|
On the one hand, any school library is going to have to limit its selection; they've got a much more focused purpose than a general library. They need not only age-appropriate books, but books that connect well to various aspects of education--a school library isn't supposed to be "a sampling of all forms of literature of every sort," but "a curated selection suitable for educational purposes."
However, educational purposes includes "discover that some people are very different, or very weird, or downright perverse." Any good education includes exposure to ideas that the local community doesn't like.
There are limits to that. Perhaps school libraries shouldn't have books on bomb-making, or novels about drug-dealers that go into great detail about how they procure their stock; while this info is widely available, it doesn't need to be handed to students directly. Certainly, a school library doesn't need to spend its limited funds and administration skills managing books that would likely encourage crime in young readers.
There's a difference between "this book would inspire crimes" and "this book would teach about crimes," and someone should be making that judgment call. There are cases of "this book is too mature, too complex, for most of our readers, so we're not carrying it;" that's different from "this book's themes are based on values we don't like" or the even worse "this book acknowledges that sometimes behavior we don't like isn't immediately and harshly punished."
|