Students, parents, teachers and community members crammed into the St. Francis School District Office on March 24 for the school board meeting. People sat on the floor, stood against walls, lined the hallway and gathered in the building's foyer to voice thoughts about the board's new policy to restrict which books are allowed on school shelves.
Rowan was one of the students to speak against the new policy. She told the board, "The St. Francis School District should refuse to let the fears of a few people affect the education of all of us.”
Rowan is a senior at St. Francis High School. She is the captain of the speech and debate team, DECA club president, an officer of the school's National Honor Society, and she unequivocally believes that reading books by diverse authors helps students to become better thinkers. "Book banning takes away people's ability to see both sides of a story," said Rowan.
Many of the books that have been pulled or are in danger of being pulled from St. Francis' shelves are texts used in AP classes. "The Handmaid's Tale” and "Brave New World" are some of the books that Rowan and her classmates have read in AP Literature.
"I gained a lot from that course and my understanding of literature," said Rowan.
"And it helped me to become a significantly better writer."
In her limited free time, Rowan likes to write. She participates in a summer writing program and writes and performs slam poetry.
"I don't think I would have as well-developed of a voice as a writer if I had not read books that were made available to me in my AP lit course," Rowan said. While reading helps writers develop their voice, Rowan also emphasizes that "by censoring the content that's in books, it can take away from students' own voice because they don't ever see it represented."
Many students, Rowan included, write to explore challenging themes. This can be difficult when texts that offer meditations on complex topics are unavailable in the school district. Memoirs have not been spared from bans and challenges. For example, "Night," by Elie Wiesel, a slim volume that recounts Wiesel's time in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, has been challenged.
After Rowan learned that "Night" would be removed from school shelves she said, "I have no capacity to understand how [the subject matter] is more harmful in the form of literature than it is in a lecture." She added, "I think it's additionally important to hear first-hand accounts rather than historical recollections of things. I think that helps contextualize history for a lot of people and makes it more real than a date in a textbook."
Now, weeks away from graduation, Rowan is beginning to turn her attention to college. She plans to pursue a degree in international relations to work in developmental aid or global security. Rowan credits the books she read in high school for helping her to determine her future.
"Reading diverse perspectives in literature definitely steered me in this direction," said Rowan. "Being able to engage with and learn about people and experiences who I otherwise didn't have the opportunity to interact with in St. Francis, seeing the differences in lived experience from people around the world, gave me a better idea of what I want to do and what issues I think are pressing and should be at the forefront of our minds."
(Rowan. Photo by JoJo's Photos & Studio)
On Monday, June 9, the St. Francis School District agreed to return banned books to school shelves!
Along with returning books to shelves, the settlement with the district rescinds the Book Looks policy, adopts the Minnesota School Boards Association model policy, and agrees that the district will not amend its library policy and procedures for three years. The school district also agreed that if the board considers overruling the review committee's decision to retain a book that is challenged, they must put their reasons for doing so in writing and present them at an open board meeting agenda before voting on whether or not to remove the book.