In education, ‘trust the experts’ is a scam to silence even expert dissent

What would you do if your child came home from school with library books clearly inappropriate for their age? Like any responsible parent, you would reach out to the school.

But what if, instead of an engaged, empathetic response, you were met with derision?

For years, “trust the experts” has been the parroted answer to any parent or teacher who objected to a library book. Librarians — backed by the American Library Association, which shapes library policy nationwide — insist that every book children can access at school has already been vetted through professional reviews. If you dare challenge that judgment, you are no longer considered a parent raising a concern, but rather demonized as a “book-banner.”

We are both experienced educators who found ourselves in exactly this circumstance: We voiced concerns and were vilified for it. Two recent developments, however, show that the American Library Association’s narrative is false.

First of all, the librarians themselves and their own organization have now admitted that the reviews of books don’t work. One of the association’s own divisions published a 2026 study finding that librarians increasingly distrust the very reviews they have long pointed to as their defense. “It’s almost like we can’t go on our reviews,” one librarian admitted.

Those reviews, from outlets like Kirkus or School Library Journal, focus on themes and genre and are shaped as much by the reviewer’s bias as by the book’s actual content. The American Library Association explicitly rejects content rating systems that document child-safety concerns such as sexual content, violence, and language — actual useful ratings, like the ones applied to........

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