Audio Transcript Auto-generated
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Hi guys, my name is Miranda Nichols.
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And today we'll be discussing the Supreme Court case of Board of Education,
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Island Trees versus PICO,
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a big a background on this case.
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In 1975 parents of the New York United
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School presented the Island Trees Board of Education
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with its list of books they deemed unsuitable for students
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that they received from a conference that they had attended
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the board temporarily removed the books from the school
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libraries and established a committee to review the list.
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The committee concluded that five of the books could be returned to the
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library but were overturned by the board and only two were returned.
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Let's take a look at the books that were banned.
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Slaughterhouse five, Kurt Van Gogh Junior
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for foul language sexual content
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and makes references to religious matters and blessings in the name of Jesus Christ
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and being flat out offensive. It's been banned 18 times in various states since
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the naked ape by Desmond Morris were improper fare
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for students and being incredibly sexist and teachings of evolution
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down these mean streets by Perry Thomas for explicit
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depiction of homosexual and heterosexual acts between and amongst people
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of color who are impoverished and live in a
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quote unquote ghetto full of drugs and other downfalls.
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Best short stories of Negro writers
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edited by Langston Hughes
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for promoting critical race theory and containing the N word
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Go Ask.
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Alice by an anonymous author was banned for
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its inclusion of profanity and references to runaways,
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drugs, sex, and rape.
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Yet more books, Laughing Boy by Oliver
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Lafarge
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and Ain't Hero. Nothing but a sandwich by Alice Childers were both banned
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for anti-christ anti-american and being obscene
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Black Boy by Richard Wright
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for the obscenity and instigating hatred between the races.
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The last of this list includes Soul On Ice by Eldridge
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Cleaver for profanity and sexual content.
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A reader for writers edited by Jerome Archer was deemed anti-christ anti-american
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obscene because of its comparison of Malcolm X to our founding fathers.
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The fixed by Bernard Maund
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for anti-american anti-christ, anti Semitic
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and just plain filthy includes instances in the book
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of profanity directed towards the Jewish protagonists by his
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five students, four high school and one middle school aged student
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led by Steven PICO organized and filed a lawsuit against the
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school board by claiming a violation of their first amendment rights.
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Public schools can't remove books to suppress ideas.
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The board banned these particular books based
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on its conservative educational philosophy and on its
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belief that the nine books removed from
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the school library and curriculum were irrelevant,
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vulgar, immoral and in bad taste,
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making them educationally unsuitable for the district's
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junior and senior high school students.
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Pico's lawyer would argue that the banning was a political purge
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rather than an exercise of the community's normal authority to educate.
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The young two board members entered the high school library at night with a
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checklist of titles and authors they had
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acquired at a conservative political meeting,
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the school board subsequently ordered that nine books be removed from
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the library on the basis of selected quotations from them.
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Only later did the board give the books a full reading?
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The decision to ban the books remained firm.
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The main issue as PICO and the other students would see it
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was that the books were banned based on excerpts from the books
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and not the lessons or ideas that the books were teaching as a whole.
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Removing books from the curriculum was much
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different than removing them from the library.
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Books not found in the curriculum are voluntary reads.
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The students led by PICO ages 13 to 17.
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At the time the books were removed,
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appealed the decision made by the first federal court.
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The board had won
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but PICO appealed the US court of appeals for
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the second Circuit and won the decision was reversed.
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However, the board challenged the decision
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and were granted
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sorci,
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the higher court would review the decision of a lower court.
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The case was presented in front of the Supreme Court on March 2nd,
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1982 by George W Lipp Junior.
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Six years after the books were removed.
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Five of the deciding members still remained on the school
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board when the case went to the Supreme Court,
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Island Trees versus PICO became a landmark case
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on censorship in schools deciding if local school
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boards should be removing or censoring library books
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from the junior high schools and high school.
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The Supreme Court did recognize the need for the school
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board to uphold social and moral values of the community
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Causing a split decision.
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This was the first Supreme Court case to consider
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the right to obtain information in a library setting
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under the first amendment.
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But the court's splintered decision left the range of this right unclear.
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The United States Supreme Court split the decision
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on the first amendment issue with four justices voting
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in favor of the book banning four justices opposing
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and one justice felt that the court was not the place to make the decision.
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In brief, we hold that local school boards may not remove books from school library.
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She simply because they dislike the ideas contained
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in those books and seek by their removal to
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prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism,
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religion or other matters of opinion.
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Such purposes stand in
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inexplicably
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condemned by our precedents.
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Justice William Brennan
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here,
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the Island Tree School board removed certain books because it
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viewed them as vulgar and in bad taste and removal.
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That clearly was content based.
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Whether they were correct in their evaluation of books is not the issue nor
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is the issue whether assuming the books to be vulgar or in bad taste,
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it is a wise or even desirable educational decision
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to sanitize the library by removing them,
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thereby sheltering the students from their influence.
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Such issues should be decided and remedied either by the school district voters
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or by the state commissioner of
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education on an appropriate administrative appeal.
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Another quote,
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even if this court were not bound by the second Circuit's holding,
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it would reach the same result.
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Although many
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are the right to read and salve
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seek to distinguish book removal from book acquisition.
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The attempted distinction is not grounded in
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any sound constitutional principle and inevitably would break
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down in actual practice.
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Maintenance of a library is an ongoing process.
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Periodically,
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books are added and removed as school officials balance considerations of cost,
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space, educational need, student demand and faculty interest
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as already noted within the constraints of money and space content
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is the primary criterion for selection.
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The court ruled that boards cannot restrict book availability just
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because they disagree with the content in the book.
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What does this mean for teachers today?
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Teachers today still fight for open access to many
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sources of information including the internet and apps.
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This issue from 40 years ago
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are countless but the problem remains,
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there is a loud minority of people pushing to censor what students have access to
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in schools on unprecedented levels and it will continue. So
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as we move forward in education and technology,
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more and more opportunities for information access
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will present itself.
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And we will have to argue
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of its relevance in the classroom.