Martine Fiske

SB 33- relative to the regulation of public-school materials, Section II, requires “each local school board shall adopt a policy describing the materials that are authorized to be used by, circulated to, and/or accessed by, students in the local school district.” This is unmanageable. Will the school board read and list every book in the library and school classrooms? Will they need to review and list every book, poster, video, photograph, etc. that every teacher will use on every topic, for every class, for the entire year? As a former social studies teacher, I taught seven different classes per day. Over the course of one week these classes covered dozens of topics with a variety of supporting materials. Multiplied over the course of the year, I used hundreds of materials. Now consider the number of teachers at each school. There will never be enough time to put this list together, let alone keep it up to date. Teachers would be locked into a limited number of materials which complete review and then be blocked from following students’ interests to explore related topics or new topics as they develop. Forcing teachers to deliver stale, dated and bland lessons will disengage students, and have lasting harm on New Hampshire’s civic and economic future. Further, there is no agreed upon standard for what is considered harmful, age-inappropriate or offensive. The words have extremely different meanings to individuals and even to the same individual when considering the context, an individual child, the topic, etc. One group believed a picture book illustration of two males walking beside each other as one pushes a baby carriage was a depiction of same-sax couple and put the book on a list of “extremely age-inappropriate and pornographic books … in the K-12 classroom.” (Florida Citizens Alliance, “2021 Porn Report” ‘Everywhere Babies,’ a picture book celebrating infants, on list of banning targets in Florida - The Washington Post ) Their rush to judgement did not consider whether this picture could depict an uncle, cousin or friend. This example shows how difficult finding agreement is likely to be.