COMMENTARY:
For many years, New Mexico children have consistently scored last in the Nation for reading skills in 4th and 8th grades. Governor Lujan Grisham made matters worse by forcing students into online school for over a year during COVID, leading to sharp declines in already-dead-last reading skills. In an attempt to make up for large learning losses from school closures, Governor Lujan Grisham launched a summer reading program in 2024.
It sounded like a good idea: Let’s give kids a chance to catch up on their reading skills during the summer! But for some children, this program turned harmful. Instead of just learning how to read better, 7th graders were exposed to shocking passages about 11-year-old girls being raped by men as part of a tribal initiation ritual in Malawi.
These passages distressed children such that on June 27, 2024, the Governor’s Public Education Department (PED) sent out an urgent email to all of the summer reading tutors. The PED said this reading assignment had been reported as “inappropriate or upsetting by several families.” Those families had to do damage control by having “difficult conversations regarding rape and sexual consent with their 11- and 12-year-old children.” Reading tutors were instructed that “Curriculum content must be suitable for the age and developmental stage of the students” and “sensitive topics MUST be disregarded to prevent any potential distress or confusion.”
When the PED realized they were exposing children to age-inappropriate content, they immediately put on the brakes and said STOP. This was undoubtedly the right thing to do, yet the PED should have ensured this never happened in the first place by reviewing the curriculum for age-appropriateness before it was used. This seems like common-sense to most of us, yet right now across New Mexico, school districts are exposing children to age-inappropriate explicit content through library books and refusing to even acknowledge it.
Parents and concerned community members have been ringing the alarm bell for several years, pointing out exactly which harmful books are present in each school. Here in Las Cruces, we have found over 95 age-inappropriate books in school libraries. Even greater numbers of age-inappropriate books have been found in Albuquerque and Rio Rancho school districts. Age-inappropriate books are in schools in Los Lunas, Farmington, Deming, Gallup-McKinley, Santa Fe, Gadsden, Los Alamos, Ruidoso, Silver City, and Hobbs, too.
These are books that contain graphic descriptions of sex acts, including between teachers and students; pornographic and excessively violent imagery; detailed passages of children being sexually assaulted, prostituted, molested, and raped; glorification of children using hard drugs and engaging in self-harm, cutting, and suicidal behaviors; teens using sex toys; and more. Most of these books are in high schools, but some are even in middle schools and elementary schools where 5-year-olds can access them.
Instead of taking this issue seriously and putting on the breaks like the PED did, most districts are stubbornly refusing to acknowledge there could be a problem. And now, instead of calling for districts to audit their libraries to make sure they aren’t exposing children to harmful materials, Progressive state lawmakers Kathleen Cates, Antoinette Sedillo-Lopez, and Harold Pope are trying to make it even harder for parents to request that library books be reviewed for age-appropriateness.
Rep Cates, Senator Sedillo-Lopez, and Senator Pope say their legislation is about the “Freedom to Read,” yet a more-apt title would be “Freedom to Read Porn in Schools.” If you think this is an exaggeration, you can look at the library book content for yourself here: www.nmfa.us/schoolbooks
It's not “book banning” to ask a school district to take a second look at an explicit book and consider whether it should be provided to students. Lawmakers should be making it easier for parents to get involved instead of trying to prevent them from raising concerns.
As a parent of two teens myself, I was heartened to see that Senator Ant Thornton has proposed the SAFE Act, which would encourage local school districts to enact book standards to ensure their libraries are only stocked with age-appropriate books. Now, it is up to Governor Lujan Grisham to decide whether to allow the Bill restricting parental concerns or the SAFE Act to be heard in the legislative session.
Byline: Sarah Smith co-leads the New Mexico Freedoms Alliance, a non-partisan statewide grassroots coalition. Sarah organizes a homeschool group for 100+ families in Las Cruces, homeschools her two teens, and teaches a Liberty-and-Leadership class for teens. She is also a natural healthcare practitioner and former NASA aerospace engineer. Sarah can be reached at concernedfornm@gmail.com.
Sarah Smith's opinions are her own and do not necessarily reflect the views of KRWG Public Media or NMSU.