Dismantling Book Banning and Constructing Inclusive Education

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 1:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Discourse Analysis: The Politics of Censorship, Book Banning, and COVID-19 Research (Table 2)

Abstract

Legislatures’ long-term efforts have directly impacted the books used in K-12 classrooms and libraries. Various independent school districts (ISDs) across Texas and other states have removed books due to policymakers’ and parents’ raising concerns and making complaints regarding content. This study utilizes critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995) to examine how supporters of banned books use Pascale’s (2019) four interlocking components of weaponized language to remove books from school libraries and curricula to serve their own personal, social, and political agendas.

This presentation will further discuss the harm that banning books causes students, the school curriculum, and communities in general. In addition, it highlights the ways student leaders, schools, and communities advocate opposing both national and local efforts to ban books.

Authors

• Burcu Ates, Sam Houston State University

• Benita R. Brooks, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

• Mary A. Petron, Sam Houston State University