Editorial: Storm Lake stands up

We’re grateful and relieved, for now, that the Storm Lake School Board and administration are not rushing to ban any books from the curriculum or the library. A state law bans books that mention sex or sexual identity but the Department of Education under Gov. Kim Reynolds, who pushed for this ignorant law, has not issued guidance on how school boards are supposed to sort through the books. In that vacuum Storm Lake has chosen to stand pat. Supt. Stacey Cole says she is not aware of books in circulation that would offend the state law, which comes into full force Jan. 1.

Various lists floating around Iowa include more than 300 books that should be banned, including Catcher in the Rye, of course. The Alta-Aurelia School Board is considering an indeterminate number of books in its shared library with the City of Alta that should not be offered in the presence of students. The Holy Bible could qualify under the vague standards written by zealous legislators.

We could hope that smart people could defer to licensed educators and librarians about what students need to learn to adapt in an overwhelmingly complex and diverse world. If we could trust the judgment of the people hired by the city and school to run the Alta library, they could perhaps manage under this silly law by working around it. Storm Lake could hope that the Department of Education or self-righteous district patrons would just leave teachers and librarians to do their jobs in a discerning way. That is, to treat them as professionals. That’s not how the Moms for Liberty work.

They assert that parents should be in control, and suggest that they should have veto  authority over what students learn. A story is in order: We know a school counselor whom a third-grade student threatened to kill. The girl was removed from her deranged mother and placed in the custody of her father, who is out of prison after serving a meth conviction. Our friend has a master’s degree in school counseling. Who is better to recommend a book for that girl: the counselor or the parents?

We have the benefit of a college degree in the humanities but have no idea what a seventh-grader should be reading about world history. We know so little about Native American or Black, or even Irish, history that we defer to people who actually know that they’re talking about. 

We like to think of Dave Skibsted. He is a Storm Lake farm boy raised amid traditional Iowa values — hard work, honesty and tolerance. The longtime school board member played football at the University of Northern Iowa (the teacher’s college, where nothing much radical or perverse occurs), and taught and coached in Storm Lake over a solid career guiding students to success on the field, in the classroom and as adults. Is this who you do not trust to guide administrators? Do you think you know better what is in the head of a 14-year-old boy than he does? He lived inside that helmet for decades. He knows better than the governor, for sure.

Would you rather that someone educated on Facebook, just in from a political rally, set the tone for the sixth grade? They never paid attention in Skibsted’s class and never learned the plays in freshman football, but now they’re experts. 

If the nun said it was so in the classroom, that was the final word for our parents. (They prescribed Catcher in the Rye right here at St. Mary’s 50 years ago, and the priest told us way back then that God loves gays in our religion class! How far back must we regress?)

Let the coach call the plays. Let the band teacher direct the trumpets. Let the librarian stack the shelves. Let the counselors counsel. Complain if you will but trust in expertise and good faith. These are good people, mainly, who do not what your child wallowing in smut. We barely made it through algebra, and are in no position to tell the math teacher how to do it despite being well-intentioned parents. We appreciate that the Storm Lake School Board is looking out for everyone’s interest. We can hope that the Iowa Department of Education will look the other way, and let Storm Lake and Alta-Aurelia sort things out as they deem appropriate. That is supposed to be local control.

Unfortunately, those who believe they have received The Word will not relent. They passed this law and want to bring the hammer of ignorance down on the rest of us. Storm Lake has always stood up for unbridled education in all its iterations. It continues to stand strong against censorship and for reasonable open inquiry. That deserves support.