Thomas Morton, an Englishman who traveled to Plymouth Colony in 1622, wasted no time in clashing with his close-knit Pilgrim neighbors, leading a nearby village called Merrymount to fellow English outlaws and Algonquian Indians. Dubbed the “Lord of Misrule” by Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford, Morton and his followers placed stag’s antlers atop an imposing 80-foot pole around which they hosted a dancing and drinking festival that was undoubtedly sinful by Puritan standards. After being exiled from the colonies several times and traveling to England, Morton wrote “The New English Canaan” around 1633 about his travails across the pond, a book that was highly critical of the Pilgrims and is widely regarded as the first banned . book in America. Morton returned to the colonies 10 years later, but his reputation preceded him, and Massachusetts leaders exiled him to what would eventually become Maine because of Morton’s “ridiculous accusations against them,” writes the University of the South history professor. California, Peter Mancall. in “The Trials of Thomas Morton.” While nearly four centuries have passed since Morton’s magnum opus was banned, the urge to censor has not gone away in America and has exploded in K-12 schools throughout the 21st century. The American Library Association reports that nearly 1,600 individual books were challenged or removed from libraries and schools in 2021, the highest number since the ALA began tracking bans three decades ago. “There has been an unprecedented increase in the number of challenges being reported,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, told Fox News Digital. “We get a lot of challenge reports on a daily basis, when we used to get maybe two or three reports a week.” INDIANA ORGANIZATION TRAINS SCHOOL BOARD CANDIDATES TO ‘RESTORE ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE’ Most of the challenges in recent years have come from conservative parents who oppose LGBTQ content and topics that cover racial issues in a way they see as divisive. However, book bans come from across the political spectrum. “To Kill a Mockingbird” – Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1960 novel that has been a staple in high school classrooms for decades – was #7 on the ALA’s list of most banned books in just 2020. The classic American novel was removed from the 9th grade reading list by a Seattle-area school board earlier this year for its use of the N-word and what some community members see as an outdated depiction of racial issues. In other cases, book bans go both ways. A school district in Texas temporarily removed 41 books from library shelves last month, which were challenged by community members. Among the disputed titles were books with LGBTQ themes such as “All Boys Are Not Blue,” but also “The Diary of Anne Frank: The Graphic Adaptation” and even the Bible. “Whether you’re a liberal or a conservative, you have to understand that this ax goes both ways,” Will Creeley, legal director at the Foundation for Civil Rights and Expression, told Fox News Digital. “Regardless of your values, teaching a generation of students to call the proverbial speech police if they come across ideas they don’t agree with — that’s setting ourselves up for trouble down the line.” “Whether you’re a liberal or a conservative, you have to understand that this ax moves both ways. UTAH STATE SCHOOL SCIENCE APPROVED CHANGES GIVING PARENTS MORE VOICE IN THE CLASSROOM Some see this new front in the culture war as a symptom of America’s one-size-fits-all education system, which forces parents to send their children to certain public schools for seemingly arbitrary reasons such as their zip code, as opposed to the educational values ​​that they aspire. Implementing school choice policies, which allow parents to decide how taxpayer funds are spent on their children’s education, will allow families to pick and choose schools that are more aligned with their values, according to Neal McCluskey, Director of the libertarian Cato. Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. “It fundamentally changes what education money does or how it’s distributed. Right now, what happens is people are taxed at the local, state and federal level and that money goes to public schools, so if you want to use that money, You have to use those schools. But that means different people are all pushed into one school, and that’s what leads to conflict,” McCluskey told Fox News Digital. “The choice says: Let’s have the money follow the kids. The effect of that is to give teachers the autonomy to start different schools, to run different schools.” Shelves of library books are reflected in the media center of Newfield Elementary School on August 31, 2020 in Stamford, Connecticut. (John Moore/Getty Images) School choice is an umbrella term that refers to the many vehicles for transferring power from state boards to parents. Vouchers allow parents to put public funding meant for their children’s education into private school tuition. Education savings accounts take things a step further, allowing families to use those funds for anything from tuition to curriculum used at home. “What it does is it ends conflict, at least it ends the need for conflict. Instead of saying you all have to fight to grab the bronze ring, it says go find whatever ring you want, go find a school that fits with your values,” McCluskey said. “Everyone can do this, instead of everyone having to enter an arena to fight for control of a single school.” THE SECRETS OF SAVING MONEY ON BACK TO SCHOOL ITEMS AFTER TODAY’S HIGH INFLATION While battles over book bans have mostly been fought at the local and state level, First Lady Jill Biden highlighted the issue last week. “All the books should be in the library. All the books,” he told NBC News. “This is America. We don’t ban books.” “This is America. We don’t ban books.” Former First Lady Melania Trump had her own brush with book challenges in 2017, when she sent a collection of 10 books by Dr. Seuss in schools across the nation for National Read a Book Day. Liz Phipps Soeiro, a school librarian at Cambridgeport Elementary School in Massachusetts, rejected the books and sent them back to Trump, writing on the Horn Book Blog that her library did not need them and that “the illustrations by Dr. Seuss are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes.” A book by Dr. Seuss appears as children play at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan. (Mario Tama/Getty Images) Battles over book bans exist on a sliding scale, from a librarian rejecting books, to a school district pulling books questioned by parents, to state legislatures enacting policies that ban specific titles outright. CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP Caldwell-Stone, the head of the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, said government-mandated censorship is the most troubling category. “Any person, any parent has the right and the ability to raise concerns about a school assignment or a book,” he said. “This is a First Amendment right to report to a government agency, but we are deeply concerned about efforts by elected officials, governing bodies governed by the First Amendment, to censor material based on their viewpoint or because it deals with a controversial issue with way they may not always agree.” Paul Best is a reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to [email protected] and on Twitter: @KincaidBest.