A lot of the controversies about books being "banned" from certain schools' curricula need to be addressed with some nuance.
First and foremost, I don't care what the book is, if you're going so far as to attempt to get it removed from libraries as some conservative groups were trying to have done to Harry Potter back in the day, I'm against you.
Most of the high profile stories haven't been like that recently. They've been about books that should be required reading. They mostly haven't been about preventing people who want to read a book having access restricted when it comes to this very specific issue.
To really be able to look at this reasonably we do need to understand that distinction between restricting access and actually requiring that a student consume certain content.
Restricting access is usually wrong; but, not always. One of the strangest realities of our time is that it's easier for a ten year-old to access a video of Riley Reid getting gangbanged than it is for him or her to open a social media account. I'm not a parent; but, I would assume that a parent who allows his or her young child full access to pornography is being rather irresponsible. My parents took a bit more time than a lot of my friends before allowing me to watch R-rated movies; but, that's a complete none issue. My development wasn't stunted and my education wasn't hindered because my folks wouldn't let me watch Schindler's List at the age of eight.
When it comes to discussions about what should be required reading, well, yeah, some materials should be required. If parents don't want books on evolution, arithmetic, or history books about the Holocaust or slavery to be assigned because they want to keep their kids ignorant of these things, that's a problem.
Still, when the Maus story first broke, I read one story that claimed that it was being removed from the libraries, too. Since then it's become clearer that it was just removed from the assigned curriculum. The stated reasons for that removal seemed dumb to me -- mouse nudity and some naughty words; but, the argument wasn't made by the parents that they didn't want the Holocaust to be taught. I think we should all be able to respect the rights of parents to make some decisions about the type of content they want their kids exposed to. I think that we should all agree that seventh graders should know about slavery; but, we should also all be able to agree that seventh graders shouldn't be required to see porn and that there's a massive middle ground there wherein reasonable people can draw a line.
Governor Youngkin's opposition to the book Beloved has been clearly lied about by the mainstream media. They claim that his objection, and the objection of parents, because he's a Republican, is out of objection to critical race theory and he's trying to stifle education about slavery. That's not true. I know about slavery and I didn't read the book until recently. The concern was about assigning a book to minors which depicted explicit scenes of rape and bestiality. It's also a novel which means that...well...it's fictional while being inspired by fact. This isn't a story of parents wanting to stop teachers from bringing up the murder of Emmett Till because they want to pretend that the USA has always been perfect.
The irony of all of this is that the most vocal critics and liars about Maus and Beloved are the same people who want trigger warnings in college, which I'm entirely against. This is where the left is showing its full authoritarianism. "Trigger warnings for me but not for thee." If anybody on the left calls for a book to be removed due to objectionable content, as they have with Huck Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird, that's progressive; but, if a person on the right doesn't want his or her twelve year-old to read about pig fucking they're trying to whitewash history.
