The free public library is a product of the Industrial Revolution. Prior to the mid-1800s, only the rich read. That all changed, however, when Melvil Dewey took over as State Librarian of New York in 1888. The concept of a free public library had been gaining ground sluggishly since the mid-1800s but, few libraries were truly free for all, with most requiring annual subscription fees. Dewey goosed the growth of free public libraries with funding, infrastructure, and regulation.

He invented professional organizations and opened librarian schools, bullied committees, and made rousing speeches. He was a zealous librarian celebrity, famously arrogant, and completely committed to the idea that the public could only improve themselves if they understood and embodied Christian morality. Dewey could provide this education with books, which would “elevate” them through a system of ideologically coordinated public libraries. When shown the foundation of Western literature—ran the logic—readers would understand how society functioned as well as their place within it. The result would be literate but passive components of a capitalist machine. Public libraries would be its oil.

Those same public libraries began to move away from Dewey’s vision almost immediately upon his ouster from the profession for sexual harassment, anti-Semitism, and career-spanning fiscal hijinks around 1905.

Almost as soon as Dewey opened a library school, librarians began to migrate away from his conservative ideals. Library doctrine of the 21st century emphasizes empowerment rather than passivity; the library should serve as a bastion of free thought and durable democracy. The American Library Association—Dewey’s own organization—vigorously supports seditious and controversial literature, and the Office of Intellectual Freedom thrives with its blessing. Librarians of the 21st century are more likely to be secret radicals than soldiers of conformity. They have appeared at Occupy Wall Street, stood up against White supremacists, advocated for Black lives, and gone to bat for LGBTQ book displays.

Nevertheless, the bones of public library work are Dewey’s, and if the profession no longer exists purely in his image, then it still bears a striking familial resemblance. As libraries move forward into an increasingly diverse future—one where the yawning gap between rich and poor is constantly exacerbated by technology and lack of education—it finds itself in the rare position of equalizer, leveler, and sharer of privilege. Public libraries could be powerful mitigators of a class crisis in an increasingly class-distressed nation, but first, they must grow past Dewey’s architecture and define themselves anew.

Those at the very bottom of the class pile make up the public library’s most loyal and most dependent users. For them, book purchase and charitable giving are simply out of the question, never mind a run for the office of Trustee. Their voices will not be heard in public discussion of the library; if money talks, they are nearly mute. However, they make their wishes known through their avid use of the Internet, driving libraries through classic consumer modeling. Low-income library patrons don’t just enjoy public-access computers, they rely on them.

Craigslist is now a critical housing service; many high schools distribute homework over Google services; being unable to use the Internet at will is debilitating. Even reliance on mobile technology–which is how most low-income people access the Internet—can’t make up what users lose when printers, keyboards, and full-size screens are out of the picture.

Public libraries are keenly aware of their role in bridging the digital divide, which is the little-discussed but gaping success gulf between people who can afford technology and people who can’t. But even as libraries work to fix a digital revolution that is crushing vulnerable people, cognizant of the fact that few other organizations are filling this niche, they struggle to keep the library “nice” for donors, who may jump ship if the library seems to be “deteriorating,” and elected trustees, who may cease to support library outreach to marginalized communities if they feel that a quaint, attractive book warehouse is becoming un-vote-for-able.

Vulnerable voices will not be heard in public discussion of the library; if money talks, they are nearly mute.
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Compounding this problem is the fact that many librarians in administration can’t articulate, and sometimes don’t realize, the importance of class awareness in library work. This is because most librarians are white, middle-class people who are able to afford graduate degrees. Those who can’t afford the degree may still work in libraries as technicians or clerks, but administration is generally out of reach for them. Opportunities to steer the library’s direction are rare for non-degree holders who might otherwise give the profession a more diverse perspective. Again, we have Dewey to thank.

Dewey believed, at least in word, that idealists shouldn’t worry about money when devoting their careers to the public good. His own initial willingness to take less money for library work compounded his later willingness to pay other people less money for library work, leading to his decision to hire women into the profession. After all, a woman could be paid far less than an equally qualified man, and she posed no threat to established male leadership. How ironic that Dewey’s conserve blinders led to the eventual women’s takeover of libraries, to the extent that 79% of librarians were women in 2017. How tragic that this very same takeover still resulted in an internal pay gap.

In 2016, the average degreed librarian was paid a little north of $27 per hour. The degree that made this wage attainable costs at least $5,500 from Texas A&M Online and upward of $50,000 from Syracuse University; the Master’s requirement to become a librarian functions as a gatekeeper, and many people—especially those from disenfranchised backgrounds— simply can’t afford the toll. Alternatively, if a graduate degree becomes possible for a student who otherwise couldn’t afford it, why not make the most of the opportunity and become a lawyer—who average a yearly income of $118,160—instead of idealistically gunning for a middle-class job?

Anyway, most library jobs are now part-time positions, even those requiring degrees, and breaking into a benefited full-time library job can take years. In effect, the graduate degree—which Dewey also introduced as a requirement for professional librarian status—filters talent and diversity out of the profession. The result is a cohort of well-meaning librarians who may not have vital enough connections to the marginalized sectors of their communities to make the best possible impact there.

The digital divide is the little-discussed but gaping success gulf between people who can afford technology and people who can’t.
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Though modern librarians celebrate the role of non-degreed colleagues—also known as “para-professionals” or “para-librarians”—they also find themselves in a bind when confronted with the fact that the degree is a barrier for some of their colleagues. If the Master’s requirement goes, then librarian salaries may become devalued and current degree-holders, already struggling to find full-time work, will suffer financially. Lower salaries could also undermine the profession and fail to draw talent into public libraries. However, it is undeniable that some talent is already failing to be drawn into areas where it could be best utilized. Para-professionals and librarians work on different sides of an invisible fence, often doing similar work but having vastly differing levels of impact on their institution’s direction. In many libraries, they even belong to different unions.

But to all appearances, Dewey never intended the library profession to be accessible to people of non-middle class status. He and his fellow morally—and economically—elevated white Christian librarians were showing up to help everybody else become them, a mission of cultural homogenization. They had no stake in perspectives rooted in the communities they were trying to serve. Their perspective was the only one that mattered, and it was that everybody should read Socrates and the Bible.

During Dewey’s tenure as State Librarian of New York, library grants were determined by the number of “quality” titles that a collection contained. The work of William Shakespeare was of appropriate quality. Popular rags-to-riches fantasies and romances were not. While Dewey himself hailed from a working class background, he held himself separate from and above most of the people he set out to save. His substantial charisma amplified the force of his vision—flawed as it was—and whether because of contemporary ignorance, conscious preference, or infectious enthusiasm, nobody called him out on the problems with his model.

The first generation of truly professional, organized librarians were a pack of Dewey converts, peppered with the occasional skeptic who knew better than to speak up.

If Dewey could have imagined the diversity of modern library clientele and their respective needs, would he have considered them important? Not likely. The critical literature of homeless LGBTQ minors, Muslim immigrant mothers, and college-bound men of color isn’t conducive to the creation of obedient class-dwellers who sit contented in their particular pigeonhole.

Dewey’s concept of “quality” literature would never have extended to the likes of James Baldwin or Camille Paglia. Today, librarians and the ALA stand robustly in favor of diverse literature, but they are hampered by the homogeneity that Dewey’s system still fosters. Class fractures that run along racial and ethnic lines quickly become library problems; in an increasingly bilingual America, it is still the rare librarian who can explain how to use a printer in Spanish.

This issue isn’t limited to libraries, of course. Many middle-class professions, including social work and teaching, are overwhelmingly white and well-meaning for similar reasons.

The obligatory graduate degree filters talent and diversity out of the profession.
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Like teachers, librarians tend to put in a lot of off-hours work, often reading for several book clubs and professional background without even considering reimbursement. The relative value placed on books holds strong thanks to state and regional offices that depend on book circulation statistics as metrics of a library’s performance. But book culture, too, is privileged territory. A book takes time, and time is money.  

The concept that all people should or even could set aside hours in every day to “improve themselves” through reading has simply fallen through in an age when poverty is expensive and maintaining middle class status requires workaholic tendencies. Reading is a luxury activity; the ability of libraries to develop will depend on getting books into the hands of a broader audience.

Here, at least, the library is starting to change the game. E-book lending models are a roaring success fewer than ten years after their debut. They’re remotely available, mobile-friendly, and fee-less incarnations; they fit into pockets, budgets, and schedules alike—literature is available on the bus for free. The most significant threat to this new innovation is a chaotic publishing model that has shown itself to be deeply uncomfortable with the idea of digital loaning, however. Going forward, one of the library’s most critical missions may be to stand between their patrons’ reading rights and the companies that want those rights to cost money.

Librarians have worked hard to flip the script of the judgmental, classics-heavy library. Meanwhile, in the face of constant budget squeezes and the departure of full-time jobs, libraries themselves are reorganizing. Many are trying to combine innovation with healthy caution for ideas that could prove bad. As long as the moment is right for skepticism and self-awareness of present shifts, then perhaps it’s also time for a look at the roots of the public library, especially at Dewey and the men who sought to use libraries to impose class obedience through reading. Attempts are being made. Loanable collections of tools empower apartment-dwellers. Community meeting room space and summer lunch programs have become library projects. The traditional book bastion is growing into something more.

Book culture is privileged territory. A book takes time, and time is money.
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But if libraries are truly to transform, it’s time to do some much-needed navel-gazing. Only diversity will empower them to serve a diverse nation. If the solution must include the graduate degree, then it could manifest as an extensive, aggressive program of scholarships and recruitment. Without, it may involve union-like behavior on the part of the ALA, or even partnership with existing bargaining units. This may be prudent anyway. There are plenty of reasons for libraries to employ knowledgeable professionals full-time. The fact that these reasons may not always involve books only speaks to the fact that knowledge is versatile. Unions may be crucial to ensuring that librarians of all degree statuses do not fall between the cracks of the digital age themselves.

Dewey was short-sighted: providing information for free is always radical. Despite their problematic mold, libraries have reshaped themselves into unifiers, and deeply important Amazon alternatives. There has never been a better time for a free public information alternative to corporate greed. There has never been a better time for that alternative to represent a force for anti-division and equality.

This past April, the North Carolina Values Coalition organized a Sex Ed Sit-Out in order to fight what they called “radical, graphic, tax-payer funded, gender-bending sex education.” Protests occurred across the U.S., and also in England, Canada, and Australia. Along with the sit-out, the organization circulated a petition that garnered nearly 60,000 signatures, speaking out against the use of taxpayer dollars in the promotion of “sexual liberation, deviance, and gender confusion to our precious kids.” They declared their intent to stand together with all parents pulling their children out of school on the day of the sit-out.

This protest is just one example of the push-back against comprehensive sex ed, a form of sexuality education that, as defined by SIECUS, “includes age-appropriate, medically accurate information on a broad set of topics related to sexuality including human development, relationships, decision making, abstinence, contraception, and disease prevention.” At the heart of these objections is the concern that children aren’t ready for this information. That learning about sex will inspire them to have it.

But many adolescents end up faced with relational and sexual decision making they’re unprepared for when they’re not given the information they need. And when they make decisions based upon faulty or inadequate information, there are negative consequences.

At the heart of these objections is the concern that children aren’t ready for this information. That learning about sex will inspire them to have it.
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Though CSE classes are open about the fact that abstinence is the most effective means of avoiding pregnancy and STIs, they also teach adolescents about various safer sex methods, and provide them with developmentally appropriate information about reproductive health, interpersonal relationships, intimate partner violence, and more.

But a lot of what Americans feel and believe about sex ed seems to be wrapped up in our conflicted attitude toward sex, and around the values we attach to it. What sex means to us not from a health standpoint, but an emotional one. As Ashley Bever, the organizer of Opt-Out Day, tells her two daughters, “[Sex] is intended to bring you together with someone else. It is intended to satisfy your soul. But it needs to be in a certain context.” And who gets to define that context can have drastic consequences for public health.

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Where does this this mindset come from? It may actually be a holdover from Christian beliefs beginning in the Middle Ages, when the church first placed marriage under its jurisdiction, eventually elevating it to the level of sacrament. As the church grappled with how to manage marriage, they came to see not just premarital sex—but sexual desire in general—as a distraction from one’s spiritual life unless it was procreative.

Disease also sparked fear. In the early 1900s, America saw the rise of venereal diseases such as syphilis, especially during World War I. At the epidemic’s peak in 1939, syphilis killed about 20,000 people, with an estimated 600,000 Americans infected. But what was even more alarming than this public health crisis, to social health organizations in particular, was what these rates of infection indicated: Americans were increasingly engaging in extramarital sex and prostitution. Members of the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA) decided that the only way to stamp out prostitution and the spread of STDs was to teach people about the “proper” uses of sexuality. And so, sex education was born from a moral panic.

In her book Talk about Sex: The Battles Over Sex Education in the United States, Janice M. Irvine describes how these socially conservative values around sex eventually led to a movement against sex ed in the 1960s, partially in response to the socially liberal political climate of the time. At that time, both conservatives and Evangelical Christians who felt alienated by this cultural moment banded together against sex ed, and against the organizations that championed it. Since then, the contention that exists between such groups has only intensified.

Between 1972 and 1990, thanks to an increase in contraceptive access, sexual activity outside of marriage rose again. Because abortion was also legalized, sex became increasingly uncoupled from both marriage and procreation. It was this—more than public health concern—that worried people. So in 1982, the Adolescent Family Life Act brought about the first federal funding of abstinence-only until marriage education programs. In the early ’90s, these programs were coupled with the first virginity pledges, kicked off by “True Love Waits.” Even now, many abstinence-only education programs still use some form of these pledges.

Because abortion was legalized, sex became increasingly uncoupled from both marriage and procreation. It was this—more than public health concern—that worried people.
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“There is a very strong push from socially conservative organizations for abstinence-only-until-heterosexual-marriage education,” says Elizabeth Schroeder, who’s been a sex educator for over 25 years. “Their propaganda is based on the assertion that teaching young people about sex and sexuality encourages young people to start having sex earlier. The awful thing about this is that they know this is false—they know there is a lot of research showing that when we talk with young people about sex, particularly parents and caregivers from the earliest ages, young people end up waiting longer to start having sex, and to practicing safer sex whenever they do become sexually active. The hyperbole is designed to scare parents. There is a lot of hysteria that has always been built up around the idea of anything having to do with sex and sexuality being responsible for moral decay.”

Our country continues to double down on its investment in abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. Recently, the Trump administration announced new rules around funding for programs intended to prevent teenage pregnancy, showing a clear preference for programs that emphasize abstinence or, as it has been rebranded, “sexual risk avoidance.” And they move away from a condition implemented during the Obama administration that required organizations receiving federal money to choose from a list of approaches that have been scientifically shown to effectively change sexual behavior.

“The reasons behind why they’re opposing sex ed in its various formats really has to do with this idea that educating young people either encourages them to start having sex earlier, or is taking away their innocence and their purity,” says Schroeder.

Newer comprehensive sex ed programs also challenge traditional gender norms, striving for greater inclusivity for those along the gender and sexual orientation spectrum, and confronting long-held beliefs about conventional, heterosexual gender roles. “Sex and relationships are shaped by gender norms and power,” says Nicole Haberland, a senior associate and researcher at the Population Council, who has found that programs addressing these issues are more effective, “and I think that spills over into the sex ed debate. There’s significant anxiety around people feeling that their traditional power is being threatened and, to the degree that sex ed transforms that, it is a direct threat.”

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Meanwhile, programs that promote abstinence-only until (heterosexual) marriage uphold traditional gender norms. But while these programs may align more closely with the values held by some, they aren’t keeping teens safe.

According to a 2016 report from the CDC, there are an estimated 20 million new STDs in the U.S. each year, and more than 110 million total (new and existing) infections. These infections can lead to long-term health consequences, such as infertility, and can also enable HIV transmission. And some of these numbers are now climbing, despite having been on the decline for years.

And it’s no wonder. The research shows that abstinence-only programs do not delay sexual initiation, nor do they reduce rates of either teen pregnancy or STIs. Young abstinence pledge-takers are one-third less likely to use contraception when they become sexually active, have the same rate of STIs as their sexually active peers, and are more likely to have engaged in both oral and anal sex than their non-pledging peers. In states that offer comprehensive sexuality education, STI rates are actually lower.

The research shows that abstinence-only programs do not delay sexual initiation, nor do they reduce rates of either teen pregnancy or STIs.
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It’s easy to find examples of women whose health has suffered due to inadequate sex ed. Jenelle Marie Pierce, for example—a woman from a conservative rural town in Michigan who later went on to found the STD Project and become the spokesperson for Positive Singles — received abstinence-only education. “All of it was about avoiding pregnancy,” she said. “Avoiding infection. There was never information around [the types of things] that would help you feel good about your womanhood. Just: ‘Here’s your uterus. Here’s where babies are made. Don’t get pregnant.’ I knew I needed to make sure not to be a slut and not to be trashy, but what did that mean?”

As she began exploring her sexuality, Pierce tried to be smart about it, knowing that sex ed left her with a lot of missing information. She drove herself to a Planned Parenthood and got a prescription for birth control. However, she didn’t use other protection when having sex. “I really thought I was being a proactive and responsible person,” she said. “I wasn’t having sex with any of the people who get STDs. The dirty people. The trashy people.” She was blindsided when she had her first outbreak.

“The things that would help you advocate for yourself were not discussed,” she said of her sex ed classes. “I thought that since I was protecting myself, I didn’t have to push my partners about [their testing history or condom use]. I didn’t feel empowered to ask them. Afterward, I thought, ‘This is all my fault. I’m being punished by god. I’m damaged goods. Nobody will ever want me.’ Afterward, I still didn’t know how to have the talk with partners.”

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The consequences of our values-based decisions around sexuality become even more stark when compared to the approaches and outcomes in other countries. Research shows that countries with a more open and positive attitude toward sexuality have better sexual health outcomes, and lower adolescent pregnancy rates. This is reportedly because there is less pressure for adolescents in Western Europe to remain abstinent, and more emphasis on teaching young people to protect themselves. Because of this, government-supported schools in many Western European countries provide—and often require—comprehensive sexuality education, and they offer easy access to reproductive health services.

The Dutch, especially, have received attention for their approach to sex ed. Sexuality education is mandated for all primary school students. And while different schools take different approaches, all programs treat sexual development as a natural process, and assume students have the right to honest and reliable information. Because of this, they happen to have some of the best outcomes when it comes to teen sexual health.

Bonnie J. Rough, author of the forthcoming Beyond Birds & Bees, maintains a deep respect for the cultural attitudes she observed during the time she lived in the Netherlands with her husband and two young daughters. She speaks admiringly of a culture in which body differences between boys and girls were normalized, and of how this seems to have translated to a wider culture of respect and tolerance. They have since moved back to Seattle, and it’s been a challenge to uphold the lessons they learned while abroad.

“The truth is,” said Rough, “I can’t fix this problem for my kids. What they’re missing…what they’re not going to get is the experience of getting educated with their peers…of getting the same education at the same time and everyone being on the same page about what we’re expected to know and what information we’re capable of dealing with and what is acceptable or not acceptable. I can regurgitate knowledge, but I can’t change the culture.”

The cultural attitudes around sex won’t be changing anytime soon. “The more socially conservative a religion,” says Schroeder, “the more likely they are to have restrictive ideas and beliefs about who should or should not be having sex, and under what circumstances. Given that our government was founded by people of Christian backgrounds, and roughly 85 percent of Congress identifies as Christian, these religious beliefs cannot help but inform how people make decisions — including about sex and sexuality.”

“For many social conservatives,” adds Schroeder, “the end justifies the means. They have no problem shaming or judging young people, or not representing all of the facts, as long as it keeps young people abstinent. And that, again, is very evangelical. But that should not be the way people choose to teach others.”

Eleanor Skelton was homeschooled from kindergarten to graduation in Colorado and Texas, and for most of her childhood her parents kept a number taped beside their front door.

In case of emergencies, that number would connect them with an attorney from the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) — just in case any curious social worker appeared on their doorstep asking questions. States away in Michigan, Erin DePree, another homeschool student, had that same number memorized.

To them and many other homeschoolers, the HSLDA represents the first and best protection they have against an adversarial government bureaucracy.

In the early ‘80s, home education was widely illegal, and fell under truancy statutes—which govern compulsory full-time education—in many states. In response, a few intrepid lawyers founded the HSLDA and over the decades have relentlessly pursued the utter abolishment of homeschooling regulation and oversight. As of 2018, they’ve largely succeeded. Not only is homeschooling legal in every state, it is now so unregulated that in 11 states, parents are not required to notify anyone of their intent to homeschool.

In those states, however, no one outside the home may know that a child exists, which leaves the door wide open to abuse—and even death.

Such is the disturbing case in Michigan, where Stoni and Stephen Berry were found dead in a freezer. Their mother tortured and murdered them, using Michigan’s gaping legal loopholes to hide her crimes for years. In New Jersey—another state where parents can educate their children at home without notice—a concerned neighbor found a 19-year-old boy who weighed 45 pounds rummaging through her garbage. If that sounds familiar, you might have read about the Turpin family in California — where homeschooling parents are required to give notice, but nothing else — who starved and tortured their children until one of them escaped out a bedroom window with an old cellphone.

In each of these states, representatives introduced bills that would create a meager amount of protection for homeschooled children. In California, Assemblyman Medina introduced a bill on February 16th that would require private homeschools to conform to the same requirement as regular private schools: a fire inspection.

However, it’s likely that this bill will fall under the same hail of fire that similar bills in New Hampshire and Hawaii faced this month. In my phone call with HSLDA’s president, Mike Smith, he grew rapturous at the power they have to mobilize the homeschooling community. “600 people showed up in New Hampshire, and 1,000 showed up in Hawaii,” he said of the hearings for bills in those states. Kahele, who wrote the proposed law in response to the death of a 9-year-old in Hawaii, withdrew his bill on February 21st.

When lawmakers seek to prevent parents from using the lack of homeschooling regulations to cover up abusing their children, they are frequently surprised by the ferocity of the HSLDA-organized resistance. In New Jersey, Weinberg said she and her office were “besieged” by phone calls from angry homeschooling parents after she introduced a bill asking them to take their children to a doctor.

Heinitz, a legislative director in Michigan, said “they make anti-vaxxers seem rational.”

This overwhelming political influence has been carefully cultivated by the team at HSLDA. For years they sent out the Court Report, a magazine that both Erin DePree and Eleanor Skelton remember reading. DePree read every issue her parents received, and said that social workers and child protective services were consistently portrayed as “evil” and people who “abuse their power.” Skelton only read the issues her mother decided were not too grisly; in her opinion, HSLDA has used resources like the Court Report and their modern e-mail alerts and Facebook posts to “fuel fear and distrust of government.”

To her, “HSLDA never believed children were being abused if CPS knocked on the door to check on families — it was always the parents who were persecuted for being godly.” In the interviews I conducted with homeschool graduates all over the country, the consistent message they received from HSLDA was debilitating paranoia.

A homeschooler who wished to remain anonymous said that even when her father beat her severely, HSLDA’s fear mongering had made her so terrified of family services that she didn’t even want to go to the ER for treatment. HSLDA has their political presence because they’ve successfully terrorized the homeschooling community into believing government regulations and CPS will destroy their families.

Kathryn Brightbill is the policy analyst at the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, an organization founded by homeschool alumni who seek sensible homeschooling reforms to protect children like the Turpins from abuse, neglect, torture, and murder.

According to Brightbill:

“HSLDA has had an outsized role in shaping homeschool culture, including secular homeschool culture. Whatever noble motivations they may have had to help homeschoolers at the organization’s outset, their belief that children don’t have rights — only parents have rights — combined with their decision to take parent’s claims at face value instead of vetting the cases they choose, has made them an organization that enables child abuse and educational neglect.”

In the decades since their founding, HSLDA has fomented a widespread culture of suspicion, paranoia, and wild conspiracy theories that propel parents to make phone calls to legislatures by the thousands — but that’s not where their political influence ends. Brightbill describes them as the “most powerful religious-right organization that nobody’s ever heard of.”

HSLDA’s Homeschool Foundation is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organization that drafts model conservative legislation for distribution to state legislatures. They are on ALEC’s education taskforce, and when I interviewed HSLDA President Mike Smith he described their membership as a fantastic success. In 2017, Betsy DeVos was the first education secretary to ever meet with HSLDA one-on-one, and they’re confident that DeVos will respect their wishes to keep government money out of homeschooling — and any regulatory strings that might come with it.

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Through their daughter organization—Generation Joshua—and the many state-level PACs that they’ve sponsored or encouraged, HSLDA’s political influence is pervasive. Kevin Swanson, one of the most significant homeschool leaders in Colorado, invited Republican presidential candidates to his National Religious Liberties Conference, which Rachel Maddow later dubbed the “kill the gays” conference.

Michael Farris, the first president of HSLDA, helped write the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA, often used to defend businesses who refuse to serve same-sex couples) in 1993, and has helped many states pass their own version. Farris is now the president of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group, and is working closely with the current administration, including Sessions and Pence.

Michael Farris would like to expand the influence of the HSLDA by recruiting and training homeschooling graduates to support his goals. To accomplish this, he founded Generation Joshua fifteen years ago, choosing the name “Joshua” to invoke biblical stories of the conquest of Canaan.

The first homeschooling parents were like Moses, leading their children out of the “Egypt” of traditional education; their children will be like Joshua, the next generation rising up to fill their parent’s (conservative, religious) shoes.

According to Joel Grewe, Generation Joshua’s director, they’re focused on getting homeschool students politically involved; he defines true success by whether students learn how to become “active citizens who robustly impact the political process.” In real-world terms, Generation Joshua deploys about a dozen or so Student Action Teams to conservative races around the country every election cycle.

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In 2016, Grewe says those teams saw a 90% success rate in the races they campaigned for. When asked about the upcoming 2018 cycle, he predicted “we’re going to see an increase in homeschoolers involved in the mid-terms,” and boasted in a 2014 interview that they can swing races by as much as seven percentage points, “if the stars align.”

He also claimed that many politicians — he named Reeves (R-VA), McClintock (R-CA), and Coburn (R-OK) — credit Generation Joshua with their electoral wins.

Despite HSLDA’s intentions, many homeschooling graduates have actually grown up to oppose their goals. The Coalition for Responsible Home Education and the Center for Home Education Policy are both organizations founded by homeschool alumni that oppose HSLDA.

The same social media that Smith praised in my interview as being a game-changer for homeschooling activism has provided a platform for alumni to find each other and begin sharing their stories — accounts that range from glowing to gut-wrenching. Homeschooling’s Invisible Children and Homeschoolers Anonymous are both sites that have formed in the last few years where homeschooler’s stories are told from the student’s perspective.

Whether these newer homeschooled children’s advocates will prevail in the fight to protect children, or HSLDA will continue dragging states down its reckless, unregulated, treacherous path remains to be seen.

I often imagine myself in the company of the poet Walt Whitman. Sometimes I’m seated beside him on one of those New York City tour buses he was so fond of riding; sometimes we’re standing at the rail on the Brooklyn Ferry looking back at our wake; sometimes we’re on the Montauk shore, our legs stretched out toward the horizon, the waves leaving shards of shell and bone at our feet.

I ask him, “So, how’s America doing?” And I imagine his long sigh.

In 1871, Whitman wrote his essay “Democratic Vistas,” which articulated his hope for his fledgling nation and expressed his fears and concerns in regard to its post-war, materialistic present — and its future.

Best known for his sweeping democratic poem “Song of Myself” and now known as the “father of American poetry,” in his youth Whitman was enraptured by the physical realities of America — its diverse human bodies and backgrounds, its prairies, its seas, its chaotic urban centers and the frenzy of individuals who populated it.

Whitman was enraptured by America — its diverse human bodies and backgrounds, its prairies, its seas, its chaotic urban centers and the frenzy of individuals who populated it.
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Like other abolitionists at the time — such as Abraham Lincoln and John Brown — Walt Whitman’s words sometimes reflected the “science” and dominant worldview among the white population of his day, which assessed Black people to be inferior to whites. While Whitman also openly questioned these commonly held beliefs and advocated for slaves’ freedom, there is a strain of thinking in some circles of academia and popular culture that perceives Whitman to be a controversial figure in terms of racism.

While acknowledging the abhorrence of such racist views, I also believe that dismissing the entirety of Whitman’s work on these reductive attitudes would be a waste—and reading his work immediately reveals why. In fact, during his lifetime Whitman avoided publishing work that addressed race because, according to George Hutchinson and David Drews, it was “as if Whitman did not trust himself on racial issues and therefore largely avoided them […] he wanted to revitalize American culture and finally to be remembered as democracy’s bard.”

In America’s stunning diversity, Whitman saw an intricately beautiful mirror of the universe’s complicated grandeur. Yet, in this variety he also feared an insurmountable division. Whitman looked at the expanse of the country — its wide-ranging regions, economies, subcultures, and individuals — and foresaw the challenges we would face in becoming truly united. He worried that we would fail to join under a common “idea” of who we are, and he was haunted by the prospect that we would lack a “common skeleton.”

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It is quite obvious given our last, intensely divisive and vitriolic election — and its continuing crushing fallout — that we as a people are not united by one Idea of what America is or should be. And at this point, we might be wondering how fusing 330 million polarized people could ever be possible. But in addition to expressing his concerns for our unity, Whitman also proposed a solution.

In his essay, Whitman argued that what would unite the diverse people of the United States would not be “Constitutions, legislative and judicial ties, and all its hitherto political, warlike, or materialistic experiences,” but a greater “moral identity.” And he theorized that this would be possible only through what he called our “national expressers”: “a cluster of mighty poets, artists, teachers, fit for us.”

People capable, as Transcendentalist philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson explained, of seeing a whole from all of the parts. Visionaries. Those who British poet Percy Bysshe Shelley called “the great legislators of the world.” These people, Whitman believed, would understand and effuse “for the men and women of the United States, what is universal, native, common to all.” At a time when there seems to be the perception that everyone is pushing their own agendas and needs or wants wildly divergent things, how can we know what’s common to us all?

If we take Whitman’s cue, we might consider reading and listening to the voices of our great expressers. Voices like Walt Whitman himself and Martin Luther King Jr. Voices like Adrienne Rich, Muriel Rukeyser, and Emily Dickinson. Voices like John Steinbeck, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Audre Lorde.

Whitman was haunted by the prospect that we would lack a ‘common skeleton.’
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But I can tell you that from my experiences as a writer and teacher of literature and the humanities, fewer and fewer of us have any experience with America’s “national expressers.” Perhaps the resistance and suspicion we feel toward each other, toward journalists, artists, teachers — toward very truth in general — perhaps the doubts we express in each other’s intentions is a result of us not communally sharing in the celebration of our humanities, our poetry and art, in the first place.

There is a growing trend in this country, a resistance and even hostility, toward intellectualism, reason, and the very same people who would be our national expressers — teachers, poets, writers, artists, even lecturers — as less and less of the population reads these expressers’ expressions, the words of our great teachers.

This is in part due to massive funding cuts to our humanities departments and courses. On top of that, it’s not uncommon for college students’ parents today to demand that their children not “waste their time” (and money) in such classes. And more people who actually do attend college focus solely on an area that will increase their chances of attaining a job that will pay higher wages.

If we suppose Whitman is right — if the common appreciation and understanding of our humanities is necessary for a unified country — then the less familiar people are with these voices, the more divisiveness ensues. In short, we’re experiencing exactly what Whitman feared.

Today, as I continue to process what the election of Donald Trump by one quarter of eligible American voters means for our future, as I reflect on my years of teaching college at state universities, private colleges, and community colleges, I think about my students — fresh out of high school, still in high school, retired, midlife, black, white, Muslim, statist, trans, autistic, rich, poor, formerly incarcerated, recovering alcoholics, Spanish-speaking, Portuguese-speaking, a new mother.

I think about the diversity of people I’ve had the pleasure of introducing to literature and poetry — to Whitman — and in turn, when they compose their own poems and essays, introducing them to their own voices, and when they peer review and give presentations, to each other’s.

In these classroom communities, all of us work together despite our differences. We learn from each other, laugh together, and better ourselves through each other and the voices we read. We discover new worlds that comprise our one world. It’s not that we have to agree with everything we read or hear; it’s simply that we acknowledge that such exchanges and bodies of work exist—and respect that. That we become aware of parts different from us that make up our whole. The college classroom — and especially one studying the humanities — is a place where differences become our wealth, and potentially, ideally, strengthen our moral compasses.

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College, of course, is not the only way to read America’s great voices. But in an age of decreased interest in reading and mental solitude, increased time on social media, and fewer opportunities to participate in discussions with diverse individuals, it remains one of the surest bets—not to mention its material rewards. A college education translates not just to more money (on average $32,000 more per year), but the probability of being employed is 24% higher; those with a college education are also twice as likely to volunteer their time or work for a non-profit.

And in our ever-diversifying world, a college education also permits opportunities to commune with people unlike oneself that otherwise might not present themselves on a daily basis.

Yet, in America today college enrollment is decreasing. According to CNN, there are over 800,000 fewer college students in 2016 than there were in 2010. And as of 2014, just under 42% of American citizens held a college degree. As the system continues to fail millions of American citizens, we highlight the systematic devaluation of education, which threatens our collective morality.

This is largely, of course, due to the alarming spike in tuition rates. But it’s also rooted in a lack of fair compensation for teachers. We may be used to hearing the lament about salaries in regards to high school teachers being underpaid, but it is also true of college instructors. According to the AAUP, 70% of college professors are adjuncts, part-time, or temporary. These teachers are almost always underpaid, under or totally uninsured, and overworked as they cobble together low-paying classes from various colleges to survive financially.

Whereas the norm used to be to teach two or three classes per semester, it is becoming more common for professors to teach six or seven. There is also a growing perception in America today that college — viewed as an investment with the expected return of a high-paying job — is a waste of time and money. Not unlike Whitman’s time, there is a preference for money and material wealth over empathy and learning for learning’s sake. In turn, we are separating ourselves and our children from the voices of our shared human past that actually unite us. We are silencing our own voices.

We are separating ourselves and our children from the voices of our shared human past that actually unite us.
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A voice inside asks me how it’s possible that Mr. Trump — a sexist, racist, xenophobic, authoritarian, woefully inexperienced public leader — was chosen to represent all of us. But that voice is quickly answered: Trump doesn’t. Hillary doesn’t. These are not our national expressers — people want actual, real change. I live in Michigan, where Bernie Sanders won the Democratic primary and where 48% of voters filled in a circle next to Trump/Pence, enough to for the state’s electoral votes to go Republican.

The majority of us — blue and red — are unhappy. But why is the change we hope for so disparate when we live in the same country? How could the least moral candidate on the ballot be chosen to represent us morally?

Today, in an America more diverse than ever, whether you live in De Moines or Los Angeles, never hearing the work of our “great expressers” not only depletes the richness of your life, but cuts you off from the American story — the stories of all of us; it depletes our nation’s integrity as a whole.

If Whitman were here (and he is — check your boot soles), I imagine he wouldn’t lose faith in the great American experiment. He’d certainly tell us to read his book Leaves of Grass, which in my courses next term we shall.

And I imagine he would also advise us to turn to our great expressers whether in a classroom or on our own; we must invest time and energy to ensure that we all have the opportunity for these pursuits. A college education is currently prohibitively expensive — it’s been said that a mere 17% of Americans believe they can cover the expense of college for themselves or a family member — but it doesn’t have to this way. Making college education more accessible must remain at the top of our collective societal list moving forward.

Making college education more accessible must remain at the top of our collective societal list moving forward.
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An American education wasn’t explicitly designed — by Thomas Jefferson or anyone else — to prepare us for the workforce. It was intended to prepare us to act as a responsible U.S. citizen, capable of voting in the best interest of our country and its people. Last election, millions of American people did not do this.

If Whitman were here, he might propose that it isn’t democracy that’s failed, and perhaps not even our educational institutions; one doesn’t need, of course, to be in school to read books. But we have to find a way to unify us in a deeper more fundamental way, through a shared learning of the important works of our past—and our present.

For it is only in unity that Americans can come to understand what Whitman called our common skeleton, and take instruction from our great expressers on how to build it—justly and with equality for all. Because until that happens, we’ll continue to exist as a nation of broken bones.

What we see today among white liberals is a mimicry of Atticus Finch’s exact posture and message.

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I blame Atticus Finch for the failure of white liberals to face racism today. Atticus, as most people know, is tasked in To Kill A Mockingbird with heroically defending Tom Robinson, an African-American man who has been falsely accused of rape. Scout Finch, Atticus’s daughter, is our narrator who provides commentary on the turmoil caused by the trial, as well as her general impressions of Maycomb, Alabama, in the 1930s as she pursues the everyday adventures of being a child.

Last October, the school board in Biloxi, Mississippi, voted to ban To Kill a Mockingbird because, they say, “There is some language in the book that makes people uncomfortable.” Of course, the literary world rallied to the defense of its darling. Most fans of To Kill a Mockingbird read the book as children and continue to champion it throughout adulthood, never rereading it or re-examining it through a critical, modern lens. Aaron Sorkin (perhaps the living embodiment of white liberalism) has adapted the story for a Broadway debut in 2018, and it will most likely be a hit. President Obama quoted Atticus in his farewell address. The book is, by all measures, an enduring and beloved “classic.”

It’s also a fixture of school reading lists. As a high school English teacher, I have the chore of rereading the book annually, becoming more aware with each rereading of the damaging narrative it offers in dealing with present-day racism.

Do we need to ban it? Of course not — but I do not believe it has any place in today’s classrooms.

I blame Atticus Finch for the failure of white liberals to face racism today.

Many articles discussing the ban focused on the repeated use of the n-word, but this dialogue echoes the problems inherent to the text itself. What’s troubling is not necessarily the existence of the n-word in the text itself, but how the book teaches us to respond to it, and the greater lessons imparted about grappling with racial tension. Atticus is very clear about how his children should react to racial slurs, and when Scout learns, we learn. Atticus directly addresses the issue in response to his daughter’s questions about the n-word:

“‘Scout,’ said Atticus, ‘n*****-lover is just one of those terms that don’t mean anything — like snot-nose. It’s hard to explain — ignorant, trashy people use it when they think somebody’s favoring Negroes over and above themselves. It’s slipped into usage with some people like ourselves, when they want a common, ugly term to label somebody.’”

Here we have a middle-aged, white, male lawyer telling his daughter that this heinous word doesn’t “mean anything.” Words obviously have power, and it is the height of white privilege to exist in a context in which there is no single word specifically constructed and used to deny your humanity. In America today, this hateful word exists to deny black people their personhood. Of course it is meaningless to Atticus. He is fully insulated against its power and significance. There is no threat that can touch him. The law is on his side. He is friends with judges and police officers alike. He is a state representative. He is every middle-class white male today who fails to understand the dangers of simply being black. Please note as well his cultured elitism: Atticus uses the word “common” with such disdain.

What we see today among white liberals is a mimicry of this exact posture and message. White liberals (and fans of the book) don’t use that word, but also deny its power. In doing so, they create a vacuum for people (“common people”) to use the word with abandon and instead silence those who would speak out against its usage. To be unaffected by the power of the word has somehow been conflated with intellectual rigor. Without any hint of irony, we perpetuate the cognitive dissonance of recognizing the power of the past without acknowledging its impact on the present.

Atticus’s limited awareness is particularly clear when Jem asks him about the Ku Klux Klan. He dismisses his son’s concerns:

“Besides, they couldn’t find anybody to scare. They paraded by Mr. Sam Levy’s house one night, but Sam just stood on his porch and told ’em things had come to a pretty pass, he’d sold ’em the very sheets on their backs. Sam made ’em so ashamed of themselves they went away.”

Here is the great dream of every white liberal — that he or she could simply face down a mob and with the sheer power of our presence as strong role models, shame would-be assailants to return to the shadows from whence they came. Sam Levy turns away the Klan with ironic humor. Atticus cows a lynch mob with the help of young Scout. According to the NAACP, from 1882–1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States, and nearly three-quarters of those lynched were black. All of those people were brutally murdered, often by their neighbors, by the very police force that should have protected them, by the ministers who should have spoken for them, by the judges who surely knew the law. Yet To Kill A Mockingbird suggests that somehow, all that was needed was one person to simply stand in their three-piece suit and frown. It is a mockery of the terror and pain that lynchings visited upon the black community. Their cries of pain weren’t enough? No, if only there had been an Atticus Finch. I know of no instance of a lynch mob being turned away with a word. Perhaps this fantasy did occur once. Maybe more. I do know of 4,743 instances when this fantasy failed.

Let us look a bit more closely at Atticus Finch’s great stand against the lynch mob. When a man tries to restrain Jem, Scout cries out, “Don’t you touch him!” and she kicks him. She is surprised when he “falls back in real pain,” and observes that although she “intended to kick his shin,” she “aimed too high.” Because we surely couldn’t let the gravity of a lynch mob get in the way of a good kick-to-the-nuts joke. Such wry Southern humor. So delightful. Scout then calls out to the men of the mob, and they come to their senses, return to their cars, and drive home.

I know of no instance of a lynch mob being turned away with a word.

If you want to understand the true terror of a lynch mob, consider reading “Between the World and Me” by Richard Wright. I was taught this poem in high school, but I was not permitted to teach it to my 8th graders last year due to concerns about the graphic violence. That being said, this poem has been far more instructive than my many readings of To Kill A Mockingbird. In the poem, the speaker encounters the scene of a lynching the day after. There are bones piled in ash, but more brutally — there is the detritus of the crowd of onlookers who treated the murder like entertainment. The speaker, contemplating the scene, becomes the victim:

And then they had me, stripped me, battering my teeth

into my throat till I swallowed my own blood.

My voice was drowned in the roar of their voices, and my

black wet body slipped and rolled in their hands as

they bound me to the sapling.

The assault begins with a brutal silencing followed by binding. It is “they” against “me,” and we feel the terror of being stripped, beaten, and bound. That is what we cannot face. When we read those words, we have to imagine what it would be like to face a crowd of violent, white faces — our faces. And we cannot face ourselves.

The fear that Richard Wright speaks to is a fear shared by all people of color in the U.S. today, and this fear is particularly acute in our current political landscape. The n-word has such power because it is intrinsically linked to the psychological terror of the lynch mob. To Kill A Mockingbird absolves us of this history. Atticus saves Tom Robinson, after all.

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Or does he? Because that is one of the sadder facts of the novel. This great text, this book that is meant to show us all how wrong racism truly is, is an exhibition of the failure to enact change. Our great white savior’s only feat is delaying a certain verdict. Still, we celebrate this as a victory and view his struggle as heroic. It is Atticus whom we consider with the most empathy and compassion. The toll on Atticus is made clear repeatedly. Consider Aunt Alexandra’s concern that she shares in the kitchen at one of her tea parties:

“I can’t say I approve of everything he does, Maudie, but he’s my brother, and I just want him to know when this will ever end. It tears him to pieces. He doesn’t show it much, but it tears him to pieces.”

While Atticus is figuratively torn to pieces somewhere in a prison morgue, Tom Robinson lies shredded by bullets. We see so much white pain firsthand, but never the toll racism exacts on black families. We see the pain of the savior, but we see none of the true victim’s agony. When Atticus goes to tell Helen Robinson that her husband has been killed in prison, we have access to that scene second-hand and from a distance. Little Dill watches as Atticus delivers the news and reports back to Scout:

“‘Scout,’ said Dill, ‘she just fell down in the dirt. Just fell down in the dirt, like a giant with a big foot just came along and stepped on her. Just ump — ’ Dill’s fat foot hit the ground. ‘Like you’d step on an ant.’ Dill said Calpurnia and Atticus lifted Helen to her feet and half carried, half walked her to the cabin. They stayed inside a long time, and Atticus came out alone.”

Here is perhaps the greatest obstacle that Atticus Finch has created for conversations about race today. Atticus’s great maxim — “Atticus said you never really knew a man until you stand in his shoes” — is a hypothetical thought exercise that we employ in place of simply listening. Moreover, we have come to believe that is enough.

Of course, when Atticus shares his view of the importance of empathy and shoes, he is encouraging his children to consider the perspectives of white characters. He encourages his children to consider the feelings of their new teacher, Miss Caroline, and after they face the mob together, Atticus tells Scout “you children last night made Walter Cunningham stand in my shoes for a minute.” Atticus even asks his son, Jem, to consider Bob Ewell’s perspective — Bob being the man who has falsely accused Tom Robinson of raping his daughter, Mayella. It is Bob who savagely beats his daughter because he can’t tolerate her affection for Tom. But Atticus calls for compassion.

Atticus calls for compassion for Mrs. Dubose — the old neighbor who repeatedly insults Jem and Scout and claims their “father’s no better than the n****** and trash he works for” — too. When Jem lashes out and attacks Mrs. Dubose’s garden, Atticus forces him to read to her every day as penance. Mrs. Dubose’s vitriol is dismissed by Atticus as an opinion she has: “She was a lady. She had her own view about things, a lot different from mine, maybe.”

Atticus wants his children to mentally “climb into [another person’s] skin and walk around in it,” but he only encourages them to climb into white skin. His children never specifically consider what it feels like to be Tom Robinson or his wife, Helen. More importantly still, at no point does anyone turn to Calpurnia, Jem and Scout’s surrogate mother and caretaker, and ask, “What do you think? What do you feel?” She never gets a chance to speak. Meanwhile, Helen grieves in silence. We do not hear her cries. We only imagine them.

Which brings us back to the word that makes people “uncomfortable.” Using the n-word is not an opinion that you are entitled to express. It causes too much pain and that is the only purpose it serves.

At no point does anyone turn to Calpurnia, Jem and Scout’s surrogate mother and caretaker, and ask, ‘What do you think?’

When we teach a book in class, that book is given a voice. It is the loudest voice in the room, and it becomes an even higher authority than the teacher. Teachers are the guides leading students through a text, but it is the text that defines the space of the lesson. The n-word is not just written on the page. As students read passages out loud, they say it to each other. They speak Atticus’s words, and they internalize his lessons. To call that experience “uncomfortable” is to disguise the pain of racial violence beneath a mask of euphemism. Consider one teacher’s experience with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the n-word. Debora Baker seeks to impart the importance of historical accuracy and contextual understanding to her students, but she also seems to be committed to listening to the voices in her classroom. She reflects on one exchange in particular:

“I am not a 14-year-old African-American girl, like Jordan.

Jordan does not often offer opinions in class discussion, but in an online forum she boldly stated, ‘Yes, I do agree with the choice to remove the n-word, because that word makes me feel uncomfortable and makes me want to throw the book in a pit of fire and dance on the ashes!’

I don’t want Jordan to dance on the ashes. I want her to love literature, to feel empowered by it. I want her to read the n-word and understand why the writer used it, to put it in context. But ultimately, I doubt that I will be able to convince Jordan of anything. I suspect that she will feel what she feels — angry and disenfranchised.”

I don’t think Jordan should feel anything other than angry and disenfranchised by Huckleberry Finn and most high school English curricula. In most English classes, minority authors are woefully underrepresented, and the topic of race is often allotted a mere one book per year. I have heard teachers at conferences refer with excitement to their new “diversity book,” as if they were checking a box and their work was finished. In my experience, texts that promote diversity often need a champion within the English department, and when they leave, the text they promoted is phased out. From a utilitarian perspective, it is a matter of effort and resources. Newer books have fewer resources available, and so teachers have to do more work to prepare lesson plans and assessments. By comparison, the classics and the perennial favorites have entire units available, complete with resources for scaffolding exercises, assessments with answer keys, powerpoint presentations, and more.

The cost of convenience is too high. In teaching To Kill a Mockingbird, we listen to the voice of a white woman, Harper Lee, instead of a person of color. If we want to convey the lesson that “racism is bad,” there are thousands of books that we could use to make that point. Go to your library and talk to a librarian. All those books with the shiny stickers? Those are award-winning books, often recently published, that have been vetted by experts and praised for their ability to tackle tough issues with delicacy and nuance. Those are the books we need. We need The Hate U Give. We need Brown Girl Dreaming. We need Monster. We need One Crazy Summer. We need to teach books written by people of color about the experience of being a person of color from their perspective on history and the world today.

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To Kill A Mockingbird was revolutionary for its time, but its usefulness in our secondary school curricula has passed. The racism students face today is different than the historical fiction of To Kill A Mockingbird. To continue to teach that text suggests to our students that racism only existed in the past. But turn on your news. Nazis and white supremacists are marching, and white commentators everywhere are crying for “unity” and “understanding,” and that’s no coincidence — compassion for oppressors and the silencing of victims is everything that Atticus Finch represents.

America is Maycomb, the fictional town where To Kill a Mockingbird is set. We tell the victims of oppression agitating for justice that progress takes time. We demand sympathy for racists and Nazis. To the chant of “Black Lives Matter,” we seek to silence those voices with a chorus of “All Lives Matter.” If Atticus Finch is our father-figure, then we are all Scout. We have all learned to serve tea and cookies to racists in our parlors while people of color suffer in our kitchens in silence.

To Kill A Mockingbird finishes with Atticus reading a children’s story to Scout as she falls asleep, and that is what To Kill A Mockingbird is for white readers: a fairy tale we tell ourselves about ourselves as we drift off to sleep.

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/yes-you-need-to-talk-to-kids-about-porn-55f5038ba06e/ Tue, 09 Jan 2018 23:46:03 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=2544 Read more]]> Erotic film director Erika Lust discusses her new project to help adults teach children about healthy (and unhealthy) sexuality.

Thirteen years ago, Erika Lust, a political science graduate who specialized in gender studies, decided to start making porn films. Frustrated by the tacky, chauvinistic content of mainstream porn, she wanted to see if it was possible to make a different kind of adult film — one that focused on story, characters, and the female gaze. Since then, she has since gone on to create over 100 highly crafted, ethically produced porn films, a host of which have won awards.

Her latest project is a continuation of her engagement with dominant porn culture — but from a decidedly different angle. Inspired by her role as a mother, and her desire to give something back in her area of expertise, she and her husband Pablo Dobner launched The Porn Conversation, a nonprofit initiative that aims to help parents talk to their children about porn. The website offers age-specific guides, starting with kids under 11 years old, that were put together in consultation with parents, sexologists, and psychologists, as well as other tools and resources for parents and educators.

I interviewed Erika in Berlin, where she recently spoke about The Porn Conversation at Tech Open Air, an interdisciplinary festival that brings together technology, arts, and culture.

Madhvi Ramani: Why is it important for parents to have “the porn conversation” with their children?

Erika Lust: Porn is part of the reality we live in. It has grown enormously in the last 10 years, because of the internet and the proliferation of porn tubes [free porn sites that do not require registration], which are the biggest part of pornography today. The kind of content available on these porn tubes is highly racist, misogynistic, and chauvinistic. It is something that parents can’t ignore because children, at a very early age, are coming across this content online. They are going to find it, and look at it, and it’s going to influence their perceptions about sexuality and gender roles. So, if parents talk to their children before or during this time of discovery, they can help them think more analytically and critically about the images they are seeing.

Why Isn’t Pornography Part Of Sex Education For Teens?
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Madhvi: Do you think porn should be part of sex education in schools?

Erika: Yes. I think it’s absolutely necessary. I’m not saying that classes should watch porn and learn from porn. You would teach it in the same way you teach kids about alcohol without having them drinking it. We don’t have to delve into every single genre of porn. We just need to touch on the subject, acknowledge it exists, ask children if they have been watching it, and if they realize what kinds of structures and values there are in it.

It’s a basic fact that sex education in so many countries and so many schools does not go deep enough for most young people, so what kids do is go online, look at porn, and think they learned about sex. Porn has become today’s sex education. And unlike most adults, who have had actual sexual experiences, kids don’t realize that sex is not equal to porn. More and more, I am seeing people who have already watched hundreds of hours of pornography before they have their first sexual encounter. They think that having sex is doing the same things that the porn stars are doing so they get very frustrated, because they don’t really understand how normal sexual encounters work.

Madhvi: Describe what you think a typical classroom lesson on porn for, say, 9-year-olds would entail.

Erika: I would say the best age is fifth grade, 10-year-old boys and girls. I think that the talk should evolve around the internet, the good and the bad things. I’d tell them that those films and tubes are not intended for them, because they are minors. And I would encourage them to talk with an adult if they find explicit sexual content online. I would also warn them that what’s displayed on those tubes is not an accurate representation of human sexuality, which is richer and more complex.

Madhvi: Any other tips for teachers on approaching the topic in school?

Erika: Do not blame, do not shame. If you take the drama away from the talk, they will feel that porn is not such a big thing. At that age they trust adults, and if we explain things with patience and love, they will trust us in return with if and when they find porn online.

Madhvi: There seems to be a disconnect between the amount of violence we can legally expose young people to — in films and video games — and the amount of sexual content we are comfortable with in society, which could explain why so many young people turn to online porn. Do you think there is space for more sexually explicit content for teens or even a kind of porn for teens?

Erika: I think there could be a kind of erotic content for them, where they could see how people relate to each other sexually, which you can definitely do without showing any explicit sex. There might be a market for that kind of material, although it’s not what I’m doing.

It would be interesting to see more real situations portrayed between younger actors and actresses. I made a short film called Coming Of Age, with two performers who were 22. I normally work with older people, because I am interested in telling stories about people who have already had a sexual life. But this film was part of my XConfessions series, where people write to me with their fantasies and I make films out of them. One young girl wrote to me asking for something where young people were together in a natural way, because all she saw online was horrible teen porn, and younger girls with older men. It’s never teens with teens.

Madhvi: Talking about sex is an awkward conversation for many parents, let alone talking about porn. What are your tips for how to approach this conversation as a parent?

Erika: It’s important to remember that this is not just a five-minute talk. When we started this [Porn Conversation] project, we were going to call it The Porn Talk, but then we reconsidered, because it’s not a talk, it’s a conversation that has to happen over a longer period of time. You can find various ways to start it without making a big deal out of it. For example, depending on the age of your child, you could say, “Lately I’ve been getting some ugly pop-ups on the computer. Has this happened to you?” Or if you’re very afraid of doing it, you could get someone to help you out. Maybe invite a friend to dinner, and get them to start a conversation with your son or daughter.

Madhvi: You have two daughters. How is your conversation going with them?

Erika: Right now, they are very interested in feminism and are trying to figure out the difference between what is sexy and what is chauvinistic. It’s difficult as a mother to try to tell them about sex positiveness and that being sexy and feeling sexy is okay, but that objectifying women is not okay. It’s very complicated to see the boundaries between these things. My 9-year-old daughter is interested in video games, and she gets upset every time she sees a female heroine in bikini.

She always comes to me and says, “Why doesn’t she want to protect herself if she’s going into the jungle?” It doesn’t make sense to her. I taught her to think critically, and this is exactly what we need to do with younger generations. So I hope that by the time she gets to the point where she does come across porn, she will be intellectually prepared to judge the kind of images she finds for herself.

Madhvi: What kind of feedback have you had from parents who have used your site?

Erika: I have had many emails from parents saying, “Thank you so much for bringing my attention to this, because I felt I had to address it, but didn’t really know how, or when, or why — especially when.” Most parents think that this is probably a topic they should tackle when their children are 13 or 14, but then they realize that I am right when I say that children as young as 9 have access to technology where they can stumble upon pornographic content. They say, “Thanks for warning me, because I was not prepared for this. She was a baby and now she is looking at Harry Potter’s magic wand — and it’s not a wand.”

Parents appreciate the guidance. There are so many new subjects on the table when it comes to technology and sex. You need to inform children about grooming, about sexting, that the person contacting them on social media might not be who they say they are. The porn conversation is part of a very important internet conversation that parents should have with their children.

How Sex Education Fails Queer And Trans Kids
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Madhvi: How did you come up with the guides for different age groups?

Erika: We collaborated with many people. We talked to a lot of parents with kids of different ages to get their experiences and find out what they thought, as well as a range of psychologists and sexologists. All the professionals today — sexologists, psychologists, etc. — say you should start talking to children about sex from a very early age. You cannot wait too long to talk about sex because then they get to the embarrassment age and they won’t want to discuss it. Most kids, even when they are 4 or 5, start touching themselves. In this situation, the most important thing is to not shame them. They do it naturally. So you just have to explain that maybe they should do it in their rooms, and not in front of everyone in the living room.

Madhvi: With the growth of online porn, and new technology, such as virtual reality, what do you think the future of sex entertainment is?

Erika: As a filmmaker, I feel like virtual reality is a totally different media. I work with framing and lighting and storytelling, whereas VR is a different experience.

As for the future of sex and porn, I hope for more awareness. I think the porn industry is going the same way as the food industry in that people are becoming more responsible consumers. I hope that people will start to ask who is behind the content they are consuming, how it’s produced, and whether it is pirated. I hope for more diversity, so that different people, with different sexualities and preferences, can see themselves represented in an honest and correct way without having to be fetishized as a group.

I am a cinema aficionado. I love to watch a movie that has been crafted with passion and thought, and I hope that in porn we can see other visual creators getting [involved]. And I believe in female participation. We’ve changed other areas — politics, advertising, etc. — so if we get more women into porn, I am confident that we can change [the porn industry], too. I think that if we raise awareness about porn, people will think about it, and make better choices.

Madhvi: What are your plans for the site?

Erika: Our original idea was just to put up an informative website. At first it was only available in Spanish and English, and now it’s in French, German, and Italian, too. We’ve talked about adding a part where people can share their experiences, and we are working on a section where you can find sexologists and other people in your area who can help you with this process.