By Jay Ashcroft Secretary of State
JEFFERSON CITY — It is more difficult than ever to shield young children from material and images that would’ve been put behind the counter at the Kum & Go just a few years ago. Our kids are deluged with inappropriate content on television, on the internet, in social media, and throughout our culture.
For parents of young kids, it is a challenge to filter all the material our children are accessing and to ensure mature content, if presented, is presented at the time and place of each parent’s choosing.
As an elected official, one of my responsibilities is to make sure government doesn’t make it more difficult for parents to exercise control over their children’s upbringing, and I strongly believe that when it comes to our schools and public libraries, parents should be in charge. Given my statutory role overseeing our state’s libraries, I proposed a new rule, which took effect last month, requiring taxpayer-funded libraries to keep age-inappropriate materials away from children.
Far from “book banning,” as progressive activists howl, it is merely making sure that materials inappropriate for young kids are identified for parents in those libraries that rely on the taxpayers for funding. When state dollars are involved, we want to bring back local control and parental involvement in determining what children read.
To this end, my one-page rule simply requires libraries to have publicly accessible policies for determining the age appropriateness of materials, while allowing parents to control their child’s access to materials. That means each library will develop a distinct policy for its local constituents, ensuring each community has input into its library policy.
The rule also forbids tax dollars from being used to acquire material constituting pornography targeting minors or child pornography and bans the display of such materials in children’s areas in the library.
And finally, the rule requires libraries to give age-appropriate designations on all advertisements of presentations and events held in the library. This is similar to the age ratings we give video games and television shows our children watch.
These are clearly common-sense steps for most Missourians. Yet, the incoming president of the Missouri Library Association went so far as to threaten to revoke kids’ library cards rather than comply with the new rule, even while acknowledging that many if not most libraries already have similar policies in place. While they accuse of me of book banning, they are now threatening child banning by revoking kids’ library cards.
Other libraries are more interested in banning the Ten Commandments than shielding young children from graphic visual depictions of sexual activity.
To be fair, most of the state’s public librarians are working to implement the new policies, which don’t really represent a significant burden on them. Their good faith efforts demonstrate a commitment to creating safe learning environments for everyone, but shouldn’t that always have been the standard?
This new policy is a small but important step toward returning control of the education and learning environment back to parents. I appreciate those who are working with us to see the smooth implementation of this rule and encourage those who are skeptical to recognize that our goal is simply to provide a safe learning environment for the next generation.
The Ste. Genevieve Country Public Library announced the new rules with this Facerbook post last week.