In the Sept. 3 New York Times I read”This Summer, I Became the Book-BanningMonster of Iowa” by Bridgette Exman. A former high school English teacher, now the assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction for public schools in Mason City, Iowa, her column befuddled me.

Exman has some power as an administrator. She doesn’t like book-banning in classrooms and school libraries. What did she do to fight it?

Sure, she has to adhere to legal constraints. Iowa’s “parental rights bill” became effective on July 1, mandating that school libraries must contain only “age-appropriate books” with no description of “a sex act.”

I’m not going to argue with Iowa’s inappropriate law, which harnesses all students in one barn. (Thankfully, I live in Minnesota, whose legislature would never pass such a stultifying bill.)

What befuddles me is Exman’s response to the law.

Did she testify against it?

I don’t care how she instituted the law, which she tells us in detail.

As a former English teacher who “read, enjoyed, and taught many of these books”that are now banned, did she rebel at all?

“There are no winners in the game of censorship,” she wrote. She’s right about that.

I would have preferred to read about her battle to retain one especially beloved (Beloved?) book she hoped students in mostly lily-white Iowa might have benefitted from reading.

Exman reports, “Our district has not had a formal challenge” to a library book in over two decades, indicating that parents must be okay with what their children are reading.

Could she have spoken up for a book that was on the chopping block? Even a sentence or two would have shown the importance of making an attempt.

I understand that Exman’s job may have been threatened if she rebelled.

Did she make a case for a book she felt was important for high schoolers to read? She might have been heard in her school district.

What if more parents went to testify against the bill in the Iowa State Legislature?

Do teachers and parents have the right to speak up? What did she learn about so-called newly assigned parents rights as law? (Parents have always had the right to speak up about their children’s education.)

The last line of her column especially befuddled me: “That’s why we must protect our public schools from the political agendas that are hobbling them.”

Tell me, Ms. Exman, what did you do? That’s what I want to know.