By Dr. Jason J. Griffith (Penn State University) and Dr. Stephanie F. Reid (University of Cincinnati)
As former English teachers and current teacher educators alarmed by widespread upticks in book-banning, we wondered how best to support educators in resisting censorship and preserving students’ right to read. We decided to visualize acts of resistance as reported in digital journalism through a series of graphics that might inspire educators to consider the best critical responses in their own contexts. This series of four blog posts highlights our graphics and actionable takeaways for educators.
“Okay, but what can I do about it?” This is a common question our preservice teachers ask us when we discuss the broad scope of book-banning attempts of children’s and young adult literature over the past five years, and it’s a valid one. Not only can the magnitude of this coordinated censorship feel overwhelming, but there can be real consequences for educators who resist book bans. These consequences can range from the discomfort of arguing social politics to being fired or facing legal ramifications in states that have legislated censorship such as Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, and Wisconsin. Clearly, whether and how educators choose to resist book bans and censorship is highly dependent on our contexts, and the question of “what can I do?” is a personal one.
We recognize book banning as a tool of oppression designed to isolate, damage, and erase people’s identities and humanity. Considering censorship is a form of erasure, particularly of historically marginalized identities, one of the ways we resist is by trying to make visible the patterns of resistance actions that people committed to preserving and fostering students’ right to read engage in. While we can’t tell anyone specifically what they should do, we can help to showcase what others have done.
Paulo Freire listed three elements of critical consciousness, including (1) critical reflection, or gaining knowledge about the systems and structures that create and sustain inequity; (2) critical motivation, or developing a sense of agency; and (3) critical action, or committing to taking action against oppressive conditions. We hope that by discovering more about others’ critical actions, we might be inspired to take our own.
Our project began with Jason pinning online articles related to book-banning to a personal Pinterest board in 2021. Alarmed by increasing reports of children’s and young adult books being banned and corresponding calls for censorship, Jason wanted to better understand the issue, and he also felt that curating these articles might be of some use in his teacher education courses to help pre-service teachers navigate their encounters with book-banning. From late 2021 through late 2024, Jason pinned close to 200 articles related to book-banning and censorship, and he started to notice a subset within this collection. Some of these articles detailed acts of resistance by students, teachers, librarians, parents, and other actors against censorship attempts.
Jason moved these articles about resistance attempts onto a second Pinterest board. The final tally for our research project included 68 articles featuring at least 114 individual acts of resistance, since many of the articles described multiple resistance acts. The 68 articles came from 46 unique publications and detailed resistance in 33 different states. Interestingly, 18 articles came from local news outlets, highlighting how resistance often takes place in localized contexts.
Starting from a visual medium with the Pinterest boards, Jason further wondered how we could visually organize the actors and actions in these articles to make them of use to other educators. Jason partnered with Stephanie to imagine a series of graphics, which were then created by Jason’s wife Kelly, a professional graphic designer.
You can read more about our research approach in our article, but this graphic provides an anchoring view of the actors and acts of resistance from the journalism in our project.
As shown in this hub and spoke map, we were able to organize the resistance actions from our data into nine groupings: building coalition, providing access (to banned books), legislating, testimonializing, calling for action, fundraising/donating, raising awareness/disseminating knowledge/sharing resources, demonstrating, and litigating. The icons around the actions indicate the actors, including both individuals and groups, who were engaged in those actions. The actor icons are identified in the key at the bottom.
It’s important to note that the size of the action circles correspond with the number of actors engaged in them rather than the impact of the action. Bigger circles mean more actors engaged in this activity rather than the activity being most impactful. For example, legislating and litigating are, arguably, the most powerful acts against book-banning and censorship, but only certain actors can engage in those (for example, only law-makers can legislate, and only certain kinds of actors have the resources or expertise to engage in lawsuits and litigation).
Some of the largest circles may seem like small actions, such as raising awareness, building coalition, fundraising, or providing access, but even small acts in local contexts can add up. Ruja Benjamin provides a useful metaphor for this with her notion of “viral justice.” Flipping the negative connotation of virus and considering the idea of “going viral,” direct and individual resistance actions can add up, especially when they spread across networks and contexts.
For another way for educators to think about it, Betty Achinstein and Rodney Ogawa define “principled resistance” as “overt or covert acts that reject instructional policies, programs, or other efforts to control teachers’ work that undermine or contradict professional principles.” While the ways we resist may be different and for different reasons, choosing not to act is also an action.
For educators considering how they might resist, here are some resources that might be helpful:
