Books are being pulled from the library shelves of an Iowa school district following new legislation from Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, which purports to protect children from obscene material, The Gazette reports.
The new legislation, Senate File 496, prohibits “instruction related to gender identity and sexual orientation in school districts, charter schools and innovation zone schools in kindergarten through grade six.” It requires that every book available to students be “age appropriate” and free of any “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act.”
The district used Artificial Intelligence to make is determinations on what books to ban.
The Mason City school board began reviewing library titles last month to ensure compliance with the law. The district said “lists of commonly challenged books were compiled from several sources to create a master list of books that should be reviewed. The books on this master list were filtered for challenges related to sexual content. Each of these texts was reviewed using AI software to determine if it contains a depiction of a sex act. Based on this review, there are 19 texts that will be removed from our 7-12 school library collections and stored in the Administrative Center while we await further guidance or clarity. We also will have teachers review classroom library collections.”
The 19 books being pulled are Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan, Sold by Patricia McCormick, A Court of Mist and Fury series by Sarah J. Mass, Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson, Tricks by Ellen Hopkins, Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Looking for Alaska by John Green, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Crank by Ellen Hopkins, Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, Feed by M.T. Anderson, Friday Night Lights by Buzz Bissinger, Gossip Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.
“Our classroom and school libraries have vast collections, consisting of texts purchased, donated, and found. It is simply not feasible to read every book and filter for these new requirements,” Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction at Mason City Community School District Bridgette Exman said in a statement. “Therefore, we are using what we believe is a defensible process to identify books that should be removed from collections at the start of the 23-24 school year. After this, we will continue to rely on our long-established process that allows parents to have books reconsidered. We are confident this process will ensure the spirit of the law is enacted here in Mason City; parents will always have a voice in their students’ education.”