An Iowa School District Just Proved Texas and Florida Aren’t the Only Places Intellectual Freedom is Under Siege

A true “hold my beer” moment

A mere four days ago, I wrote a piece about the largest school district in Texas taking book censorship to an unbelievable extreme. Normally, I don’t rant more than once every week or two, so I had settled in to work on some drafts of bookish topics and the obligatory Springsteen article. Then I read the weekly Book News Corner by Amanda Kay Oaks, and all bets were off.

In that article (which you can read here) she wrote about a school district in Iowa that used ChatGPT to decide what books to remove from their shelves. I initially just commented that this was madness, but I have not been able to get it out of my mind. According to the story she linked to on Vulture.com, the Mason City (Iowa) Community School District says it will “be using artificial intelligence to sort through its library system to ban books deemed inappropriate for its students.” They have already removed 19 books to bring the library into compliance with a state law requiring books to be “age appropriate” without “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act.” The banned books include The Color Purple, The Handmaid’s Tale, Beloved, and Friday Night Lights (that last one will never be banned in Texas, where high school football is more popular than tacos and Jesus combined).

Until now, I have pretty much ignored ChatGPT. I know that there is a “sky is falling” panic about it in some circles, and I can see the potential dangers both in the workplace and for creative writers. I also remember when 8-track tapes and Betamax players were going to revolutionize how we experienced music and movies (for those under 30 who have no clue what either of those things are, ask your mom). The early stage of any technology tends to be junk, and I assumed I would be long dead before ChatGPT became a real threat.

Clearly, I was wrong.

It’s one thing for a school board or legislature to ban books as part of a political agenda. If the 80 million eligible voters who stayed home in 2020 would get off their asses and vote, we could probably sweep those Neanderthals out of office. Turning over decisions about what books are “appropriate” to a machine is something else entirely.

Bridgette Exman, the Assistant Superintendent of the Mason City School District, told the Mason City Globe Gazette that it was “not feasible to read every book and filter for these new requirements.” I can understand that; library staffs are already stretched to the breaking point in schools across the country. Even so, turning to AI to make the decisions on what books to ban is a very slippery slope.

Interestingly, Exman also said that they went back 20 years and “can’t find a single formal challenge to a book by a parent of a student here in the Mason City School District.” That means ChatGPT chose books to ban that haven’t even been challenged by parents in the district. The books have been challenged elsewhere, however, which is surely part of the AI’s algorithm. Just take a look at the complete list below (these will be removed from the libraries for grades 7–12):

Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan

Sold by Patricia McCormick

A Court of Mist and Fury (series) by Sarah J. Maas

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

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Regardless of whether books are being banned by a legislature with an agenda, a school board with an agenda, or a computer program with an agenda, we need to combat the agenda. I ramble on about this issue in part because it’s happening so often that we’re in danger of “censorship fatigue,” which is just what those legislatures/schoolboards/AI’s want; they want us to get so tired of hearing about it that we just tune it out. This is something we absolutely must not do.

Keep writing about it, keep talking about it, keep putting pressure on your elected representatives. And never lose sight of that word “representative;” they’re supposed to represent us, not their own special interests. I know that sounds naïve, but it’s true nonetheless. And keep on reading; I don’t want to have to rely on John Connor to save us from Skynet.

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