Why a Home Library is More Important Than Ever

I’ve been an advocate for home libraries for many years. It began with the quiet revision of certain history facts on the internet. Next came censorship on social media and search engines, making it harder to find information about certain topics. And now we find ourselves in a society that allows pornographic material in public school libraries and public libraries, while at the same time banning classic works because of the nationality or skin color of the author.

The Problem

I first began my company, Knowledge Keepers Bookstore, when I ran across Google’s skewed search results for “American inventors” many years ago. It became apparent that simple web searches were no longer an accurate method of education or research. You can read about it in detail here.

Not only do the major search engines choose what appears in search results, YouTube and social media companies decide which topics and people are worthy of an audience.

Of course, the problem isn’t just the internet. Have you been to a museum lately and seen some questionable statements about history? Have you visited the website of a museum? Increasingly, cultural trends are creeping into the informational displays at historic monuments. Visitors are treated to revised versions of the original stories, or at the very least, abridged stories with some very important details removed. (The more you read, the more you notice.)

Not only are the internet and the museums questionable, so are the history lessons taught in schools. Americans have long been aware that the quality of history education in this country has diminished severely. It is no secret. It’s embarrassing how often high school and college graduates are unable to answer very simple questions about world or American history. And if they don’t know anything about history, they won’t recognize when it’s being repeated.

History textbooks can be great, or they can be horrible. Trying to cover world history is no easy task, I’ll admit. To do it well takes some dedication! In America, school history textbooks are widely varied in their approach. Read this quick interview to get just a snippet of what I mean. And as the article states, more and more schools are moving away from textbooks altogether.

Schools, in particular, are concentrating heavily on a new form of history education that focuses on the oppressed members of a society. It comes in many forms and under many labels, but the most common thread in all of them is that the traditional history we’ve supposedly been taught all these centuries is incorrect, racist, and bigoted. You’ll recognize names like critical theory, diversity, equity, inclusion, social and emotional learning, etc. They are all connected, and they do have one goal: the complete upheaval of world history education to favor certain people, certain races, and certain lifestyles. Read my blog post on the 1619 Project here to get a glimpse.

And all this time, through the past couple of decades, despite what is happening on the internet and in the schools, our libraries could be counted on to provide a world of great books. Who would imagined what we are witnessing today?

Libraries in chaos

Now we have constant news stories of pornographic content in public school libraries. It’s quite shocking to see what has been quietly approved for years, but it shouldn’t be. In a godless system, anything goes. What’s more disturbing is the fact that school boards are pushing back, denying the existence of the books in their own libraries, and fighting for some sort of twisted freedom for children. In case you’ve been out of the loop, here are a few recent headlines:

• What in the World is Going on at the Schoolhouse?
• Mom Reads Sexually Explicit School Library Book to Board
• List of Sexually Explicit Books in Texas School Libraries (and all the other states, too)
• Sexually Explicit Books In Virginia Classrooms
• Activist Librarians Win Award for No-Age-Limits ‘Freedom to Read’ Promotion
• Who decides what kind of Kid’s Books are published?
• Librarians Fight Back Against Efforts to Ban Books in Schools
• Read about all of the Texas school library fights here
• Scholastic Books “Woketopus”
• In New York City, administrators at the Life Sciences Secondary School have ordered all textbooks rounded up and removed.
• BUT, To Kill a Mockingbird and Huckleberry Finn are banned

Public libraries are no better:

Just recently, a lesbian Marxist was elected President of the American Library Association. You can read her platform here. Yep, she’s a true Marxist.

And does anyone remember a few years ago when Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name was pulled from a library award because of politically incorrect topics (like Indians) in her books?

Peruse the Advocacy Page of the American Library Association to see their priorities.

Local libraries are rapidly replacing great histories and classic works with modern titles that push a social trends. I know this because I often buy up their discarded titles myself. The photo below is a notable example of what I routinely purchase at library book sales. Public library discards. School library discards.

Do you remember when everyone was freaking out at this photo going around? Hundreds and hundreds of books regarding American history including Native Americans like Sitting Bull and fFamous Sioux Chiefs, foreign nations far and wide, the Holocaust and even Mister Rogers, found in dumpster behind Sunrise Park Middle School in White Bear Lake, MN.

Guess what? My personal library includes stacks and stacks of books discarded from all of the local, rural, Texas schools in my county. I got them for dimes and quarters at library book sales. They were DISCARDED.

They are superior quality books about real history. Classics, out of print histories, poetry, beautiful stories. And they were not deemed necessary at your school anymore. It’s all very Orwellian. They had to be removed to make room for something else. What else?

I think we know.

The Solution

In short: make your own library at home. Curate a collection that is safe for your families. Stock your bookshelves with beautiful books, informative books, educational books, and uplifting books. Rearrange your furniture to squeeze in another bookcase.

There are two reasons for this:

1. To provide your family with a wonderful variety of books to read
2. To preserve the great and important books for posterity

The state of things shows us that we cannot assume that our children and grandchildren will have free access to the truth and the beauty of excellent and worthwhile books. We, right now, need to own and read these books, and then we must pass them down to future generations.

We must be the Knowledge Keepers

The first step toward totalitarianism is to silence those you oppose, for whatever reason. In America, the voices being silenced are those that align with what our Founders stood for: small government, freedom of speech, freedom of religion…freedom in general.

The problem is, too many in America don’t even know what our founders stood for anymore. Students for decades have been given an increasingly biased and revised version of history, fashioning the events of the past into a new story that makes some pretty cool people into villains, and some pretty bad guys into heroes.

But there is a way to know the truth. It’s books. Books written and published by the people who made history. People who lived very ordinary lives, or who did remarkable things, or who suffered unimaginable misery. All of these stories are important, and no one can tell them better than those who lived them.

That’s why I founded Knowledge Keepers Bookstore. If more homes had even one bookshelf filled with original accounts of important, world-changing events, we could stem the tide of societal ignorance.

There are volumes filled with the reasons why things were done…migrations, revolutions, resistance, wars, and everything else. Understanding their reasons, seeing it through the eyes of those who lived it, realizing the high cost paid by so many…if we would own and read these books, I believe we’d have a much different world.

Join Me

Join me in the home library movement. Start with what you have. Keep an eye out for library sales, look through the thrift store bookshelves, and stop at yard sales on the weekend. Hunt down the really good books by going online to Thrift Books, Abe Books, and even Amazon used. Ask your friends and family for recommendations on worthy books.

Let library-building be your new hobby. Do it for your family right now, and for the generations to come.

Want lists? I have them! Visit my Book Lists page here, where I specialize in excellent books for children and homeschooling. The Lists page at my bookstore, Knowledge Keepers, is focused on history books that are as true and accurate as you can get, including my series reprinted old books from 1492 to 1918.