According to PEN America, across the 2024-2025 school year, 6,870 instances of book bans were recorded across the United States. Donald Trump instructed the US Department of Education to end their investigations into these bans, and the official Department of Education press release described the bans as “removing age-inappropriate materials”.
Throughout Trump’s campaign, he reiterated his focus on closing the Department of Education to “move education back to the states where it belongs”, and that this would help parents feel “empowered to send their child to public, private, charter, or faith-based school of their choice”. Despite his promises, schools are not flourishing under the Trump administration, according to reports: the bans have allegedly cost districts between $34,000 and $135,000 a year. Jonathan Friedman Syms, managing director for US free expression programs at PEN America, compared current events to “different historical periods”, such as Nazi Germany. A notable event during this period was in Berlin, Germany on May 10th 1933, where an estimated 20,000 titles were burned.
One of the books PEN America, one of America’s largest non-profits dedicated to protecting free expression in literature and beyond, recorded was Stephen Chbosky’s: The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The book was not banned universally in a single state, but rather in many specific libraries and school districts across America. For example, in 2025, the book was removed from the school library in the Wilson County School District, Tennessee. It was banned on the grounds of “being sexually explicit, and having LGBTQIA+ content while mentioning rape, drugs and profanity. 57% of books banned contained sex or sex-related topics and content, and 39% included LGBTQ+ characters or people.
With the rise of book bans gaining traction, could this be a trend we expect to see across Europe? In the future, could the UK be experiencing similar events?
Lola Ward Yr11
Boston High School