Enacts the freedom to read act

• Democratic41
• Republican3

◆ The sponsor's argument

Why Rachel May says this is needed

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing." This quote from Scout, the young heroine of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mock- ingbird, sums up the way censorship almost inevitably backfires. Banning books makes people take them more seriously. In the Soviet Union, people went to extreme lengths to gain access to both Russian and foreign literature that was forbidden by the government, with the result that forbidden writers gained status and reached many more readers than they might otherwise have done. The current wave of efforts around the country to ban books from libraries and classrooms focuses on books that help young people under- stand our society, our history, and personal identity from a range of perspectives. However, there is ample research to show that children are more excited, and therefore more likely, to read books that feature characters with whom they can identify. Moreover, "protecting" children from negative information or harsh realities about issues like the history of slavery or injustice serves to make them less resilient and less vigilant about preventing such outcomes in the future. In a diverse state like New York, it is critical that we ensure that students have access to a broad range of materials available to them to let them pursue a love of learning and reading that can transport them to the distant past, to imagined futures, or into the far reaches of our galaxy. By ensuring that students have access to many perspectives, they have the option to enrich their minds and broaden their perspectives. Whether they embrace or reject those perspectives, the opportunity to explore challenging ideas is valuable to students' development as lear- ners, as community members, and as citizens. Democratic self-government depends on a free exchange of ideas and information, and our schools must continue to ensure that ideas and information arc available for students to embrace or reject in line with their values and those they learn from their families and communities. This bill helps to protect the freedom to read by ensuring that school boards will continue to provide the broadest range of access to age-ap- propriate materials in school libraries and adding a guarantee of access to diverse reading materials.

This is the sponsor's own case for the bill, quoted from their memorandum. It is not Agora's description of what the bill does.