Intellectual Freedom: At Every Age
(essay for LIS 651-02)
(essay for LIS 651-02)
Parents
and teachers have a responsibility to prepare the young to meet the diversity
of experiences in life to which they will be exposed, as they have a
responsibility to help them learn to think critically for themselves. These are
affirmative responsibilities, not to be discharged simply by preventing them
from reading works for which they are not yet prepared.
A
person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of
origin, age, background, or views.
Although
I was generally familiar with the idea that librarians take a liberal view on
intellectual freedom and the right to information, I hadn’t thought much about
what that meant until I attended the American Library Association’s Annual Conference
& Exhibition this year. I was lucky
to have my travel to New Orleans, conference registration, and lodging paid for
with a scholarship. As a student, I had
no particular agenda to accomplish, and the only session I knew I wanted to
attend was the opening ceremony. The
keynote speaker for ALA 2011 was Dan Savage, an author most well-known for his
outspoken political opinions, gay rights advocacy, and his long-running
syndicated sex advice column, Savage
Love. His writing style is humorous,
witty, sharply critical, and astonishingly frank. Although he’s a best-selling author and
editor, his iconoclastic streak and controversial views wouldn’t seem to make
him the most obvious choice to represent the ALA at its largest professional
gathering. Beginning in the fall of
2010, however, Savage had taken on a new venture, one that perhaps endeared him
to the library community more. The It Gets Better Project, as it’s called, is a web-based outreach effort intended
for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) youth. It may in fact be more radical than anything else Savage has done, but combining an
innovative use of technology and social media with a commitment to the free dissemination
of information is like a librarian dream come true. The project had come up in a number of my
courses, related to discussions of digital archiving, community archives and
cultural heritage collections, and born-digital media preservation.
I
had always liked Savage’s work and was looking forward to hearing him speak,
but I knew he wasn’t likely to address the topics I was particularly interested
in--technical details like metadata and the intellectual
organization of such a collection. I
recognized the social significance of It Gets Better, but until I heard Savage
speak about the project I hadn’t considered that information policy has special
ramifications for minors.
A
series of highly publicized suicides by gay teens was Savage’s call to action. He saw a simple lack of information at the
root of the crisis. Maybe these
teenagers were bullied and harassed by their peers or condemned by their
families, but if they could just be armed with the knowledge that life does get
better (eventually), maybe they could find the will to survive. The question was how to reach them, and
YouTube provided an easy answer. The
technology was easy to access and already familiar to kids growing up in an era
of ubiquitous personal computing and instant Internet access. Savage and his partner recorded a very
personal video describing the difficulties they had faced as gay teenagers and
the rewarding lives they had gone on to make for themselves, ending with a
heartfelt plea to kids in similar situations to just stay alive long enough to
make it to that better life. They
uploaded it to the Web and asked a few friends to contribute their own
stories. Within two weeks they hit the
maximum number of videos allowed by YouTube and had to migrate the content to
their own website. There are now tens of
thousands of videos representing celebrities, politicians, professional
athletes, business leaders, and average adults from all walks of life. The message of the project has grown to
encompass any adolescent suffering from bullying or harassment at school,
regardless of sexual orientation. But
the situation for LGBT youth remains most serious: they are four times more likely to attempt
suicide than heterosexual teenagers, and eight times more likely if their
families are “highly rejecting.”[1]
Some estimate that 40% of homeless
teenagers are LGBT youth kicked out after coming out to their own families.[2] For kids who are living in hostile
environments 24-hours-a-day, there may be no safe haven between home and
school, no one they can talk to. Savage
described the important role the Chicago Public Library played in his own
adolescent life, when was too afraid to be seen with “gay books,” so he would
quietly take them from one section of the library, read them, and
surreptitiously leave them elsewhere in the stacks. The It Gets Better Project is entirely about
bypassing hostile, adult gatekeepers and guaranteeing minors their own rights
to vital information. Savage pointed out
in his speech that this is the same subversive and essential task that
librarians are charged with carrying out every day in a number of ways.
His
narrative provides a powerful argument for the importance of defending the
right of minors to freely access information.
Many people who are comfortable with the idea that freedom of speech (as
established by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution) means some
offensive forms of expression must be tolerated are less comfortable when the
rights of children are involved in the conversation. Censorship is generally understood to be
un-American, but we also accept parental advisory labels and the movie rating
system, legislate education requirements for children, and deny minors the right
to vote. Pretty much everyone agrees
that there is a lot of stuff on the Internet that would be terribly
inappropriate for children to stumble across, but we are also likely to condemn
China’s practice of blocking access to websites that might disagree with government
policy. When we start talking about children there is a tendency to get
alarmed more easily, and the fact that minors are not equal to adults in the
eyes of the law appears to set a precedent for the idea that they might not
receive the full protection of the U.S. Constitution. The fact is that judicial interpretations of
constitutional law are not entirely clear on this matter and have continued to
evolve. (For one example, we now
consider women and people of color to possess the full rights of U.S.
citizens.)
The Library Bill of Rights
(first adopted by the ALA Council in 1939, amended and reaffirmed continuously thereafter)
takes a more unequivocal stance. All
information is valuable, no opinions or points of view should be censored, and
no one should be denied access, regardless of age. The ALA expands upon these basic ideas in a
series of “interpretations” including one addressing “Free Access to Libraries for Minors” (adopted 1972, amended 1981, 1991, 2004). This states that minors’ rights are “unquestionably”
protected by the First Amendment.
Additionally, parents are the only ones who should be responsible for
advising, guiding, and restricting their children’s access to inappropriate
materials--this is not the librarian’s role.
The
“Free Access to Libraries for Minors” statement emphasizes that lack of
information can be more harmful than accessing ‘wrong’ information. The It Gets Better Project illustrates this
as well. In practice, of course, nothing
is ever so black and white. There are ongoing challenges and revisions to the
scope and intent of the U.S. Constitution, and librarians everywhere must
balance their professional ideals with the needs and desires of their user
communities. Collection Development
means excluding some materials and choosing others. Readers’ Advisory is supposed to be a neutral
sort of recommendation service, but it necessitates some subjective interpretation
of the material in question. Is it ok to
assign “reading levels” (Kindergarten, Grades 3-4, etc.) to children’s books? Probably.
Is it censorship to not include The
Story of O in a middle school library?
Probably not. This balancing act
is an essential part of life in a democratic society. Re-evaluating, re-establishing, and expanding
the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all citizens is another hallmark of
democratic life. Children are people,
too, and if they are mature and capable enough to deliberately seek out specific information,
it should not be denied to them.
The
ALA’s Freedom to Read statement (adopted 1953, amended 1972, 1991, 2000,
2004) is somewhat grandiose, but I think it is appropriately so. It ends on the following note: “We believe rather that what people read is
deeply important; that ideas can be dangerous; but that the suppression of
ideas is fatal to a democratic society. Freedom itself is a dangerous way of
life, but it is ours.”
