A video showing people marching in a 2023 Pride Parade went viral. They chanted, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children.” The agenda is no longer being hidden.
Most people agree with the concept that ideas conferred in books have the capacity to profoundly impact who we are and who we may become. Therefore, when we first discovered sexually explicit age-inappropriate books in our own school libraries we assumed it was a mistake. We were taken aback by the staunch resistance from the school board and administration to the logical request of offering children a wide selection, but at the same time ensuring safeguards were in place. This led us to dig deeper into what was happening. We learned about diversity, equity, and inclusion, critical race theory (CRT), gender ideology, critical literacy, social justice, and neo-Marxism and found each of these philosophies were embedded in various school lessons, and especially in the books offered to our children. The conclusion was obvious. Providing sexually explicit books to minors was not a mistake. It was purposeful and a small part of a much bigger agenda.
In addition to the overt sexual themes, we found many books with neo-Marxist and anti-parent themes. Neo-Marxist themes commonly incorporate three components - Identity, Injustice, and Activism. They divide people into categories and then use emotionally charged examples of injustice to manipulate participants into becoming activists. Traditional Marxism divided people upon economic lines, but today’s iteration of Marxism divides people on any convenient characteristic in order to ‘liberate’ them from a perceived oppressive and unjust social order. Lessons do not have to be given by a teacher to a class to be effective. Many library books focus on one or more aspects of Marxism.
Sexual orientation, race, and ability are some of the better-known categorizations for dividing kids and ushering in the Marxist way of thinking, but parent/child status is another common categorization found in school library books. In the anti-parent books, the parents are commonly the antagonist and exhibit behaviors such as incompetence, not supporting the child’s lifestyle, general abusiveness, or religious fundamentalism. These books are crafted to slowly turn children against their parents and ultimately work to break down the structure of the family.
The centralization of the book selection/recommendation process for school districts has resulted in school libraries offering similar books to children across the country. School librarians order books for their school libraries. They take recommendations from students and teachers, but ultimately rely upon a few national organizations, comprised of professional reviewers, to rate and recommend books for school libraries. The process to acquire books has not changed much over the last thirty years with the exception of becoming more electronic. What has changed is the opinions and recommendations coming from the expert reviewers. Here are some of the organizations reviewing and recommending books for children.
Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA)
Booklist a division of the American Library Association
If you were to check out these ‘expert reviewers’, you will quickly find social justice rhetoric about offering diverse collections and books from representative authors who can share their lived experiences. To top it off, Emily Drabinski, the president of the American Library Association, is a self-described Marxist who proudly wrote an academic paper in 2013 titled Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction.
Parents who have questioned books in Grand Haven school libraries are typically invited to meet with the curriculum director to address their concerns, but their concerns are not generally taken seriously. Rather, concerns are typically dismissed and parents are made to feel their requests are unreasonable. Here is an audio recording of one such meeting.
Some parents raised concerns as early as 2019, but they were labeled book banners and dismissed. Today, several questionable books still sit on the shelves in the Grand Haven school libraries.
When we first discovered age-inappropriate books in school libraries, we knew there was a problem, but we had no idea how big it was. We have since learned a lot. A large percentage of teachers do not support what is going on. Social Emotional Lessons are negatively changing the way our children think. Chromebooks can be used to surveil children. Despite not having the appropriate medical staff, schools are placing a big focus on mental health. Across the country, standardized test scores are not improving despite the constantly increasing budget of the Department of Education. The Department of Education offers many grants and incentives to schools that help to usher in their failed agenda. President Trump recently mentioned eliminating the Department of Education and pushing educational responsibilities down to the states. That would be an excellent start, but I believe state requirements should be greatly simplified, and the ultimate responsibility for education needs to be returned to local school districts.