"Unintended Consequences": SC Board of Education Discusses Bans on Phones and Books
Yesterday, the South Carolina State Board of Education met for the first time since most of the state’s students returned to classrooms. While the meeting focused heavily on adopting a new policy for districts in connection with a state budget proviso banning cell phones throughout the school day, public comment often found its way back to the topic of book bans.
“The law of unintended consequences”
Board Chair David O'Shields— who is also the current Superintendent of Laurens 56 Schools, and therefore someone who is probably sees the consequences of new state policies in real time— set the tone for many of the comments during his opening remarks. O’Shields said he was “frightened” by the prospect of creating a model policy that would apply to all school districts. He was concerned, he said, about “the law of unintended consequences.”
He also expressed a desire to make a policy that was “more carrot than stick”— one that helped school districts with the overwhelming task of adopting a total cell phone ban by January 2025. O’Shields’ concern seemed genuine, and he seemed particularly concerned about passing a policy that would lay the burden for implementation on the teachers and administrators who actually have to go to work in these theoretically “phone-free” schools. (Presumably, O’Sheilds, who became board chair during last session’s contentious meetings on the state board “instructional materials” regulation, has already seen firsthand the impact of at least one new policy this year.)
You can read more about the specifics of the model policy created yesterday here, via the Daily Gazette.
Weaver on the data
For her part, Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver, who pushed for the abrupt cancellation of state support for AP African American Studies over the summer, as well as the adoption of an state-level book ban process that even conservatives in the legislature said was moving too quickly (before they accidentally let it pass anyway), played the role of a more circumspect leader when discussing the cell phone policy.
“When you see a correlation like this, there’s not excuse for the adults in the room not stepping up and taking action.”
-Superintendent Ellen Weaver
Weaver argued that the idea of a cell phone ban policy was good, citing Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation as well as a story about meeting a father at Lizard’s Thicket (a story she had already tried out on social media the week before), and saying, of data on student anxiety, “When you see a correlation like this, there’s not excuse for the adults in the room not stepping up and taking action.”
Following mental health data makes sense. But what is striking is that such data doesn’t seem to apply, for Weaver, to policies regarding the other hot-button culture war issues she pushed throughout the preceding years, months, and weeks.
Why, for example, doesn’t Weaver believe the “adults in the room” should follow the data when it comes to gender-affirming care (click on the link for lots of data from experts on the value of this kind of care for children)? She has both scoffed at the very idea that transgender people exist— interrupting her own remarks at last summer’s Moms for Liberty “Joyful Warriors” conference by asking, “I just have a question for you. Do you know what a woman is?” And she has explicitly encouraged school districts to violate federal Title IX requirements designed to protect transgender students from discrimination.
Why, for example, has Weaver ignored data on school vouchers, which demonstrates they generally cost public schools money, don’t improve the kind of performance on test scores she was highlighting throughout the meeting, and, in general, create lots of unintended consequences?
“The freedom to teach”
As she continued to discuss the cell phone ban, Weaver seemed to want to echo some of O'Shields’ notes of caution about the implementation of the policy. She said that, beyond better compensation, what teachers wanted most of all was the “freedom to teach”.
This drew an immediate and sustained smattering of laughter and exchanges of disbelieving looks in the audience— which included a large number of current and former teachers, librarians, and parents— presumably because Weaver has been trying since her election to walk a strange tightrope between “supporting teachers” and aligning herself with the increasingly radical “parental rights” movement— which, based on the coverage I’ve seen of the latest Moms for Liberty conference, has become more and more about opposing transgender rights and banning books and less and less about anything even pretending to improve our schools. (The headline story seems to be former president Trump absurdly claiming that schools are actually performing transgender surgeries on students.)
Ultimately, the tension between Weaver’s stated support for teachers and her actions that heap new bureaucracy, restrictions, and unclear rules on those same teachers, seems inevitable for someone who managed to win election to an office that was created by the state constitution to support public schools, but whose entire professional history has been in support of the same agenda and groups that ultimately created Project 2025.
Weaver formerly worked for Palmetto Promise Institute, which is on the Project’s advisory board; her longtime mentor is former Heritage president Jim DeMint. And Weaver, herself, was using Project 2025 talking points before the Mandate for Leadership existed, suggesting in a conversation with the 0verton Report that she was open to refusing federal funding for schools— implicitly so that she could avoid “woke” federal requirements like civil rights protections.
Weaver may really want to support teachers, but her bread and butter has always been policies which undermine them.
Weaver on history education
This kind of selective rhetoric was also evident as Weaver talked about the importance of raising state history scores. She quoted from Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream,” specifically the paragraph where King said,
When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
“I Have a Dream” might be the most often-mischaracterized speech in King’s considerable body of writings, often co-opted by people King would have seen as his opponents in pursuing justice when he was alive. Similarly, Weaver, stopped before the sentences immediately following these, where King also says,
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.
That kind of tension, of course, between the promise of America and the reality of marginalized communities, is the discussion Weaver seems to have wanted to end when she removed the AP designation from AP African American Studies, or when she deputized every parent in the state to challenge books based on broad and unclear criteria.
And, as James Loewen argues extensively in his book Lies My Teacher Told Me, it is likely that the removal of meaningful discussions of history contributes to at least some of the lack of student engagement in the study of history. South Carolina, after all, likely due to a long history of using private schools to enable and encourage white flight from public schools, has created a system in which most of the citizens of the state are white, while most of the students in its public schools are not.
Engaging with that history would probably bring more students into the study of history, and if Weaver were truly concerned with history performance— and would listen to many of us who actually spent time in the classroom— she would be bringing more perspectives into the study of American history, culture, and literature— not fewer.
The problems with book ban policies were reflected in the public testimony.
Ultimately, the public comment portion of the meeting demonstrated two of the major flaws in the regulation.
The first is that book ban policies are often policies of appeasement, catering to a vocal, sometimes violent, and unrepresentative minority of citizens who support government restrictions on books. The flaw here, other than its undemocratic nature, is that you can’t apparently appease ardent book banners. The first three speakers in the meeting were, predictably, still very angry about whatever they think or claim is going on in schools and libraries.
The first of these speakers, a woman who prior to the passage of the new regulation supported it, in part, by arguing that teaching The Odyssey (a book I have since seen on a list of books to be pulled and reviewed for possible removal under the regulation in at least one local district), schools were encouraging students to engage in witchcraft. Her remarks yesterday were even harder to follow, though she memorably shared a story about replying all on a district email sent to a large number of people— in favor of banning books, from what I could gather— and then finding herself signed up for “homosexual dating websites” and “Satanic groups”.
The second speaker said, “Libraries have become dangerous places for children to roam,” and claimed Greenville libraries contained a book entitled How to Rape a Child. Obviously, there does not seem to be any such book, and Greenville libraries certainly do not carry a book with that title.
But that didn’t stop the second speaker from reiterating the story that the libraries were carrying that specific book with that specific title. (She also claimed, without examples or evidence, that Scholastic book fairs were engaging in a conspiracy to give free “woke” books to schools.)
This illustrates another major problem with the regulation: it really only empowers this type of complainant.
In most situations, a parent with a real concern about a real book or topic could easily work with the teacher, librarian, or school officials to make sure their student could not access the book. As librarians have repeatedly testified, the school could make a note in PowerSchool, SC’s online attendance program, that would flag students when they tried to check out a book their parents chose to forbid.
But many of the past and current challenges against books— which could increase dramatically given the state’s loose definition of “age inappropriate” materials— are from people who never actually read the books they’re angry about. As the 600+ books challenged in Dorchester 2 ,or the 97 challenged in Beaufort, or the many challenge forms I received through FOIA requests showing that complainants didn’t bother to read the books, attest— many complaints have nothing to do with reality. What is being challenged is not a specific issue facing a specific parent or child, but an abstract idea that book-banners want to attack.
And if the speakers at the meeting were an indication, getting their way will not lessen the attacks or satisfy them. (It is probably no coincidence that many book-ban groups, like Moms for Liberty, began by protesting COVID-era mask guidelines; when they swiftly got what they wanted, across the country, it seems to have only empowered them to want to ban more stuff.)
Again, most people don’t support these kinds of book bans.
In any case, most speakers yesterday did not support the regulation.
One representative remark from a parent was that the regulation “interferes with my rights as a parent… the people I want selecting books for my child are the teachers and librarians”.
The current regulation, she said, was ripe for “unintended consequences”.
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