Well, we don’t allow parents to bullwhip their children for any reason, so I don’t see your point. We do, for instance, allow parents to ground their kids for a month if they get a B-.
I’m naturally suspicious of most new laws. I don’t think our country is suffering from a dearth of legislation.
I’m not even sure if I’d vote for this law myself, if given the opportunity. But I don’t see a constitutional impediment to the proposed law. I can’t tell from your post if you do or not.
Originally posted by kaylasdad99:
Exactly. This is the crux of the matter and, IMO, one where political posing becomes worse than useless. Public ownership and personal responsiblity, anyone? What fun…
Speaking as a battle-scarred, longtime (public) librarian, may I observe that this is just one example where laws–public policies–must fit messy, various human lives if the laws are to be effective?
Here’s a hard fact: public libraries are public institutions which, by law, do not act in loco parentis. We aren’t like schools, specifically entrusted to the care of the young. That’s not indifference; it’s pragmatic reality. A previous poster compared public libraries to bus stations in term of rights to access. (Sorry, can’t attribute the quote because the board is crawling.) It’s a rather apt analogy.
Public libraries can’t guarantee absolute safety for children, physically or mentally. We can take measures to regulate behavior, at the constant risk of law suits btw, but there ain’t no way in bloody hell we can neatly package, label and regulate the entire friggin’ output of humanity, suitable individualized consumption.
Want a real-life dose of really, really bad law? Now keep in mind all the perfectly legitimate examples cited before; curious kids functioning within who-the-hell-KNOWS-what-home-environment. (You think we know?) Then apply all the personal/familial quirks possible. For a refresher course, check out ALA’s list of banned books. Keep in mind these titles faced court challenges just to stay on the shelves. Hey, it ain’t like most public libraries aren’t desperate to just keep the doors open, much less fending off lawsuits.
Now tie those titles–and all the vast other possiblities–into modern families. Factor in, say, divorces and custody. They’re always fun. Or kids sheparding slightly younger kids. Or bewildered grandparents–or babysitters, sisters, brothers, aunts, whomever.
Here’s the bottom line for public libraries: we’re stewards for the collection. We try to choose materials widely and wisely, taking into account the whole human condition. We lay out the feast.
Our responsibility ends there.
How or why people use resources is up to them. We don’t dictate anything beyond financial responsiblity for materials. We ain’t the thought police–and that includes kids. Something that traumatizes one kid may give wings to another. We don’t and won’t accept responsibility for it.
No, not at all. But ‘community standards’ don’t apply to all manners of parental policing of children; rather, they apply only to those that community standards specifically define as child abuse or neglect. That’s why the bullwhip is out. But that’s all community standards can do. If community standards were to dictate that it was unreasonable for a parent to expect a child to brush his teeth more than three times a day, punishing a child by making him brush his teeth every hour on the hour for an entire weekend would still be as legal as church on Sunday.
Deemed, by whom? Each individual parent? I don’t think so.
And this is one issue in play here: the right of each parent to supervise his/her child as s/he believes best. The state has the right to intervene to protect children from abuse and neglect; aside from that, it’s the business of parents to decide how to go about this business of raising their children.
It unquestionably adds to parental control. We disagree on its legitimacy. But you are claiming the illegitimacy of such control as fact. On what basis?
We disagree. I think it addresses a perfectly legitimate, reasonable concern on the part of parents: their lack of knowledge or control, in a society that lacks community, over who is influencing their children.
No, I see no constitutional problems. I just think it’s a dumb law that’s going to cause more harm than good.
Guess again. Acceptable community standards regularly are defined in cases other than abuse or neglect. Your right to raise your kid as a nudist, for instance, is limited in some communities.
**
Um, no, that wouldn’t be a COMMUNITY standard, would it? Community standards are established in court proceedings as a general rule. Same way they’re defined for obscenity laws. If you’re interested in what your local community standards would be, the best place to start is a judge or a DA.
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And this is one issue in play here: the right of each parent to supervise his/her child as s/he believes best.
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This is not the right you seem to believe it to be. There are restrictions on how far a parent can go, both in means and ends. You don’t have the right to beat your child senseless into a healthy diet in most communities. You don’t have the right to browbeat your kid into believing the government put a chip in their head and they need to beat up the Jewish kids at their school in most communities. You do have a right to browbeat your kid into a healthy diet in most communities.
**
No, I’m not. I’m saying that the only control expanded by this law is illegitimate control. There is already a mechanism for legitimate control to be exerted. Many people in this thread, as well as many people in the public debates wherever this pops up seem to not know that.
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I think it addresses a perfectly legitimate, reasonable concern on the part of parents: their lack of knowledge or control, in a society that lacks community, over who is influencing their children. **
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It doesn’t address that at all. They can already decide who influences their children in as far as the books at the library are concerned. In fact, they can already decide who influences me and my children at that library in most places, over my objections if need be. Hence my suggestion for an R-rating type system.
What you’re saying is that parents should be able to keep their kids from reading, as an example, Soul on Ice, because it speaks praisingly of rape. I agree. The thing is, they can already do that. Public libraries being child-accessible, the public has a very easy time getting books out of them. Even when it tends to tick the heck out of us adults who’d like to read something besides Dr. Seuss on our taxpayer dime.
What I’m telling you is that in addition to giving lazy parents a second chance to restrict the above material if they’re too lazy to go to a city council meeting, or a library management meeting, or write a letter to the editor, it also gives John Q Scumbag the ability to prevent his kid from reading Frederick Douglas because he’s black. That’s not legitimate parental authority. If he tried to police his children that way publically, he’d be in for a world of scorn, and there’s a good chance that someone would raise enough of a fuss to have HHS sicked on him. But now, thanks to these lawmakers, he can do just that, without the meddlesome worry of people finding out he’s abusing his child and turning him into a dangerous sociopath who’s likely to be a timebomb the rest of us get to deal with.
This law could have ruined my life as a child. Had my parents found at that at 14 I was checking out books about homosexuality, trying to make sense of who I was, my entire life would have been ruined.
Which, of course, is exactly how the Christians and conservative thugs who support this sort of bill would want it.
Which, of course, is exactly how the Christians and conservative thugs who support this sort of bill would want it.
rolls eyes
Having fun up on that cross, there?
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I guess the parents won’t be held responsible for any lost or damanged books. After all there’s no reason to expect the parents to be responsible for books they have no knowledge of. Is the law kind of silly? I think so. I don’t see why a modern computerized library wouldn’t tell a parent what books their child checked out. Especially when the parent will ultimately be the one responsible for ensuring that the book makes its way back to the library unharmed.
Marc
Oh goody, yet another unfunded mandate. I don’t know how it is in your neck of the woods, but here in Oregon the money is kind of tight library-wise. How many man-hours and how much paperwork would this little law cost the public?
Probably less than the lawsuits that some parents might file aginst libraries that refuse the info. I agree it’s probably a silly law, but I don’t see a flood of parents descending on libraries to find out what Johnny and Mary are reading. I suspect it’ll be rarely used, if ever.
I think most people will agree that a parent should have a great deal of control and oversight over a prepubescent child. In my opinion this includes a list of materials checked out from a public library on request. Or, barring that, a greater amount of flexibility in restricting what material the child can check out in the first place. The trickier part is weighing the rights and interest of the parent to that of their teenage child. As a person develops, so should their legal rights and responsibilities.
So, essentially, the question is to what extent should a parents interest supercede a teenager's in this context? For the purposes of answering this question it is not of primary relevance to note that parents can already exercise a degree of influence in the books that a public library has.
Of particular concern to me is the implied assumption that the negative uses to which the proposed law will be put will outweigh the benefits. Is it only assholes who wish to know what their teenagers are reading? Are there no parents motivated by a genuine concern for their adolescent offspring? The two viewpoints that I see being advocated here roughly amount to:
The teenager knows what material is more suitable for them than the parent(s).
In this instance I realize that in some (rare) cases this may be true. Laws, however, are tools based on generalizations and this generalization isn’t true. Parents, generally speaking, are much better are determining what material is appropriate for their pre or post pubescent children than the child themselves.
And/or…
The government has an interest in ensuring that the teen has access to information the parent may not approve of.
If a parent doesn’t wish their teenage child to read about evolution, homosexuality or other religions is it, or should it, be their perogative to restrict the availability of that material for their teenager? I think so. As distasteful as some of those choices may be I think it sets a dangerous precedent to do otherwise. I’m referring to the implication that the government knows what material is suitable for your child better than you do.
Some posters have indicated that a parent can use other methods of regulating the material available to their child. Suggestions included going to the library with their child, asking them about what materials were checked out, etc. IMO these are good suggestions yet miss the point. A pre pubescent child, in most cases, isn’t going to be traveling to the library by themselves anyway. The child is nearly always going to be accompanied by an adult in the first place. No, the greater concern IMO, relates to the appropriateness of material being checked out by teenagers who may have little or no supervision during a trip to the library. Some may argue that a teenager should be afforded more leeway in their range of choices. I would certainly agree with this but think that this decision is ultimately the parents.
A last addition. IMO rights should not be granted without also an understanding of, and commitment to, a set of responsibilities. If society deems a teenager’s right to privacy trumps a parent’s interest in the development of their child than the teenager is the one who should legally be entirely financially responsible for overdue and lost/damaged book expenses.
Yeah, because that’s such a huge problem right now… oh, wait. It’s not.
The question that comes up in my mind on this issue is… how will the kids get around this? It’s not as if the kids are just going to take out the books they fear their parents will know they’re reading all willy-nilly if they know their parents can find out. So what will they do?
Will they ask friends with more understanding parents to check them out instead? Yup. Will they steal the books? Yup. Will they buy them from a bookstore? Sure. Will they read them in the library? Why not? Will they get the information of the Web instead? You betcha.
In other words… once this law passes, it instantly becomes unenforceable. Want to monitor what your kid reads? Don’t bother to call up the library. If they’re smart enough to figure out that there’s stuff out there that their parents are trying to hide from them, I’ll bet Buicks to bagels that they’re cunning enough to check out a library book without news of it getting back to Ma and Pa.
Meanwhile, the librarians’ jobs become more complex and tiresome, having to deal with not only the information requests and security measures, but with the knowledge that suddenly part of their job includes reporting on people who are searching, perhaps desperately, for knowledge.
The law is worse than useless; it’s a pathetic means of passing off censorship as a way to safeguard children.
Here’s a tip to parents: If you’re threatened by your child acquiring knowledge of anything, then you’ve done something dreadfully, terribly wrong. Ignorance isn’t a solution; it’s a curse.
Mr. Visible:
You seem to be forgetting why this law was enacted. Some parent tried to get a list of books from the library that his or her kid had check out only to be refused that information. I agree this will do little or nothing to stop kids from reading stuff their parents don’t want the to. That’s not the point. The point is this: What should the default situation be? Libraries comply with the request of parents, or they don’t comply? Given that a choice must be made, I see no reason to deny parents access to information about their kids.
As for the cost, there is no reason why an administrative fee can’t be charged in order to fulfull a request by a parent.
I haven’t forgotten anything, Mr. Mace. I simply believe that knowlegde doesn’t harm people. Not even kids.
If you’re scared of what your children might learn at the local public library, then keep them out of there. Just don’t expect librarians to inform on their activities for you.
I’m curious, though. What if you were a librarian, and the parent of a local child came to you and asked for their daughter’s library records. The daughter has been spending hours poring over books on womens’ rights, and doing intensive research on Christianity. You know the parents of this child belong to a local cult, which believes in keeping women barefoot and pregnant, and denounces Christianity as the teachings of the devil. What do you do?
That exact situation may never come up, but you have to realize that this legislation puts librarians in the position of informants. And informants are often in difficult moral positions. Inform on someone, or not, and your actions have consequences. Librarians aren’t cops, they’re not soldiers. They’re librarians. I don’t want the moral dilemmas of informing on children in the hands of someone who’s not trained (or paid enough) to deal with that kind of decision.
Then there’s the next question, which is: okay, you give parents the right to view library records. What kind of proof do you require that they are parents? Right now, it takes a subpoena to get access to the list of what you’ve read. With this law in place, I could walk into a library with a good fake ID, claim to be the father of Little Johnny Mace, and take a good hard gander at your reading habits.
All because some parents are scared that their kids might learn too much.
I’d do what the law requires me to do unless I thought it was morally repugnant to do so. Additionally, if I suspected a child was being abused, I’d report that to the police (whether I was a librarian or a bystander).
Driver’s License. Works for verifying airline passengers and credit card purchases. Call me crazy, but I’m not too worried about someone faking an ID to find out what my kid is reading in the library.
Again, I’m not defending this as a good or necessary law. I’m just saying that I recognize the rights of voters to pass such a law and that I don’t see that it’s against the constitution. In a democracy, there are lots of laws you won’t agree with. And if libraries are forced to choose between the wishes of parents and the wishes of children, I think it’s reasonable to choose the former.
And there you have my point in a nutshell. If we make librarians informants, and informants on kids, we put them in a position where they may have to face that decision: do what’s lawful but morally repugnant, or do what’s moral and face the legal consequences.
Besides which, if the parents were so all-fired hot to get Junior’s records, didn’t they have legal recourse? Couldn’t they have gotten a subpoena? Is this law about getting access to a minor’s records, or making it easy to get access to a minor’s records?
Let’s say your name is, well, Smith. There are a few hundred Smiths out there. How is the librarian to know that I’m not Timmy Smith’s father?
Can you see how this law would come in handy, not just for parents, but for pedophiles? It’s strange, in this day and age, to see a law being made that makes it easier to get personal information on children.
If libraries are forced to choose between becoming informants and safeguarding personal information, I think it’s imperative to choose the latter.
That’s pretty easy to get around. Print a warning on juvenile library cards that parents can have access to a list of books they check out. Explain it to them when they get the card. Post a sign at the checkout counter. Informed consent.
This isn’t rocket science. If you don’t like my driver’s license proposal, use whatever method schools use when a parent requests a conference with a teacher about his kid. Or require the parent to bring the kid with him. Only send the list, registered mail, to the address on the kid’s library card. Charge the parents for whatever the cost is.
I think this is the same issue as above (informed consent).
I’m curious as to why you chose not to address the idea that this isn’t a law about letting parents have access to this information: it’s about making it easier for adults to do so. There is already legal recourse available to parents who need their kids’ records.
In regards to informed consent, do you think it’s going to make a whit of difference to the librarian who has to turn over information about a child in a circumstance where she knows the child’s life might be impacted negatively, that she told the kid that this might happen? “Hey, she got a library card. She knew the risks.”
It’s still the same rock, the same hard place. You just put labels on them.
Meanwhile, we’re agreed that this law isn’t going to keep information out of kids’ hands anyway. It seems rather cavalier to give up any amount of privacy or security for no benefit whatsoever, doesn’t it?
Tangentially at least, that’s not really a strawman. It could be used as counter-argument to your comment:
You can be held financially responsible for your spouse, right?
Where I live, the overdue notices from the library include the name of the book. That seems to be the easiest way to resolve the issue of getting the overdue notice, but not knowing the name of the book. If my child got an overdue notice that didn’t include the name of the book, and the library wouldn’t tell me the name of the book because of privacy issues , it seems to me that the easiest way for me to find out is to go to the library with the child while he requests the name of the book.
I think saying that the library is denying parents access to information about their kids is a bit strong. The library is not providing the access, but parents can get that information in other ways- like through the kid. If I really wanted to control what my child was reading, I could. I could make sure that he was under adult supervision at all times, to eliminate a secret trip to the library ( or bookstore or comic book shop). I could search his room, his backpack and anything else brought into the house to eliminate books borrowed from friends. I have every right to do those things, but that doesn’t mean the library ( or the bookstore or the comic book shop) has to make it easier for me by providig a list.
Regarding the financial responsibility- there is an argument that if the parents are responsible for the books (and they might not be- my 13 year old son just received a new card, and my signature was not required on the application), they should be informed of which books they are responsible for. But there is an argument on the other side as well- if the parents don’t like the policy, and feel it’s too much of a burden to find out which books are overdue through the child ,then they don’t have to allow the child to get the card to begin with.
Bring the kid with them is a fine idea- except that parents can surely already get the information if they bring the kid with them and the kid asks for the list. The article didn’t say that the child doesn’t have access to his own records, only that the parents don’t.