Jumping on the banned wagon — Anne Rooney

 

It's hard to know how to start this. I've had books banned in the USA in the past because people with fragile sensibilities don't want their children exposed to facts that conflict with religious beliefs. This book on democracy, written in response to the events of Jan 2020, might be next to be banned in certain (additional) territories. I'm writing a book at the moment that I know can't be sold into China, and indeed can't even be printed in China. Markets are shrinking. But it's not the financial aspect that's the worry.

I'm not expecting the coming new regime in the USA to welcome my books, which are mostly about science. My books don't endorse or even respect the views of many of those who will be making policy, or pushing local-level reshaping of communities and education. The coming years might be a hard time for publishing about science, and a harder time for children who want to read about science. And the decades after will be a hard time for American science and technology if that's the case. I want to talk about two concerns here. They are not party political. You will find nothing intended to offend you if you are right-leaning, but I hope you will consider them because I'm concerned about children, knowledge, the fate of humanity, and truth.

One is fragility and openness. Suppose you sincerely believe that evolution is a lie, climate change a hoax, the Moon landings were faked, Covid was deliberattely engineered or non-existent and/or that vaccines do untold harm, and you want your children to believe that too. My books will not be on your preferred reading list. Not for yourself, not for your children, and not for your school. But they should be, in particular for your school. Books should be available for children to choose, and books you or they disagree with are as important, or more important, than books that reinforce your views.

A child might choose a book about evolution, or they might choose a book about Noah. I wouldn't ban books about Noah as I don't find it threatening, and knowledge of many types is useful. I consider the story of the Flood a myth. As the story appears in different forms around the world, it quite possibly has some roots in a long-ago tsunami or similar event. Aside from potential geological connections, it is important to know this story because the Abrahamic religions permeate Western and Middle Eastern culture. We can't understand the art that surrounds us if we don't know the stories our culture is rooted in. We can't understand the people who surround us if we make no attempt to know the culture they come from and what they might believe.

If you want someone to believe something, you need to be able to defend your position. You need to be able to say why you are right and other people are wrong. If you shield children from counter-arguments, you don't give them the resources they need to defend their view, either to themselves or to others. Why would you ban books? Don't you trust children to weigh up arguments and make a choice? Don't you think your view *can* be rigorously defended? (in which case you might like to reconsider it.) Why do you think your views and your children are so fragile? This is not an assualt; it's an invitation to learn how to strengthen your position if it is genuinely viable.

If our ideas are good and strong and well-founded, they can be tested against dissent and will stand up to the challenge. I can defend the science of climate change and of evolution precisely because I can counter the claims against it. Listening to arguments and considering if a position remains valid makes that position stronger, not weaker. It's not, ultimately, about teaching your child that either Noah or evolution is true. It's about teaching your child to work with evidence, to learn how to think, to come to the right conclusion, whatever that is. 

When I was a student, I went with some friends to a rally by the evangelist Billy Graham. None of us was Christian, or certainly not of the BG persuasion. We went because we wanted to hear how he made his case, to see whether it would persuade us. We were open to challenge. It also showed us in action a methodology of persuasion that was new to us, and therefore interesting in itself. We were not persuaded; it was impressive in its way.

 About five years ago, I was at a college dinner (this is in Cambridge, UK). Some students cornered the head of the college and protested that he was allowing a visitor they disagreed with to speak to students. I no longer remember what the topic or objection was, only that it was a speaker whose views I personally disagreed with, but it was an issue of politics and not about personal offence. It would now be couched in terms of de-platforming. The head of the college told them the visitor held legal views that he was free to express and students were free to listen or not listen as they chose. Were they so insecure or so incapable of rational thought that they couldn't countenance challenge? He made it clear that their perception of their own weakness, or the weakness of their view, was not a reason for expecting people with different convictions or opinons to be silenced. I agreed with him. We need to hear dissenting views and respond to the challenge, even if only internally. Children need to learn to do this. It is a crucial life skill. It is ironic that it is the right wing that loudly proclaims the value of freedom of expression, yet is most eager to ban books that offer different views of the world.

The second point I want to make is about the future of the USA and its world-leading science. There is massive cognitive dissonance at the heart of a regime that denies and limits scientific education and information on the one hand, yet hopes to succeed in a world that is increasingly dependent on science and technology. And in an administration that attempts a forced marriage between science-deniers and technocrats in office. I have no respect for Elon Musk, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't think Earth was created in six days or the Moon landings were faked. 

If you want to support the economics of fossil fuel use, of course you deny climate change. But where will future American scienists come from if they aren't taught science or if an inquisitive and exploratory pattern of mind isn't encouraged in young people? Decent scientists aren't going to move into the USA under the conditions that are coming. I know several scientists who have moved out of the USA in recent years because, whatever the funding opportunities for research (about to go down), they don't want to bring their children up there. They don't want to have only six weeks off work when their babies are born. They don't want to send them to schools where they have to consider the possibility of a shooter. They are human beings before they are scientists. So if America wants a future generation of Elon Musks and their ilk, they will have to be home-grown, and that means teaching some science.

Who says science is scary?

A few years ago, the Chinese Communist Party realised that Chinese scientists were not innovative. They were good at copying and even perfecting things thought of in the West, but they were not good at coming up with new ideas. One reason, it appeared, was because Western scientists had grown up reading science fiction. Science fiction plays with possibilities, it encourages dreaming in scientific and technological landscapes. A very large number of the technologies we enjoy now had their genesis in fiction and were later realised by readers who had grown up wanting the stuff in the stories they had read and the movies and TV shows they had seen. So it's not even just books about actual science that children need access to. They need books that spark their imagination and desires, books (or movies, or computer games) that raise possibilities.

Finally: when Copernicus published his model of Earth going around the Sun in 1543, he left it until he was dying because he anticipated trouble from the Church. (Plus ça change...) But the Church did not ban the heliocentric model of the solar system then. They allowed and even used it because it was a helpful mathematical model that gave results no worse than those they already had. It might not be true (they still thought the Sun went around Earth), but it was mathematically valid. Could America at least do this with science? Use the models that show us how to limit climate damage, improve food supplies, combat diseases, even if you see them as imperfect representations of how the world actually is? (Science is likely always going to be such an imperfect representation — all we disagree about is precisely how imperfect.) Then American children can operate within a framework that the rest of the world recognises and uses, they can grow up to continue to make scientific discoveries that will improve lives, the USA will not slump to the bottom of the world league in a mire of science-denial and fear. Banning useful things because of ideology never leads to a good place. Seeking to understand them gives you power, even if you take the view of "knowing your enemy". Science doesn't care if you believe in it. It will get you anyway, so you might as well see what's coming. You might as well be equipped to partake in the future.

Anne Rooney

Out now: Weird and Wonderful Animal Facts, Arcturus, September 2024; illustrated by Ro Ledesma