Everyone remembers the lesson in history class that made breaths catch across the room. Chills ran up spines, and many might have broken out in goosebumps. Most commonly, it is a lesson taught in junior high, when the curriculum decides that students are old enough to watch footage from World Wars and national tragedies. Students are shown graphic clips of the Challenger explosion, or of planes crashing into the Twin Towers; they are required to sit through a lesson on the Holocaust while being shown images of starved men and mass graves. While teaching these tragedies is essential to national and international history, it has more influence on young minds than many may think. 

Outside of history, students are assigned classics in English about a variety of topics. The Scarlet Letter is about adultery and suicide. Unbroken is the story of a soldier in World War II who struggles to survive, undergoing horrific events, and Night is Wiesel retelling his memories of the Holocaust in vivid detail. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment documents a man’s slow descent into madness after he brutally murders a woman and her sister. Kids are tasked with breaking these topics down, discussing themes and events with students, and writing essays on what they learned. Like in history, it is decided by school boards that if they are old enough to take the classes, they have grown mature enough to read the assigned novels.

This belief takes a complete turn when it comes to student’s free choice.

Library books are a crucial resource for kids looking to delve into literature outside of what they have been handed. In the past couple of years, parents have looked at these books and decided they were unfit to read based on a variety of reasons. These reasons include queer main characters, character of color, feminist ideas, and authors that fit any of the prior mentioned categories.

This raises the question: where should our priorities lie? This past February, Collierville’s Central Office answered this with a soft book ban in their high school.

In light of a situation that occurred late last school year, the Commercial Appeal released an article titled ‘Collierville Schools took LGBTQ+ books off shelves while Tennessee lawmakers considered ban.’ While we at the Dragon Spirit believe it was quite informative, we wanted to bring to light something the staff at the other paper cannot: what it looked like from the inside. 

Laura Testion’s article asks if students were involved in the soft book ban Collierville High School rolled out. We interviewed three ex-library teacher assistants who actively participated in the pulling of more than 300 books from the shelves of the CHS library. These three students, who aided in the discretion of censored books, were tasked with helping the librarians collect books deemed problematic.

Beginning in February of 2022, library TAs were made aware of the newest “project.” While the librarians had already pulled a number of books deemed problematic, they needed help identifying more and sorting anything found into five tiers. These tiers were not made known to TAs, only what content was worse, and the book they sorted were not returned to the shelves until months later. 

Our biggest problem with this pull was misinformation. The Commercial Appeal did an excellent job uncovering an aspect that was previously left out – LGTBQ+ books were not the only victims. Any literature with diverse or challenging ideas was also removed. LGBTQ+ books were not the only pieces of literature ripped from the library. We acknowledge the fact that the librarians were only taking directions given by the central office and they should not be held at fault for the situation. In fact, they did everything in their power to keep the books available to students and in circulation. 

At the beginning of 2022, book banning seemed a faraway issue in states hours away. Unbeknownst to many, it did reach Collierville, and books were pulled. High school students’ are continuously told that, as soon-to-be adults, they must start making their own choices, but by banning books, their freedom of choice is revoked.