Banned Books

Stack of Books

Introduction

Hello, my name is Katarina. I am a Junior Data Analyst given the task of figuring out the consequences or cause of banning books. And what affect it has on children. More specifically with the banning of so many books, does this hinder or enhance children’s learning experience in school? My client represents children’s education. And they want to know the questions found below. With the information I have gathered, I have reason to believe that it doesn’t quite hinder their learning experience. But, more so their independent way of thinking. Moving forward I will go through the steps I took in order to reach a conclusion needed by my client and their stakeholders. Our main focus being 8th grade. I will touch a little on 4th and 12th just to gather a range.

First I took into consideration the questions that were being asked.

Has there been an increase in banned books over the years? Why?
What is to gain from banning books?
Are specific “views” being taken into consideration? (Religious, ideals)
Does banning books change children’s learning experience?

Some problems needing to be identified.

The only accurate dataset I was able to find is located on PEN America’s webpage owned by T. Magnusson. Unfortunately this dataset only represents the school year of 2021-2022, and only represents books that were banned in the United States during that time. With that said a problem of bias seems to be an issue when not including other countries. However, for this case study the stakeholders only requested data from the U.S.
Other datasets representing banned books were from prisons around the U.S. Like I stated before we are looking for banned books for children, and hopefully with the data I found we can answer the questions the stakeholders have.
Another problem I ran into while gathering and cleaning data was the limited recorded data for anything banned book wise through the previous years.
I also noticed that 12th grade the only year that was recorded for Reading test scores was 2013. The website states that all other years no assessment was done. Lets get started.

Metrics for the study

I plan on measuring not only how many books have been banned over the years starting in 2011 to 2022. But I also plan on measuring children’s test scores over the course of that same time. Hopefully we can see if there are some similarities. Or perhaps some differences. What I really want to focus on is the reading portion of test scores, especially if we are concerned with banned books playing a roll.

Initially I started with the dataset from PEN America owened by T. Magnusson, as mentioned above. Below I will place a link to the original dataset.

Banned Books 2021-2022 According to PEN America

The dataset shows the Author, the Title of the book. The type of ban, whether it’s banned from classrooms, libraries, or both. The dataset shows the State, district, date of removal/ challenge, and finally the origin of challenge. The origin lets us see whether it was administrative, or formal. On this same website, you can find 2022-2023 school year.
With the Reading test score dataset. I pulled gathered information from the website The Nation’s Report Card. Below I will place a link. On this website I was able to download Reading Test Scores based on States for the school years 2011-2022. I pulled specifically from Grade 8.
Understanding that only pulling from one grade is considered bias. With that said the other grades represented on said website are placed below to further our investigation. (May have to open link in new browser to work)

Reading Test Scores 2011-2022

The website itself before downloading a dataset, you are able to choose between grades 4,8 and 12. You can also choose Mathematics, Science, Reading, and Writing. You may also choose the year you wish to view. Scrolling down you can see that each State in the United States has a score. Also to be viewed is the difference from the National Public. Or the average in other words.

Credit: Bubert

School House Cartoon

Visualizations showing Similarities and Differences

Below is a link to the Tableau Viz I made in order to assist in this project I was tasked with. Once the webpage is loaded you will be brought to the searched page. From there you will scroll down and click on Number of Books Banned in the U.S 2011-2022. Created by me! (May have to open link in new browser to work)

Tableau Visualizations

Recap

After taking a look at the visualizations I have presented, there is quite a lot to take in.
We would have to really dig into the children’s lives to see if it could be an at home factor. Or perhaps it’s lack of an at home factor and something else?
We know that viewpoints have changed. We know that throughout the years reading levels have decreased; though slow, they have. We also know that the amount of books being banned has increased. I’d like to discuss some possible solutions on this very touchy subject.

Conclusion/ Possible Solutions

One might find two sides to this subject. Some might view banning books as a whole a good thing. Some might not. Then we head into uncharted waters about side scenarios as I have mentioned above.
There are groups that have formed on both sides of the spectrum. It’s almost a half and half. Half are for banning books, and others aren’t. It’s as simple as typing into Google and signing up to a group to get reminders of the newest list of books that have been banned. If it makes you feel good to sign up, go for it. But, it’s not really a solution unless some of these groups are using their numbers to make a change. Some actually are!
Besides groups there have been many conferences across the U.S between school boards and parents. Administrations have been brought into the mix, as well as editors of books. Within these conferences, there have been positive outcomes. However honestly, most are negative. In the end of the school year 2023 over 4,000 books have been banned.
I asked the question who? It seems it ranges from Parents, schools, and administrative persons. As I had mentioned in a previous conversation. With that said should we look at the views of those speaking out? Have we even asked the children their perspective on the matter?
We can place blame anywhere. We can say it’s the fact that disease after disease is the problem. We can say it’s a specific groups fault. Perhaps its the fault of the parent, keeping their children’s minds locked away afraid of society. Surprisingly according to PEN America 70% of parents are opposed to banning books. Blame unfortunately won’t get us anywhere. Although some have taken a stand and made groups to help banning books slow, it seems they are outmatched unfortunately.

Answering the Questions

Has there been an increase in banned books over the years? Why?

Yes, there has been a major increase in banned books over the years. Meaning our views on banned books has changed doesn’t mean we forgot about the previous views. It’s almost as if we added on more views to ban. Which in turn upped the numbers even more.

What is to gain from banning books?

Some pros about banning books are that we would have content control, we would be able to uphold community values, and parents would have a say in what their children read. Some cons would be censorship, which would be against intellectual freedom. Equity and representation, as well as educational impact. All of these factors need to be taken into consideration when making a ban on a book.

Are specific views being taken into consideration?

As we can see from the data above and the visuals on Tableau, we can see that views are quite a big part of the books that have been banned. Ultimately “views” are the reason books are banned. It depends on the type of view, and who finds it worth banning.

Does banning books change children’s learning experience?

Realistically, it is hard to say if banning books is a cause of reading scores soaring low over the years. We have been banning books since the 14th/16th century. Could it have played a role in their scores? Most definitely however, we won’t ultimately know the truth to this question unless we dig deeper into test scores in the future.

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Next Steps

A light at the end of the tunnel, that is figuratively speaking. Unfortunately this battle of banning books, views, and children’s education will always be just that, a battle.

Is there actually a solution to this mess? Unfortunately, I don’t believe there is. There will always be two sides to this. However, it doesn’t mean we can’t improve how we approach.
“We know that banning books limit’s the student’s exposure to different perspectives. It stifles critical thinking, and hinders their understanding of important social skills. Not able to think for themselves,” says Robert Kennedy on Public School Review. I think he has a valid point.
We must also keep in mind that the next generation is looking up to us to teach them. If we hypothetically speaking ban “all” books, then we sway their minds.
Before I mentioned pros and cons to the so-called “gain” of banning books. I think we should have that as a check-point list present in all meetings or conferences concerning book bans. I think we should create a website that allows anyone to fill out a notion to ban a book. With those check-points available, I feel like it would make filtering out actual concerns VS. dislike easier. A filtering system should be put in place, if not immediately then in the next few months. I also think we should place parents of children in charge of what their kids read, as well as school boards. I personally don’t think having anyone else involved in banning books makes sense. Too many hands in the cookie jar if you ask me.

Hopefully you enjoyed my presentation of Banned Books. Honestly there are a ton more views I could take on the matter, but for now I’ll keep it simple. Thank you for reading.

Credit: Prof. Achyuta Samanta

Thank You Readers, Image

Towards the bottom of this Page I will place my works cited, as well as the recorded timeframe of cleaning data that was used above. Thanks again!

Works Cited

Recorded Timeline

PEN America csv. file

Started this project approximately a week and a half ago. I downloaded the csv file from PEN America straight to an Excel spreedsheet.
The dataset wasn’t big enough for me to use SQL.
I formatted the csv. in Excel and trimmed any white space and also checked for duplicates.
Made sure there was a space between the first and last name using the Trim code as well, and dragging it down. (Double clicking was used as well in this step.)
Spelling was the next thing to tackle. The last name Johnson was misspelled two times as Johnshon. This is fixed with filters being added to the author row.
The name Sabnini was also fixed to read Sabnami. Adopton was changed to Adoption.
In cell 2399 the last name Van Whye, the V was not capitalized.
In cell 1770 Column C the cell itself was Red. A simple fill color change was all that was needed.
Changed all the blanks in the csv. file to N/A values. Again a filter was placed in order to fix the issue.

Nation’s report card

This information I was able to download right to Excel as well. I first placed two columns to hide. Columns that were not needed for this case study.
I then checked spelling. Nothing was needing to be fixed with this.
There were a couple null values that needed to be fixed. With that I used a filter to single out the null values and replace them with N/A.
I then trimmed white space and made sure the file was perfect.

Number of Books banned

This data I was able to manually type into Excel. With that said I was able to make sure spelling was correct. No white space was present, and no null values were recorded.

HTML Page

I find R to be more simple than SQL, hence why I went with using an HTML page for this case study. I feel like this page is a great way to get your point across. It’s organized and honestly you can change every aspect to it just like anything else. I used the skills I learned through the Google Certificate for Data Analytics to put together this page. First I started with a new workspace. I got to work creating a new HTML page, and saving appropiately. Once I gathered all my information on the topic I got to work inputting all the information.
Once the datasets, and images had been uploaded. I was able to piece together everything perfectly. I wanted to also show my skills with Tableau, hence why I created all the visualizations there. The last step after inputting all the information and links. I inputted the images, and used src and alt to resize to the desired size!

The stakeholders and client have copies of a more run down timeline. A timeline with times, dates, and a more detailed manifest on how I put this project together.