There have been over 200 instances of book ban incidents in Florida alone since last July, according to AP News. This only reached the third highest record of the year, with Texas and Pennsylvania in the lead. Bans have become widespread, occurring in 138 school districts in 38 states and affecting over 4 million students between 2021 and 2022 alone. Surely if the government continues to ban books, kids will never be exposed to questionable content, right? They’ll stay away from the terrors of the LGBTQ+ community presented in Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer and the sexual innuendos of horrendously pornographic books like The Handmaid's Tale. Heaven forbid kids be able to form their own opinions by reading constructive literature. What those powerful books, and many others on the banned books lists of Florida and Texas have in common relates to the educational conversations that they encourage. The strength of literature lies in its ability to make people uncomfortable, in the struggle with our beliefs that it creates. 

Two main issues occur when trying to validate the argument for book bans: first, many of them target books that follow diverse characters rather than inappropriate topics, and second, banning books removes conversation around difficult social concepts from the classroom. Florida’s legislature,  inspired by the enlightened Governor DeSantis, recently passed a bill that allowed as few as one parent in a school system to remove a book from its system entirely, as long as it presented “pornographic material.” According to ABC News, some of the books removed included I Am Jazz, Kite Runner, and Gender Queer: A Memoir. Many of the books feature protagonists that identify as a part of the LGBTQ+ community, while others contain educational or relatable descriptions of sexual behavior, and include themes of diversity and discrimination. PEN America reports that today, 41% of book bans center around queer characters and 40% follow racially diverse protagonists. Only 22% of the books actually contain sexual content. 

What happens to education if kids can’t be informed about perspectives other than their own? Those who oppose the bans claim that the information written in the books will be consumed regardless of the bans, and the issue will become the fact that the kids can no longer have productive conversations in safe spaces like their classrooms. Yale’s student newspaper reports that social media has caused kids to become desensitized at a very young age, and has “normalized disturbing images, violence, and hatred.” Removing books and the conversations they create about race, sexuality, and trauma could mean that the main source of student’s information could become the sensationalized and biased media presented by the Internet. If the media presents an exaggerated and uncensored image of the world, literature should be able to counteract that by presenting intentional, truthful narratives that provide context for difficult concepts.