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Written as a piece of an application for a program I attended one year ago.

Children have a right to knowledge. Whether it be the tactile knowledge of their environments, the interpersonal knowledge of empathy and conversation, or the academic knowledge of humanist and STEM fields, children’s education has been critical for functional societies as long as they have existed. Yet, my home, Texas, is filled with empty libraries in schools, banned fields of study, words eliminated from vocabularies, and a complete restriction on children’s curiosity and capabilities. There are educational boogiemen, things deemed a danger to children’s minds.

I am particularly disheartened by the reasons the censorship is baring its teeth. Primarily, it is pettiness. It’s a petty fear of the different, of change, and of resistance. Fears of “sexual content,” “language,” and “disturbing themes” are cheap masks to hide queer lives and bodies, lived experiences of racial minorities, and distract from America’s infections. The transparent erasure of America’s authentic history shatters my standards for her, particularly as an educator.

Kids are as smart as you let them be. As early as elementary school, children exert a desire to think critically about their world, and particularly what they learn in school. The incessant “why”-s of young children are not an indication of indignance or foolishness, but the budding seeds of philosophy. A young child full of potential and curiosity, attempting to understand—or challenge—the knowledge being handed over with a series of “why,” is apparently too powerful a tool for contemporary fear mongering. Each level of “why” challenges all that came before it, until eventually it snaps and society regresses to the long loathed excuse of “because.”

“Why is this book not in the library?”
“Because.”
“Why can’t I say ga–”
“Because.”
“Why is my history so scary to you?”
“Because.”

“Because” is the worst of all reasons, as it is barely a reason at all.

This is what frustrates me most. While the natural curiosities and honest lives of children are banished from the environment they are required to be in every day, the reasoning being passed through the hallowed halls of democracy amounts to little more than “because.” The language used to silence children is being used to corrupt “grown-ups” (although the maturity associated with the word grown-up does not appear to surface in the minds of the belligerent censorship advocates, so perhaps I should find another word). Children are left, stranded on an answerless raft, with the “safest,” substanceless books to guide them.

Of course, behind all of the restrictions on children’s learning is the twisted green mouth of silencing educators. Whispers of racial theory, queer love, America’s faults, and America’s truth are high treason now. “We the people” encapsulates fewer than it ever has. The marriage of a Mr. and Mrs. is happy and healthy, children can smile and laugh, ask questions and see photos, but a Mr. and Mr. is a marriage of monsters, hedonism, and vulgarity. “The minds of children cannot comprehend such an image”—oh, they’ve only seen Clifford the Big Red Dog’s girlfriend, and a happy family of Blue’s Clues seasoning shakers.

“How will the white children comprehend slavery? You will teach them to hate their own bodies; their skin will stink of fear; they will feel small!” Of course—this has never happened before with another child’s body, not the ones whose family was enslaved, killed, colonized, segregated, brutalized, hated. Deny! Regress! Avoid!

“America is a promised land, we make a promise to our children to keep them happy!” But I ask, which children are kept happy with secrets. What voices are raised to be strong? Which minds are cultivated best? To me, it seems a select few—the few not deemed dangerous when they turn eighteen. The few who don’t know there are secrets to be kept at all.

Because of course, children are as smart as you let them be. Black and Brown children feel the splitting floorboards hardly covering the bodies. Queer children see the sinking ceiling damp from ignored “dirty blood.” Immigrant children hear the wind whistling through cracks in windows, poised to whisk them away. Trans children feel the attic walls crumbling around their souls, boxed out of sight. Disabled children smell the mildew, abandonment lets it cultivate. Young girls hear doors slam in front of them the moment they are born. Indigenous children feel the ghosts that haunt America’s stolen heart.

You cannot censor children’s lives from them.

America is broken, and as we tend to her broken bones, fresh cuts, and decomposing histories, I implore we not leave children’s minds behind us. The next generation cannot be one raised on hollow works, “safe” ideas of human lives, and sterilized histories. Stunting a generation will not cut the head off the snake, it will multiply the venom. Children have a right to the truth, even if “grown-ups” are afraid of it.

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