The Written Word Is Humanity's Greatest Achievement. Why Are We So Afraid of It?

The Written Word Is Humanity's Greatest Achievement. Why Are We So Afraid of It?

From the clay tablets of ancient Mesopotamia to the libraries of modern Texas, humanity has spent thousands of years preserving knowledge. Now we must ask why we are making it harder for the next generation to encounter it.

By Gabriel F. Gonzales II | My Local Press

OPINION | NOVEMBER 13, 2026

Imagine a world where the dead could no longer speak to the living. Where the wisdom of grandparents disappeared with their final breath. Where scientific discoveries died alongside the people who made them. Where the stories of civilizations vanished because nobody had the means to preserve them.

Imagine never reading the words of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, or Anne Frank. Imagine knowing nothing about the ancient Egyptians, the Roman Empire, or the civilizations that existed thousands of years before our own.

Imagine having to rediscover everything, generation after generation, because humanity had never learned how to preserve its thoughts. That is the world we might inhabit without the written word. Before the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, electricity, and the computer, human beings accomplished something extraordinary.

They found a way to make their ideas outlive them.

They learned to write.

And in my opinion, it remains the greatest achievement in human history. Not because writing is more spectacular than landing on the moon or more technologically sophisticated than modern medicine. But because writing made it possible for knowledge to accumulate across generations.

It allowed human beings to preserve laws, record discoveries, communicate experiences, challenge authority, and pass their understanding of the world to people who had not yet been born. Writing helped make civilization what it is today.

And yet, in the year 2026, in a nation that prides itself on liberty, education, and opportunity, we find ourselves arguing over which books children should be allowed to encounter. Worse, we are doing so at a time when many of those children are already struggling to read. As an educator, that concerns me. As a historian, it troubles me even more.

And as someone who believes that the written word represents humanity's most extraordinary intellectual achievement, I find it heartbreaking.

Five Thousand Years of Human Memory

Around 3200 BCE, the people of ancient Mesopotamia began developing the writing system that would become cuneiform. Some of the earliest surviving tablets recorded grain, commodities, and other administrative information. At first glance, these might seem like ordinary accounting records. But consider their significance.

A person could record information in clay, and another person could examine that record long after the original writer was gone. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, cuneiform developed into a system used for economic, religious, political, literary, and scholarly documents by the middle of the third millennium BCE.

What began as a method of recording transactions became a way to preserve human thought. Writing also developed in other parts of the world, reflecting humanity's remarkable capacity to create enduring systems of communication.

Oral traditions continued—and still continue—to preserve important cultural knowledge. Writing did not make those traditions irrelevant. It provided another powerful means of carrying knowledge beyond individual memory. Think about what that meant for humanity. Laws could survive their authors. Medical observations could be recorded and examined.

Stories could travel beyond the communities where they originated. A scholar could study the discoveries of someone who lived centuries earlier. An entire civilization could leave evidence of its existence for people thousands of years into the future.

Today, historians examine those records to reconstruct the lives of people who could never have imagined the modern world. I find that remarkable. When I study a document written centuries ago, I am not simply reading old words. I am encountering the thoughts of someone whose entire world has disappeared.

That person lived, struggled, believed, questioned, and experienced life in ways both familiar and unfamiliar. And because their words survived, they are not entirely lost to history.

The written word is humanity's memory.

What greater achievement could there be than finding a way for human experience to survive the death of the person who experienced it?

Frederick Douglass Understood What Literacy Meant

Few Americans understood the power of the written word more profoundly than Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery in Maryland, Douglass discovered that literacy could open a world his enslavers did not want him to understand.

The National Park Service documents how learning to read led him to newspapers, political arguments, and books that helped shape his understanding of freedom and slavery. His education became an act of personal liberation. He eventually escaped slavery in 1838 and published his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, in 1845.

That book became one of the most influential firsthand accounts of American slavery. Think about what it accomplished. A man who had been denied his freedom used the written word to expose the injustice of the system that enslaved him. He challenged the claims of slaveholders. He gave readers access to experiences many Americans preferred not to confront.

And he contributed to a national movement demanding that human beings be recognized as free. Without the written word, generations of Americans might never have encountered his testimony in the form he chose to preserve it. His story demonstrates something fundamental about literacy.

Reading is not merely the ability to recognize words. It is the ability to encounter ideas, examine claims, and question the world around us.

That is precisely why literacy has so often been connected to struggles over power. When individuals gain access to knowledge, they become better equipped to question those who claim authority over their lives. When knowledge is restricted, the powerful can find it easier to control what others understand.

History offers countless reasons to take that distinction seriously.

The Historical Danger of Destroying Ideas

On May 10, 1933, pro-Nazi university students organized public book burnings throughout Germany. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum documents book burnings in more than twenty university towns and cities during May of that year. The students targeted works they considered incompatible with Nazi ideology.

Books by Jewish authors, pacifists, and political opponents were among those destroyed. In Berlin alone, approximately 20,000 volumes were burned as a crowd watched. These were not spontaneous acts of literary criticism. They were organized political demonstrations intended to help reshape German intellectual and cultural life.

The students wanted certain ideas removed from public consideration. The Nazi regime supported their actions, although the May 1933 student-led burnings were not organized directly by the government. Now, historical accuracy matters. Modern American school-library restrictions are not equivalent to Nazi persecution, and it would be irresponsible to pretend otherwise.

A parent questioning whether a book is appropriate for a twelve-year-old is not the same as a totalitarian government destroying the work of political opponents. But the historical record does establish a broader principle. The restriction of knowledge is a serious exercise of power, and societies should examine carefully who is exercising that power and why.

The frightening lesson of history is not that every disagreement about a book leads to dictatorship. It is that intellectual freedom should never be treated casually. Once a society becomes comfortable deciding that certain perspectives are too dangerous to examine, it becomes essential to ask where those restrictions will end.

Texas Is at the Center of a National Crisis

This is not simply a philosophical concern. There is measurable evidence of increasing restrictions on school books. On October 5, 2026, PEN America released its report examining book bans during the 2025–26 school year. The organization documented 11,982 instances of school book bans nationwide.

Those instances affected 7,370 distinct titles and the work of more than 4,000 authors, illustrators, and translators. Texas accounted for 8,193 of the documented instances—the highest number reported for any state. These numbers require careful explanation.

PEN America counts instances in which access to books is removed or restricted under its published methodology. The same title may be counted more than once when restrictions occur in different districts. Therefore, 11,982 instances do not mean 11,982 different books were permanently prohibited across the United States.

And PEN America is an organization that actively advocates against censorship. Those qualifications should be acknowledged. But acknowledging the methodology does not make the findings irrelevant. Thousands of documented restrictions are still thousands of restrictions. And Texas is at the center of the debate.

The question is no longer whether students' access to books is changing. It is whether Texans understand what is changing, why it is happening, and what the consequences will be.

Who Is Actually Challenging These Books?

There is another finding that deserves serious attention. In April 2026, the American Library Association released data concerning book challenges during 2025. The organization documented 713 attempts to censor library materials and services, including 487 incidents targeting books.

More importantly, it reported that 92 percent of documented book challenges were initiated by pressure groups, government officials, or other decision-makers. Fewer than 3 percent originated from individual parents. These figures describe the incidents documented by the association; they are not a complete census of every private parental concern across America.

Nevertheless, they challenge the popular assumption that the movement to restrict books is driven almost entirely by individual mothers and fathers independently approaching their neighborhood schools. Organized political pressure is clearly part of the story.

That distinction matters.

A parent asking whether a particular novel is appropriate for their child is one thing. An organized effort to pressure numerous school districts into removing large collections of books is something quite different. One is a family exercising judgment. The other can become a coordinated attempt to shape what entire communities are permitted to read in public schools.

Both deserve examination. But we should not pretend they are identical.

What Texas Senate Bill 13 Actually Does

Texas Senate Bill 13 took effect on September 1, 2025. According to the Texas Education Agency, the law requires school districts to provide parents with access to library catalogs and procedures for restricting their own children's access to designated materials. It also establishes processes for challenging library materials.

Those provisions respond to concerns about transparency, age appropriateness, and parental involvement. Parents are not wrong to care about what their children encounter. But Senate Bill 13 goes further. The law requires school boards to adopt library acquisition policies and approve proposed additions to school library collections.

Under the Texas Education Agency's implementation guidance, proposed library materials must be made publicly available before a board votes to approve or reject them at an eligible open meeting. The law also establishes procedures through which parents, district employees, and district residents can challenge library materials.

And districts must create library advisory councils if a sufficient number of parents petition for one. Think about what that means in practical terms. A librarian's work no longer involves simply identifying appropriate books, evaluating literary or educational value, and helping students find materials.

The acquisition process now includes additional administrative steps, public review, and board-level approval. Supporters argue this creates accountability and transparency. But a reasonable question remains:

At what point does the machinery intended to regulate reading begin interfering with the ability of students to read?

We should not answer that question with assumptions. We should answer it with evidence. And that evidence is beginning to emerge.

Seven Months Without Ordering New Books

On September 4, 2026, The Texas Tribune published reporting that should concern every Texan who values literacy. The newspaper examined the effects of new school-library restrictions and reported that some librarians had become hesitant to recommend or acquire books because of the political and professional consequences they feared.

One example was especially revealing. According to records obtained through a public information request and reviewed by the newspaper, Lubbock ISD placed no new book orders from August 2025 through February 2026. District officials attributed the pause to implementing Senate Bill 13.

Seven months.

Seven months during which a public school district reported placing no new library book orders because it was navigating the requirements of a state law. That does not prove students had no books to read. Existing collections remained relevant, and the reporting does not establish that all reading activities stopped.

But it demonstrates a concrete consequence of implementation. An extended pause in acquiring new books is not merely an abstract debate over ideology. It affects the ability of libraries to refresh their collections, respond to students' interests, and provide newer materials. This is where political arguments become educational realities.

The Legislature can pass a law. A school board can adopt a policy. An advocacy group can circulate a list. But the consequences ultimately reach children who simply want something meaningful to read. And that should matter more than scoring political points.

When a Book Becomes Someone's Lifeline

One of the most revealing examples in The Texas Tribune's reporting involved an Austin English teacher named Frank Strong. Strong described how copies of Erika L. Sánchez's novel I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter gradually disappeared from his classroom library. Students borrowed the book and became so attached to it that some copies were never returned.

Strong described the experience affectionately. The book explores grief, family expectations, identity, and the complicated experiences of a young woman in a Mexican American family. It is also among the titles on a list promoted by critics of school-library collections. There is something profoundly human about this story.

A student encounters a character whose life may resemble experiences they recognize. A book gives that student language for emotions they have struggled to understand. A young reader discovers that somebody else has experienced grief, loneliness, cultural expectations, or family conflict. Sometimes literature offers an escape. Sometimes it offers a mirror.

And sometimes it offers the reassurance that a difficult experience is not uniquely one's own. Not every student will connect with the same book. Not every novel belongs in every grade level. But when a student discovers a book that makes reading meaningful, that experience has educational value.

The teacher's account does not constitute a controlled scientific study of reading achievement. It is a documented example of the human relationship between a student and literature. And it illustrates something that standardized testing can never fully capture.

A child who discovers a love of reading has discovered a doorway that can remain open for the rest of that child's life.

Why would we make that doorway harder to reach?

Even Literature About the Holocaust Is Being Questioned

The 2026 controversy extends beyond recently published novels. In August 2026, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick urged Texas school administrators to remove materials he considered inappropriate, referring to a list compiled by the conservative organization Recover America as guidance for schools reviewing their collections.

Patrick stated that he did not maintain his own list of specific books he wanted removed. The list he referenced was compiled by Recover America, not by his office. That distinction matters when evaluating both his statements and the resulting controversy.

According to The Texas Tribune, Recover America's list included familiar works such as Gary Paulsen's Hatchet, Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Daniel Keyes's Flowers for Algernon, and Elie Wiesel's Night.

Patrick argued that schools should not use public funds to provide materials he considered inappropriate for children. He also maintained that his proposed restrictions did not constitute a ban because the books could remain available elsewhere.

Critics, including librarians and educators interviewed by The Texas Tribune, questioned why acclaimed works of literature and books addressing difficult historical subjects appeared among the titles being targeted.

The appearance of a title on Recover America's list does not mean that Patrick personally selected it or that the book was removed from every school in Texas.

Those distinctions must be maintained.

But consider what some of these books represent. Night is Elie Wiesel's account of his experiences during the Holocaust. It confronts readers with suffering, loss, cruelty, and the moral responsibilities of human beings. Those subjects are difficult.

They are supposed to be difficult.

The Holocaust was not a comfortable event.

Slavery was not comfortable.

Segregation was not comfortable.

War, poverty, abuse, prejudice, and human suffering are not comfortable. But should students encounter those subjects only after the difficult passages have been removed?

Should the historical record be softened because confronting it requires maturity and thoughtful instruction? There is an enormous difference between selecting age-appropriate material and deciding that difficult experiences should disappear from the books students can access. As a historian, I believe the past must be examined honestly.

As an English educator, I believe literature allows students to approach difficult truths through stories, characters, and individual experiences. These are not competing missions. They reinforce one another.

We cannot teach young people to recognize injustice if we are unwilling to let them examine how injustice has affected human lives.

We Have a Reading Problem. Why Make Reading More Difficult?

Here is another troubling contradiction. Texas already faces significant challenges in reading achievement. According to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, the average reading score for Texas eighth-graders was 252, compared with 257 nationally. Only 25 percent of Texas eighth-graders performed at or above NAEP Proficient.

More concerning, 39 percent performed below NAEP Basic. NAEP's achievement categories are not identical to individual grade-level expectations, and the scores do not establish that book restrictions caused poor reading performance. The assessment predates the implementation of Senate Bill 13.

But the figures establish something important about the environment in which these policies are being implemented. Texas already had a substantial literacy problem. Students need stronger reading comprehension. They need opportunities to build vocabulary. They need sustained engagement with texts.

They need to learn how to evaluate arguments and distinguish credible evidence from misinformation. And they need encouragement to become readers. Yet instead of making the development of strong readers our overwhelming priority, we are devoting extraordinary political energy to deciding which books should be restricted.

There is room for responsible discussions about age appropriateness. But we should also ask whether our political attention is proportionate to the problem.

What good is winning a political fight over a library shelf if we are losing the larger battle to help children become capable, independent readers?

The question should concern legislators, parents, school boards, and educators alike.

The Quiet Fear of Librarians

The impact of this debate is not limited to individual titles. It also affects the professionals responsible for maintaining school libraries. In its September reporting, The Texas Tribune interviewed librarians and educators who described the expanding administrative workload and political pressure surrounding book selection.

Shirley Robinson of the Texas Library Association discussed the burden created when districts receive large numbers of challenges. Retired librarian Mary Woodard emphasized the importance of recognizing that not every book is right for every reader.

And librarians described spending increasing amounts of time reviewing lists and compliance requirements instead of connecting students with literature. These concerns deserve attention. Librarians are trained professionals. Their work involves evaluating materials, assisting students, supporting research, and helping young people navigate information.

They are not simply custodians of shelves. They are guides to knowledge. And when those professionals become afraid that recommending the wrong book could jeopardize their careers, the effects may extend beyond any formal removal decision. A librarian may hesitate to suggest a challenging novel. A teacher may avoid introducing a particular author.

A school may delay acquiring new materials. A student may never discover a book that would have inspired a lifelong interest. Those consequences can be difficult to measure. But they should not be ignored simply because they do not appear in a formal list of removed titles.

What Happens to the Child Who Never Finds That Book?

This is the part of the debate that troubles me most. Think about a student who feels invisible. Perhaps the student is grieving. Perhaps life at home is complicated. Perhaps the student struggles academically and believes reading is something other people are good at.

Perhaps the student is trying to understand history, family expectations, or a world that seems increasingly divided. Now imagine that student encountering a book that finally makes something understandable. The characters may be fictional, but their emotions feel real. The setting may be centuries away, but the questions feel familiar.

The reader discovers that pain, uncertainty, courage, and hope are experiences shared across generations. A book cannot solve every problem. It cannot replace a supportive family, professional counseling, or a caring school community. But it can offer perspective. It can introduce possibilities. It can make a reader feel less alone.

And sometimes it can inspire someone to keep learning when other approaches have failed. That is the extraordinary power of literature. Not simply to entertain. Not merely to prepare someone for an examination. But to help human beings understand themselves and one another.

When we discuss removing or restricting a book, we often hear detailed arguments about the people who object to it. We hear much less about the students who might have benefited from reading it. Their interests deserve consideration, too.

There may be a child somewhere who needs the very story that adults are arguing should disappear from the school library.

That possibility deserves more than a passing thought.

Parents Have Rights. But So Do Other Parents.

I want to address an argument that is frequently raised in this debate. Parents have rights. I agree. Parents should know what their children are reading. They should be able to raise concerns about age appropriateness. They should have access to school library catalogs and meaningful opportunities to communicate with educators.

Texas Senate Bill 13 includes provisions allowing parents to identify materials their own children may not check out or access outside the library. That is an important distinction. A parent making a decision for their own child is exercising individual parental authority.

A decision to remove a book from an entire school collection affects every family whose children use that library. Those are not the same thing. One parent may believe a particular novel is inappropriate. Another may believe it provides an important opportunity to discuss grief, historical injustice, or difficult personal experiences.

Both families deserve to be treated respectfully. But neither family's preferences should automatically erase the other's choices. There must be a responsible process for evaluating books, considering students' developmental needs, and protecting individual families' rights.

And that process should recognize the value of educators and librarians who understand literature and student learning.

Parental rights should not become a competition in which the most politically influential family decides what every other family's child may read.

The Written Word Belongs to No Political Party

One of the saddest aspects of modern political debate is the tendency to assign every cultural issue to a political team. A book becomes liberal. A historical interpretation becomes conservative. A classroom discussion becomes evidence of political loyalty. And suddenly, literature is treated as another battlefield. That is intellectually impoverishing.

The written word is not Republican. It is not Democratic. It is not conservative, progressive, Christian, secular, or confined to any particular ideology. It is a means through which people of every belief have expressed themselves.

The same literary tradition contains religious texts, philosophical arguments, revolutionary manifestos, scientific discoveries, poetry, memoirs, and works that challenge nearly every assumption imaginable. Students should be able to study Edmund Burke and Frederick Douglass. They should encounter Shakespeare and Maya Angelou.

They should understand the historical significance of the Bible, the writings of the Enlightenment, and the testimonies of people who experienced oppression. Reading a work does not require agreeing with its author. Studying a belief does not require adopting it. Examining an injustice does not mean approving of it.

These distinctions are essential to intellectual maturity. A serious education prepares students to encounter different perspectives and decide, through evidence and reasoning, what they believe. We should be teaching students to respond to ideas with arguments. Not merely with demands that those ideas be removed from sight.

What Will Be Left for Future Historians?

As a historian, I often consider the documents that have survived from earlier generations. Letters. Diaries. Newspapers. Court records. Political speeches. Books. These materials allow us to study the past through the words of people who actually lived it. Some documents reinforce the beliefs of their time. Others challenge them.

Some record extraordinary human achievements. Others reveal cruelty, prejudice, or injustice. The historian's responsibility is not to erase the uncomfortable evidence. It is to examine that evidence critically and explain what it reveals. The same principle informs my understanding of literature.

A society that preserves only the stories it finds agreeable creates an incomplete account of itself. And an education system that avoids every difficult perspective risks producing students who know how to repeat approved conclusions but have little experience evaluating competing arguments. I do not want that future for my students.

I want them to be capable of reading a difficult passage and asking what it means. I want them to challenge an author's argument when the evidence does not support it. I want them to understand that history is complicated and that human beings are capable of both extraordinary achievement and terrible wrongdoing.

Most of all, I want them to recognize that knowledge is not something to fear. It is something to pursue. Because the next great historian, scientist, novelist, attorney, physician, or teacher may be a child who has not yet discovered a love of reading. And we have no way of knowing which book might open that door.

The Responsibility We Owe the Next Generation

I am not arguing that every book belongs in every school. Reasonable standards of age appropriateness matter. Professional selection matters. Parental involvement matters. And schools have legitimate responsibilities to protect students. But those responsibilities must coexist with an equally important commitment to intellectual freedom and educational opportunity.

A sound policy should ask more than whether a passage is controversial. It should examine the complete work, its literary and educational value, its intended audience, and the available options for families who object. It should also examine what students lose when access is restricted. And lawmakers should be willing to measure the consequences of their own decisions.

How many books have districts stopped purchasing? How much staff time is consumed by challenges? How many titles have been removed, restricted, or restored?

Are students receiving access to current and diverse collections? Are districts communicating clearly with parents?

And what are these policies accomplishing for literacy? Those questions should have documented answers. Because good intentions are not the same as good results. A policy intended to protect children must also be evaluated for how it affects their education.

Humanity's Greatest Achievement Is Worth Defending

More than five thousand years ago, someone pressed marks into clay and helped begin a transformation in human communication. That person could not have imagined the modern world. They could not have imagined printed books, public libraries, computers, or the millions of people who would eventually learn to read.

Yet those early developments helped lay the foundation for a civilization capable of preserving knowledge across centuries. Today, I can open a book and encounter a person who lived thousands of years before me. I can study the words of Frederick Douglass and understand more deeply what freedom meant to someone denied it.

I can read about the Holocaust through the testimony of those who survived it. I can encounter poetry that gives language to grief, philosophy that challenges my assumptions, and history that forces me to reconsider what I thought I knew. And I can share those discoveries with another generation. That is what makes the written word extraordinary.

Not the paper.

Not the ink.

Not the binding.

But the fact that one human being can reach another across time, distance, language, and experience. I think about what that means for the children sitting in classrooms today. Some will become scholars. Others will become electricians, nurses, engineers, soldiers, business owners, public servants, and parents.

Many will never read every classic or study ancient history. But all deserve the opportunity to become literate, thoughtful adults capable of understanding the world around them. And all deserve an education that encourages curiosity instead of teaching them to fear difficult questions.

A society that values children should want them to read more, understand more, and discover more. It should want them to encounter ideas that expand their imagination. It should want them to recognize injustice, appreciate beauty, examine evidence, and understand perspectives beyond their own.

Most of all, it should want them to inherit the accumulated knowledge of the generations that came before them. I believe the written word is humanity's greatest achievement because it allows us to leave something behind that can be greater than ourselves.

A discovery.

A warning.

A story.

A testimony.

A lesson.

A hope for someone we will never meet.

And when I consider the political battles taking place over school libraries, I cannot help returning to one question.

After thousands of years spent learning how to preserve human knowledge, why are we making it harder for our children to encounter it?

We should not be afraid of books. We should be afraid of a future in which children stop reading them. We should not fear students asking difficult questions. We should fear a society that no longer knows how to answer those questions with evidence. And we should not measure the strength of public education by how many titles adults successfully remove from a shelf.

We should measure it by how many young people learn to read, think, question, and understand.

The written word gave humanity a memory.

Literature gave that memory a voice.

Education gives the next generation the ability to hear it.

And if we fail to protect that inheritance, we risk giving our children a world filled with information but impoverished in understanding. The greatest achievement of human civilization deserves something better than becoming another political weapon. It deserves to be preserved, studied, questioned, shared, and passed on. Not because every book is perfect.

But because the freedom to read, think, and learn is one of the most important gifts one generation can give the next. And that is a gift we have no right to treat carelessly.

One Lone Star. Millions of Stories. A Place for Everyone.

Gabriel F. Gonzales II

Historian. Educator. Inspiring the Next Generation Through History and Education.