for people paying $35.000 per year to attend Westminster?
Do you “ban” pornography from your home? Most of us with kids do. We “ban” junk food from our cabinets when we’re trying to ensure that our kids are eating well. We “ban” screens when we see that they are taking over our kids’ lives. We “ban” violent video games from our homes because we want our kids to have healthy and positive minds. We even “ban” certain people from our home if we know they are bringing drugs, alcohol, or bad attitudes in our child’s life.
We limit many things that could destroy our children. Books are powerful, and they can be either uplifting or destructive. In the K-12. years, kids still need our guidance. The American Library Association knows this, and it is using libraries to push our children into as much leftism and unlimited sexuality as possible. Modern parents are so busy that they’ve been fooled into thinking that the “school library” is just like the one they grew up with, with a section of Hardy Boys, Boxcar Children, nature books and
Westminster, claiming a Christian identity, should stock its library with books that aren’t just serving the warped interests of adults who view life through the lens of genitalia and skin color.
Speaking of skin color, is there any reason Westminster doesn’t publicly recommend books by Thomas Sowell or John McWhorter–both of whom are black? Aren’t we trying to promote black voices? Or is this really about something else?