KANSAS CITY, Mo. — I know, I was a weird kid. Born during the time when parents bought sets of World Book or Britannica encyclopedias, I was the girl who would sit down and read the dictionaries that came with the set.

Hey, I was a latchkey kid and had a couple of hours to kill waiting for my working parents to get home.

Today, students aren’t reading as much and don’t seem to have the desire to. Teachers are concerned students can’t handle reading assignments and are not coming to college prepared to do the work.

Recent studies have looked at some unsurprising key reasons: the prevalence of social media; the pandemic and online learning; schools expect less from students; people are reading fewer books than before.

But I propose we look at another reason that hits home in Missouri and Kansas and across the country: persistent censorship and book ban challenges at the elementary and high school levels.

In fact, restoring these banned books and teaching students to embrace challenging and demanding works might be the only way to turn the trend. And I’m not talking about only books with diversity, equity and inclusion or LGBTQIA+ themes. Works considered to be classics — “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Shakespeare and Chaucer — are on these lists, too. So is “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood, who visits Kansas City to a sold-out house on Sept. 24.

How do we expect to raise a generation of citizens who can question ideas if we take away the books that can help develop their young minds? How can we expect young people to have the patience and ability to read ballot initiatives and amendments if we don’t share difficult tomes that deal with issues of injustice and inequality?

Blaming the pandemic is too easy. Experts saw it happening before COVID-19. In “Reading and Engaging Sources: What Students’ Use of Sources Reveals About Advanced Reading Skills,” a 1990s survey of college sophomores compared to sophomores in 2012 saw a radical difference in the “ inability to understand — or engage with — longer and more formal texts, especially in print.”

The trend to restrict access to books is on the rise in our states, according to the American Library Association. Books in public schools and libraries may be challenged, and if successful, banned. A book is banned when it is removed in response to a formal or informal challenge.

In Missouri, only five books were challenged in 2014. In 2023, the number had skyrocketed to 126. In that same time period, only one book was challenged in Kansas in 2014, but that number is now up to 63.

Hundreds of challenges to books about minorities

The reasons for the increase, according to the ALA?

•Pressure groups focused on public libraries in addition to targeting school libraries.

•Groups and individuals demanded the censorship of multiple titles, often dozens or hundreds at a time.

•Titles representing LGBTQIA+ and people of color made up 47% of those targeted in censorship attempts.

•Missouri is one of 17 states where there were attempts to censor more than 100 titles: Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Look at the timing of increased challenges on the ALA’s trend map. Beginning in 2021, the number of challenges to books went up just when students were at home using online learning. In 2022, Education Week reported Missouri’s biggest leap when districts removed — either temporarily or permanently — almost 300 books from school libraries.

The removals came after Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft introduced a rule requiring public libraries to “adopt policies on the age-appropriateness of literature.” The rule called for restricting the use of public funds for materials that “appeal to the prurient interest of any minor.” On the surface, not a bad idea. However, the application went too far.

The books banned? “Graphic novels, such as Batman and X-Men, a copy of Reader’s Digest, works about artists including Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, graphic novel adaptations of classics by William Shakespeare and Mark Twain, the Pulitzer-prize winning graphic novel Maus and other books about the Holocaust, and The Children’s Bible,” Education Week reported.

The rule came at possibly the worst time, in my opinion. It was a time when students needed more, not less. Years later, we are reaping the penalties.

In high school, my advanced literature class had these classics on the syllabus: Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” the epic poem “Beowulf” and works by Shakespeare, among others. Many of those appear on challenged or banned lists.

Today, more than ever, we need young people who can read complex ideas, and are able and willing to engage in civic opportunities. Sure, the problem might be the compelling offerings on social media, but it also might be what they aren’t being offered — and that’s complicated, dense and important fiction and nonfiction.

We must resist future efforts by our local, state and federal governments that want to censor what our kids read.

The next generation needs our help to regain the skills they have lost. Their professors are seeing it. How about the rest of us?

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Yvette Walker is The Kansas City Star’s opinion editor and leads its editorial board.

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