“I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.”
Jorge Louis Borges
For those of us born before 1960, Borges’ words resonate. We lived at a time when you could go to your local public library and read all day long without anyone troubling youn or your parents worrying that you would come home with questions too vulgar to repeat in the public newspaper.
For those who lived during that admittedly idyllic time, as a young boy or girl, you could read about the Hardy Boys adventures or Nancy Drew mysteries. The former taught young boys about courage, honesty, and living up to a certain standard of ethical behavior. Meanwhile, Nancy Drew taught young women about being smart, using their mental acuity to solve problems, and standing out in a crowd. There was no hint of chauvinism or feminism in these books. Just great stories about character and intelligence.
When it wasn’t these books, boys and girls could take magical trips with Treasure Island, or to outer space with Rocket to Luna or Moon of Mutiny. It is obvious that C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia were also available and allowed young adults to imagine another world, another place, another time, all the while learning important lessons about life. These books were not written to inculcate. But because each of the authors assumed a certain zeitgeist, a certain way of looking at the world, they all followed a path that stressed the advantages of the seven virtues, first enumerated by Pope Gregory I in the 1500s and later enlarged by St. Thomas Aquinas. Four classical virtues met up with three theological ones to create the perfect atmosphere in which young people could grow into fine adults. The virtues are humility, charity, chastity, temperance, patience, and diligence.
Reading over these, it staggers the mind why anyone would want to jettison these for something else, and yet, here we are. Scanning them again, a jaundiced view might well say that too many young people embrace the opposite of most of these virtues, but that would be unfair. Thanks to organizations like the American Library Association, books for young people stress these virtues as toxins to avoid. Now, don’t get me wrong. No books were written diasyrming these, per se (well, a few were, like Catcher in the Rye). But the introduction of characters who were anti-heroes, misfits from broken, dark figures who may have meant well but did not necessarily do well, and the like, poisoned literature for young people to the extent that one must be very careful what one checks out in school and public libraries.
The American Library Association did not begin that way. At the Convention of Librarians that convened more than 100 years ago (1876 to be exact), the American Library Association was formed to help librarians with their work and to establish standards that would stretch across the whole profession of librarianship. The idea behind the convention sought to regularize what librarians did everywhere.
And thus, for most of the next three quarters of a century, ALA did just that. Also, for most of that time, recommendations to librarians were age and developmentally appropriate. Parents could send their children to the local public library or, especially, to any school library and rest assured that the books their children would receive would be nearly identical to the ones they would choose for their children themselves. Loco in parentis had real meaning to librarians then. They did not want to usurp parents but to work alongside them.
With the 1960s and 1970s revolts, the flotsam and jetsam proved to be an “awakening” (ironic term, that) that librarians (and teachers) knew better than parents. Children did not need an escape from the toils of life but needed to drown in it with books that depicted characters awash in drugs, alcohol, sex, and more, because this is what life had to offer to some.
The American Library Association went from assisting parents to telling them, instructing them didactically on what they—the librarians—knew best. Librarians were experts, and parents should bow to their superior knowledge. How could parents possibly know better, since librarians studied this sort of thing all the time, and parents were tied up with providing for their children?
Add to this the negative stereotypes that depicted librarians as bun-headed (the vast majority were female), dour, and often single individuals, and the zeitgeist was ripe for change. Think of Mary in It’s a Wonderful Life, and you get the idea of what ALA and its ilk were trying to change. Indeed, librarians moved from wearing their hair in buns to wearing miniskirts, going braless, covering themselves in tattoos, and dyeing their hair pink or purple. They let it all hang out, and it often turned out not to be something that should be seen in public.
American Library Association conventions went from proffering a balance of ideas to paying six figures for partisans like Germaine Greer, Hilary Clinton, and, for the annual conference this year, Jill Biden and Rachel Maddow. Needless to say, there is no longer any attempt at balance in the convention or in libraries. It’s a bare-knuckle fight with ALA presidents calling for the “queering of American Libraries” to calling for President Trump’s impeachment, the excoriation of Israel, the inclusion of transgender materials for elementary students (despite scientific evidence that it is grossly misguided (https://tinyurl.com/mw9vvxne), to same-sex marriage, and to glorifying nearly every belief that is antithetical to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Meanwhile, publishers followed their lead and released a torrent of intellectual effluvium, the smell of which still clouds the air.
Can this marriage be saved, the one between parents and librarianship? At this point, it seems unlikely. While ALA boasts a multimillion-dollar endowment, smaller, more balanced library groups like The Association for Library Professionals (b.2020, https://alplibraries.org/) soldier on with five figures to run its nascent program (but see this: https://tinyurl.com/yhfezmt3). ALP is truly a modern-day David vs. Goliath story and will only succeed if everyone pitches in to see that they do.
ALA has recently come under the microscope for its blatantly biased views, and more than a dozen libraries and/or organizations have severed their relationship with the organization in part or completely (https://tinyurl.com/923prtt6). That’s a good beginning, of course, but it’s going to take more before parents can trust libraries and librarianship as they once did.
Unlike Borges’ dream, libraries aren’t heaven on earth but a kind of hellhole for the unsuitably vulgar and depressing. Until it can be redeemed once more, scrutinize every book your children read, BEFORE they read them.
