In April of last year, Governor Youngkin signed a bill into law requiring teachers to notify parents of any “sexually explicit” materials used in the classroom and to provide an alternative if a parent requests to opt out. The bill went into effect this January, as the Department of Education was charged with developing a model to notify parents.

Though it isn’t supposed be discriminatory, teachers have expressed their discomfort with the works regulated by the policy. Many times, the books or films deemed explicit are those representing marginalized groups.

We sat down with two of our very own English teachers, Susan Brunner and Aaron Ford, to discuss the implications of this bill.

Brunner mentioned how she felt that the types of works being flagged represented a bias against “minority groups and especially the marginalized groups in each of those, like the LGBTQ+ community,” as well as “females and what [they] go through.” She noted specific works like The Color Purple by Alice Walker, which follows a young African Amercian girl’s experience in rural Georgia.

Ford shared a similar sentiment. As our Film Analysis teacher, he also had to deal with strict regulations on the types of films he can show in class.

While the current bill restricts sexually explicit material, which is certainly reasonable to restrict in a school environment, Ford discusses the gray area of what has been deemed inappropriate for school, particularly with how he has dealt with restrictions in the past that censored minority voices. “We tend to look at marginalized voices as though they are horrible, because they’re talking about an experience that is horrible. And so we kind of call that genre horror.”

He expressed that because we have decided that “horror is not for children,” minority voices are often silenced in our educational systems, as is further evidenced by this policy. Ford mentioned specifically the issues he has had with showing works by Spike Lee, a black director. Since Lee creates films in the horror genre, meaning they have R-ratings, Ford has been unable to show them in class. Ford stressed the importance of exploring “the legacy of black filmmaking”, but because of regulations like these, he has been unable to do so effectively.

Moreover, the new restrictions are not necessarily more effective in keeping parents informed than methods previously used.

Brunner pulled out an example of a notice paper she gave out to her students for the book, A Color Purple, which expressed in greater detail the book’s more serious topics, compared to the basic one-size-fits-all permission form from the school board. She values the importance of giving parents enough information to “make an informed decision” regarding their children’s education.

Furthermore, Ford mentioned how “most teachers already had that [instinct to know] what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate to bring into a classroom.” As such, he believes that “what’s important to the teachers and students needs to supersede somebody’s who’s not there,” expressing that “other [stakeholders] need to operate in a way that serves [the] core function” of facilitating teaching and learning.

Brunner brought up the challenge these restrictions pose to newer, inexperienced teachers. “We do have some teachers on the 11th grade team especially that were afraid to teach [controversial topics]”. She likens it to Critical Race Theory for social studies teachers, who may be afraid of backlash “if they talk about any issue that has to do with the black community”.

Regarding the overall implications of the bill, Brunner emphasized how important it was for school to be a safe space for the free discussion of ideas and problems. “I mean, that’s part of growing up. You have to learn how to think critically and decide what issues are important…and a lot of these books have issues that are like that.”

To this end, it is important that we as students contribute to an open dialogue at school about controversial topics. By welcoming diverse perspectives, whether that be in discussions with peers or the books we study in class, we can encourage the acceptance of underrepresented voices into the canon.

Ford encapsulated this sentiment perfectly in his hope and trust for the future. “I loved that they brought in a student ambassador a few years ago, and I think that’s a step in the right direction.”