At the November 8th school board meeting, parents and school board members expressed concerns about sexually explicit books in the school division. Board members Abuismail and Twigg used terms that got a lot of media attention such as “burning books”. Nonetheless, the central issue remains. The issue is about the specific examples of sexually explicit material in public schools.

At the November 15th school board meeting, most speakers were teachers or librarians. Even the Spotsylvania Education Association was involved. None of them directly addressed the specific sexually explicit material. Instead, the speakers changed the issue to a narrative on censorship, relying upon the expertise of educators to select books, following an internal process to remove books, etc.

Those that spoke on this narrative completely missed the point. At the bottom of this article are excerpts from a book called “Like a Love Story” by Abdi Nazemian. This book exists at most of the high schools in Spotsylvania County. We have read thru the book and there is a lot of explicit content. We share just 3 examples.

• Is this what the teachers, librarians, Spotsylvania Educational association, and others are defending ?

• Would it not be better to have a process to prevent the books from entering the school division in the first place ?

• If we are told to rely upon the expertise of educators, then why did they make the poor decision to allow sexually explicit material in the school library ?

• How does this explicit material teach any skills needed for the real world ? Isn’t the point of school to teach skills for the real world ?

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