7 ms·

Meanwhile, Florida is purging libraries of unpopular political opinions. This is not about a principled approach to free speech. It's about protecting the rig

by klyrs 4y ago

Meanwhile, Florida is purging libraries of unpopular political opinions. This is not about a principled approach to free speech. It's about protecting the right to enforce religious-inspired bigotry, tearing down the separation of church and state even as that bigotry becomes "unpopular."

case0x00 4y ago
To what are you referring?
- klyrs 4y ago
  There is a "satire[1]" meme floating with some disinformation about book bans in Florida. However, the state is second, only behind Texas, in actual book bans[2]. Relatedly, the vague "don't say gay" law has a significant impact on LGBTQ teachers right to free expression -- straight teachers are totally free to talk about their spouses, for example, but gay teachers are not. Quite reminiscent of the "don't ask don't tell" policy. [1] https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/a-viral-list-of-banned-books-in-florida-is-satire/ https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/a-viral-list-of-b... [2] https://floridapolitics.com/archives/557111-florida-second-only-to-texas-in-banning-school-books-as-number-of-bans-rises-report-finds/ https://floridapolitics.com/archives/557111-florida-second-o...
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    What's struck me as weird about this is that I don't recall a single teacher ever mentioning their spouse, or their personal weekend plans. The idea that a teacher wants to talk to their students about their personal lives is utterly foreign to me. Maybe it's just a sign of times changing? Edit: this thought came to me in the context of a quote I saw from a teacher upset he couldn't talk about going surfing with his husband. There was a wide enough income gap in our school that teachers talking about vacations was frowned upon, since you never really knew which kids didn't actually ever get to go on vacations, etc.
    - fzeroracer 4y ago
      Did you never have a teacher you were friendly with or served as a mentor even outside of class? I grew up in poverty and if it wasn't for a couple teachers going above and beyond I probably would've never got the help I need to get free community college tuition. With cases like that, personal details end up discussed inadvertently because it's impossible to avoid. So-and-so's wife might be a teacher in the same district, or they might show up at school during late work hours and so forth. Same if they're running a club or some extracurricular activity. I don't think that's especially weird at all.
      - pstuart 4y ago
        Indeed. And there's a difference between on observation that something exists (e.g., their same sex spouse) vs discussing their "romantic relationship". So they want to shut down any and all speech in that regard but force companies to publish speech that may not fall within their terms of service. This is small government?
    - klyrs 4y ago
      I had a teacher who taught a class that regularly featured his vacation photos because he spent his summers traveling. Sounds super corny, but he managed to make it interesting, and the first-person account brought to life the countries, religions and philosophies that we learning about. His wife occasionally showed up in those pictures. My school also had two married teachers who shared a surname. We all knew they were married. There were also a few teachers (band, orchestra, sports coaches) whose spouses would volunteer at events and travel with them. Also quite a few teachers wore religious symbols -- cross on a necklace kind of thing. And quite a few of my teachers had pictures of their families on their desks. They didn't make a big deal about it, but evidence was in plain sight. Now, I was in the high school in the 90s. I'm not sure when you think this changed.
    - tshaddox 4y ago
      > What's struck me as weird about this is that I don't recall a single teacher ever mentioning their spouse, or their personal weekend plans. That strikes me as odd. I recall this happening many times. Heck, there were even several pairs of teachers who met at school and got married. One teacher proposed to another teacher during a town parade where many students and teachers were present. It's not like teachers dwelled on personal details in class. It's just that it would be impossible to miss.
  - anon291 4y ago
    There are books public schools or public libraries may not carry, not bans.. Germany making pro Nazi rhetoric illegal no matter where is a ban (one I can agree with) Florida making sure their Public money is not spent on this is not a ban. You can still own and publish these books in Florida. Or have them in a privately owned library or at a private university or school. Let's stop hyperbolizing. It is actually totally reasonable to censor books in libraries targeted towards children. Not doing so is unreasonable.
    - joshuamorton 4y ago
      If I donate a book that is banned, the school library will not accept it. That is a ban.
      - anon291 4y ago
        It costs money to keep a book. And lending a book is a positive action. If you gave the library your playboy collection should they keep it? Why or why not? Clearly, it is important to have standards for school libraries. There are other books that elementary school libraries should not contain. For example, mein kampf should be maybe available to higher-grade high-schoolers. Certainly not children. My school library growing up would not lend books marked for older grades to younger ones without permission. This is the same thing.
  - andrew_ 4y ago
    Does the bill in fact restrict anyone from saying the word "gay"? If not, continuing to use the misnomer is spreading misinformation.
    - kyrra 4y ago
      Agreed. And if you actually want to read the bill, called "Parental Rights in Education": https://flgov.com/2022/03/28/governor-ron-desantis-signs-historic-bill-to-protect-parental-rights-in-education/ https://flgov.com/2022/03/28/governor-ron-desantis-signs-his... There was so much misframing and misinformation about the bill, continuing to use the Democrat and media made up name and language for the bill shows your slant. Just because many media organizations kept calling it, that doesn't mean anybody here should.
    - sangnoir 4y ago
      > If not, continuing to use the misnomer is spreading misinformation. Just like the reframing of "woke" and "critical race theory" are misinformation - right? Right? I have accepted that reframing language is now a legitimate political tool, and from my PoV, the right has been doing it a lot, such as labelling any milquetoast protest by groups nominally on the left an "insurrection" after 1/6. I believe it's a deliberate attack akin to semantic satiation to render a word meaningless, the conservative operative bluntly admitted (on Twitter!) to successful rebranding "woke". That egg will not be unscrambled.
      - andrew_ 4y ago
        I was raised that two wrongs don't make right. I'll continue to take the high road. I don't need to score points against anyone else.
        sangnoir 4y ago
        > I was raised that two wrongs don't make right. You'll likely make a terrible politician[1] then, because that is a terrible approach in game theory when facing an opponent who defects consistently. I was being descriptive - not prescriptive. This is now our political reality regardless of how we feel about it: politicians hold entire hearings to get 10-second sound-bites, and political operatives focus-group effective language which tends to be pithy and evocative (which gets called "misinformation" on HN when it's the other side doing it). Talking heads get coached on which phrases to use and the meme (in the original sense) gets spread and repeated by viewers/listeners. Asking people to stop using a specific term which was selected for being catchy is a losing battle - Pandora's box was opened on what are effectively PsyOps by political parties. 1. Jimmy Carter was a terrible politician in the same vein - he gave an honest answer when asked by the press if he had lusted after any woman who's not his wife. He is a good man, but that's not good politics.
  - rufus_foreman 4y ago
    >> However, the state is second, only behind Texas, in actual book bans The bans in the article you cited are done at the school district level, not the state level. Holding the executive branch of government of Florida responsible for those decisions would be similar to blaming the Biden administration for the actions of Florida's executive branch. It also appears that the link you cited confuses curriculum selection with book banning. There's a range of what can be called a book ban. For example, when the novel Ulysses was banned, people who sold the book were arrested and imports of the book into the US were seized. That's definitely a book ban. Nothing of the sort is happening in Florida. There are also cases where local school districts remove titles from school libraries, but those books can still be borrowed from public libraries, sold in book stores, or purchased or read online. If that's a book ban, it's not a book ban in the same sense that the ban of Ulysses was a book ban. Then there are decisions by local school districts about what material should be used to teach classes in the schools in that district. For me, exercising control over school curriculum is not a book ban and is in no way similar to seizing copies of books and arresting people for selling those books.
    - joshuamorton 4y ago
      Districts are banning books they believe they need to to comply with state law.
      - rufus_foreman 4y ago
        Which books are banned under state law?
        joshuamorton 4y ago
        Ones which 1. Are complained about by a parent and 2. Are obscene Note that 2 is open to interpretation, so this justification has been used to ban classics like beloved and the kite runner, as school librarians can face criminal penalties if they don't do what (a single) parent asks.
        4y ago
  - TeeMassive 4y ago
    The state can't censor books per the 1A.... unless you're considering restricting some publications unsuitable for children "banning books"... Also the don't say gay bill is fake news because it doesn't say that.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    The so-called "don't say gay" law doesn't actually restrict LGBTQ teachers from talking about their gay partners in informal contexts: it bans them from teaching kids in a formal context about gender and sexuality (of any kind - heterosexual or homosexual) before a certain age and restricting it based on curriculum standards above that age. The idea that the law restricts a male teacher from having a family photo or talking to students about what he did with his husband over vacation is completely false. That would be as illegal as preventing a teacher from praying with students in their off-time (after football games), which recently got re-affirmed by the supreme court. It only binds teachers' speech when they are operating in their official capacity as agents of the state. While you might not agree with this particular restriction, agents of the state generally do not have free speech when they are acting in their official capacity. Teachers, DMV employees, and police officers all have lots of restrictions on their official speech. The ability of the people to restrict the speech of their agents is very important for maintaining a democracy. It keeps religion out of school curricula and it is what makes cops read you your rights when you are arrested.
blast 4y ago
I agree with you about that, but I also (might) agree with them about this. Not that you said otherwise, but... I think we should go back to a transactional mix-and-match style of politics, with different coalitions per issue, instead of the "agree with your friend tribe and disagree with your enemy tribe about everything" style that we seem to be locked into these days. There shouldn't be any shame in being part of the same coalition on one issue with people who are reprehensible on other issues. Agreeing with the Florida government about some point of social media regulation doesn't imply I agree with them about anything else.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  Well put. Welcome to contemporary political discussions. Objectivity is really scarce. The entire discussion goes down the toilet due to some form of 1) whataboutism 2) moral superiority complex 3) strawmanning 4) gas lighting. Add a dozen or so common biases and you've got a toxic brew of non-productivity. Furthermore, reconition of biases from a list like this [1] can be both good or bad. Bad in a way that it can be weaponized to shutdown conversation. Basically, everything you ever say (including this comment) would violate one of these cognitive biases, its a huge list. Feel free to use them as weapons! /s. There are also eggregious misuse of 2) which comes in the form of "For the children" or "Killing babies" or "For the good of the planet", etc. Modernity has brought us closer to subjectivism than ever. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
- munk-a 4y ago
  I am a one-issue voter (whenever it's on the ballot) and my issue is voting reform because, in my view, the two party system America (and almost Canada!) is stuck with is just making inter-party discussions on policies impossible. Once the political class has stratified like it has in America and can box out anyone who doesn't pass a litmus test of dozens of issues (Oh, you're pro-gun rights but also pro-abortion access? Sorry, neither us nor the other guys want you) then the political system will quickly break down. We desperately need elections where more than just the two dominant parties can compete without a spoiler effect. This is happening, just FYI, up in Canada right now - there are four parties worth talking about - Liberals, Conservatives, NDP, Bloc Quebecois - the last two are essentially just regional parties which do occasionally win surprise seats but mostly just exist within a localized area. That is enough, in our parliamentary system to force cooperation at a federal level - but without serious action I can't see any ending in sight other than slowly devolving to American politics.
a-user-you-like 4y ago
- weakfish 4y ago
  What book is encouraging that? Or are you using hyperbole to try and make your point sound more scary?
  - a-user-you-like 4y ago
    Any book that confuses a kid on gender, what moral monster would do that
tomcam 4y ago
> Florida is purging libraries of unpopular political opinions. For example?
- favorited 4y ago
  "Palm Beach County school district tells teachers to review classroom library books for references to racism, sexism and oppression" https://www.wlrn.org/education/2022-06-09/palm-beach-county-teachers-are-being-told-to-review-classroom-library-books-for-references-to-racism-sexism-oppression https://www.wlrn.org/education/2022-06-09/palm-beach-county-...
  - tomcam 4y ago
    So “review” now means “purge“?
    - shadowfacts 4y ago
      Oh, I wonder what could possibly happen based on the results of the initial review. Let's see: > District staff sent out a list of questions teachers have to answer, like — does a book encourage students to believe that people are racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously? [...] If teachers answer “yes” or “unsure” to any of the questions in the district’s guidance, the book is to be removed from the classroom for further review. Gee, would ya look at that
      - tomcam 4y ago
        “Further review” means purge? Since when?
  - intimidated 4y ago
    Countless districts have a de-facto ban on fascist books—and all of their books about racial politics likely lean the same ideological direction. I don't see how this is any different.
imgabe 4y ago
Florida is a state. Several counties in Florida are removing books from school libraries. There is no statewide policy in Florida to ban books from libraries in general. Libraries are generally managed at the city / county level.
honkdaddy 4y ago
> Florida is purging libraries of unpopular political opinions I think the fact that you deliberately expressed what's been a complicated, and almost exclusively school-board driven, phenomenon in such a simple way shows you either haven't read much outside the headlines, or are just hoping to pull people to your side while discouraging them to do any actual research. Either way, your comment comes across as just as transparently politically motivated as the actions you're criticizing. If you don't like DeSantis and want him voted out, please just say that, it's not necessary to beat around the bush.
- klyrs 4y ago
  > If you don't like DeSantis and want him voted out, please just say that No, I want him voted out because of specific actions and I also want every politician inclined to take those specific actions voted out. I don't hate him because he's a Republican, I don't hate him because he's a straight white Christian man, I don't hate him because he's from Florida, I don't hate him. I hate the actions that he's performed (funny thing about that MLK quote; some people just cannot tolerate being judged by the contents of their character). To pretend that the people behind these "school-board driven" actions are not motivated by, encouraged by, and supportive of DeSantis is completely ludicrous. Anti-LGBT activists are clamoring to join school boards around the country, looking to effect the same policies.
  - honkdaddy 4y ago
    Thank you. Admitting your perspective on this topic is based in personal politics is ultimately a good thing, and makes for more better reading for other users.

by klyrs 4y ago

case0x00 4y ago

To what are you referring?

klyrs 4y ago
There is a "satire[1]" meme floating with some disinformation about book bans in Florida. However, the state is second, only behind Texas, in actual book bans[2]. Relatedly, the vague "don't say gay" law has a significant impact on LGBTQ teachers right to free expression -- straight teachers are totally free to talk about their spouses, for example, but gay teachers are not. Quite reminiscent of the "don't ask don't tell" policy. [1] https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/a-viral-list-of-banned-books-in-florida-is-satire/ https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/a-viral-list-of-b... [2] https://floridapolitics.com/archives/557111-florida-second-only-to-texas-in-banning-school-books-as-number-of-bans-rises-report-finds/ https://floridapolitics.com/archives/557111-florida-second-o...
- zdragnar 4y ago
  What's struck me as weird about this is that I don't recall a single teacher ever mentioning their spouse, or their personal weekend plans. The idea that a teacher wants to talk to their students about their personal lives is utterly foreign to me. Maybe it's just a sign of times changing? Edit: this thought came to me in the context of a quote I saw from a teacher upset he couldn't talk about going surfing with his husband. There was a wide enough income gap in our school that teachers talking about vacations was frowned upon, since you never really knew which kids didn't actually ever get to go on vacations, etc.
  - fzeroracer 4y ago
    Did you never have a teacher you were friendly with or served as a mentor even outside of class? I grew up in poverty and if it wasn't for a couple teachers going above and beyond I probably would've never got the help I need to get free community college tuition. With cases like that, personal details end up discussed inadvertently because it's impossible to avoid. So-and-so's wife might be a teacher in the same district, or they might show up at school during late work hours and so forth. Same if they're running a club or some extracurricular activity. I don't think that's especially weird at all.
    - pstuart 4y ago
      Indeed. And there's a difference between on observation that something exists (e.g., their same sex spouse) vs discussing their "romantic relationship". So they want to shut down any and all speech in that regard but force companies to publish speech that may not fall within their terms of service. This is small government?
  - klyrs 4y ago
    I had a teacher who taught a class that regularly featured his vacation photos because he spent his summers traveling. Sounds super corny, but he managed to make it interesting, and the first-person account brought to life the countries, religions and philosophies that we learning about. His wife occasionally showed up in those pictures. My school also had two married teachers who shared a surname. We all knew they were married. There were also a few teachers (band, orchestra, sports coaches) whose spouses would volunteer at events and travel with them. Also quite a few teachers wore religious symbols -- cross on a necklace kind of thing. And quite a few of my teachers had pictures of their families on their desks. They didn't make a big deal about it, but evidence was in plain sight. Now, I was in the high school in the 90s. I'm not sure when you think this changed.
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    > What's struck me as weird about this is that I don't recall a single teacher ever mentioning their spouse, or their personal weekend plans. That strikes me as odd. I recall this happening many times. Heck, there were even several pairs of teachers who met at school and got married. One teacher proposed to another teacher during a town parade where many students and teachers were present. It's not like teachers dwelled on personal details in class. It's just that it would be impossible to miss.
- anon291 4y ago
  There are books public schools or public libraries may not carry, not bans.. Germany making pro Nazi rhetoric illegal no matter where is a ban (one I can agree with) Florida making sure their Public money is not spent on this is not a ban. You can still own and publish these books in Florida. Or have them in a privately owned library or at a private university or school. Let's stop hyperbolizing. It is actually totally reasonable to censor books in libraries targeted towards children. Not doing so is unreasonable.
  - joshuamorton 4y ago
    If I donate a book that is banned, the school library will not accept it. That is a ban.
    - anon291 4y ago
      It costs money to keep a book. And lending a book is a positive action. If you gave the library your playboy collection should they keep it? Why or why not? Clearly, it is important to have standards for school libraries. There are other books that elementary school libraries should not contain. For example, mein kampf should be maybe available to higher-grade high-schoolers. Certainly not children. My school library growing up would not lend books marked for older grades to younger ones without permission. This is the same thing.
- andrew_ 4y ago
  Does the bill in fact restrict anyone from saying the word "gay"? If not, continuing to use the misnomer is spreading misinformation.
  - kyrra 4y ago
    Agreed. And if you actually want to read the bill, called "Parental Rights in Education": https://flgov.com/2022/03/28/governor-ron-desantis-signs-historic-bill-to-protect-parental-rights-in-education/ https://flgov.com/2022/03/28/governor-ron-desantis-signs-his... There was so much misframing and misinformation about the bill, continuing to use the Democrat and media made up name and language for the bill shows your slant. Just because many media organizations kept calling it, that doesn't mean anybody here should.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    > If not, continuing to use the misnomer is spreading misinformation. Just like the reframing of "woke" and "critical race theory" are misinformation - right? Right? I have accepted that reframing language is now a legitimate political tool, and from my PoV, the right has been doing it a lot, such as labelling any milquetoast protest by groups nominally on the left an "insurrection" after 1/6. I believe it's a deliberate attack akin to semantic satiation to render a word meaningless, the conservative operative bluntly admitted (on Twitter!) to successful rebranding "woke". That egg will not be unscrambled.
    - andrew_ 4y ago
      I was raised that two wrongs don't make right. I'll continue to take the high road. I don't need to score points against anyone else.
      - sangnoir 4y ago
        > I was raised that two wrongs don't make right. You'll likely make a terrible politician[1] then, because that is a terrible approach in game theory when facing an opponent who defects consistently. I was being descriptive - not prescriptive. This is now our political reality regardless of how we feel about it: politicians hold entire hearings to get 10-second sound-bites, and political operatives focus-group effective language which tends to be pithy and evocative (which gets called "misinformation" on HN when it's the other side doing it). Talking heads get coached on which phrases to use and the meme (in the original sense) gets spread and repeated by viewers/listeners. Asking people to stop using a specific term which was selected for being catchy is a losing battle - Pandora's box was opened on what are effectively PsyOps by political parties. 1. Jimmy Carter was a terrible politician in the same vein - he gave an honest answer when asked by the press if he had lusted after any woman who's not his wife. He is a good man, but that's not good politics.
- rufus_foreman 4y ago
  >> However, the state is second, only behind Texas, in actual book bans The bans in the article you cited are done at the school district level, not the state level. Holding the executive branch of government of Florida responsible for those decisions would be similar to blaming the Biden administration for the actions of Florida's executive branch. It also appears that the link you cited confuses curriculum selection with book banning. There's a range of what can be called a book ban. For example, when the novel Ulysses was banned, people who sold the book were arrested and imports of the book into the US were seized. That's definitely a book ban. Nothing of the sort is happening in Florida. There are also cases where local school districts remove titles from school libraries, but those books can still be borrowed from public libraries, sold in book stores, or purchased or read online. If that's a book ban, it's not a book ban in the same sense that the ban of Ulysses was a book ban. Then there are decisions by local school districts about what material should be used to teach classes in the schools in that district. For me, exercising control over school curriculum is not a book ban and is in no way similar to seizing copies of books and arresting people for selling those books.
  - joshuamorton 4y ago
    Districts are banning books they believe they need to to comply with state law.
    - rufus_foreman 4y ago
      Which books are banned under state law?
      - joshuamorton 4y ago
        Ones which 1. Are complained about by a parent and 2. Are obscene Note that 2 is open to interpretation, so this justification has been used to ban classics like beloved and the kite runner, as school librarians can face criminal penalties if they don't do what (a single) parent asks.
        4y ago
- TeeMassive 4y ago
  The state can't censor books per the 1A.... unless you're considering restricting some publications unsuitable for children "banning books"... Also the don't say gay bill is fake news because it doesn't say that.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  The so-called "don't say gay" law doesn't actually restrict LGBTQ teachers from talking about their gay partners in informal contexts: it bans them from teaching kids in a formal context about gender and sexuality (of any kind - heterosexual or homosexual) before a certain age and restricting it based on curriculum standards above that age. The idea that the law restricts a male teacher from having a family photo or talking to students about what he did with his husband over vacation is completely false. That would be as illegal as preventing a teacher from praying with students in their off-time (after football games), which recently got re-affirmed by the supreme court. It only binds teachers' speech when they are operating in their official capacity as agents of the state. While you might not agree with this particular restriction, agents of the state generally do not have free speech when they are acting in their official capacity. Teachers, DMV employees, and police officers all have lots of restrictions on their official speech. The ability of the people to restrict the speech of their agents is very important for maintaining a democracy. It keeps religion out of school curricula and it is what makes cops read you your rights when you are arrested.

blast 4y ago

I agree with you about that, but I also (might) agree with them about this. Not that you said otherwise, but... I think we should go back to a transactional mix-and-match style of politics, with different coalitions per issue, instead of the "agree with your friend tribe and disagree with your enemy tribe about everything" style that we seem to be locked into these days. There shouldn't be any shame in being part of the same coalition on one issue with people who are reprehensible on other issues. Agreeing with the Florida government about some point of social media regulation doesn't imply I agree with them about anything else.

systemvoltage 4y ago
Well put. Welcome to contemporary political discussions. Objectivity is really scarce. The entire discussion goes down the toilet due to some form of 1) whataboutism 2) moral superiority complex 3) strawmanning 4) gas lighting. Add a dozen or so common biases and you've got a toxic brew of non-productivity. Furthermore, reconition of biases from a list like this [1] can be both good or bad. Bad in a way that it can be weaponized to shutdown conversation. Basically, everything you ever say (including this comment) would violate one of these cognitive biases, its a huge list. Feel free to use them as weapons! /s. There are also eggregious misuse of 2) which comes in the form of "For the children" or "Killing babies" or "For the good of the planet", etc. Modernity has brought us closer to subjectivism than ever. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
munk-a 4y ago
I am a one-issue voter (whenever it's on the ballot) and my issue is voting reform because, in my view, the two party system America (and almost Canada!) is stuck with is just making inter-party discussions on policies impossible. Once the political class has stratified like it has in America and can box out anyone who doesn't pass a litmus test of dozens of issues (Oh, you're pro-gun rights but also pro-abortion access? Sorry, neither us nor the other guys want you) then the political system will quickly break down. We desperately need elections where more than just the two dominant parties can compete without a spoiler effect. This is happening, just FYI, up in Canada right now - there are four parties worth talking about - Liberals, Conservatives, NDP, Bloc Quebecois - the last two are essentially just regional parties which do occasionally win surprise seats but mostly just exist within a localized area. That is enough, in our parliamentary system to force cooperation at a federal level - but without serious action I can't see any ending in sight other than slowly devolving to American politics.

a-user-you-like 4y ago

weakfish 4y ago
What book is encouraging that? Or are you using hyperbole to try and make your point sound more scary?
- a-user-you-like 4y ago
  Any book that confuses a kid on gender, what moral monster would do that

tomcam 4y ago

> Florida is purging libraries of unpopular political opinions. For example?

favorited 4y ago
"Palm Beach County school district tells teachers to review classroom library books for references to racism, sexism and oppression" https://www.wlrn.org/education/2022-06-09/palm-beach-county-teachers-are-being-told-to-review-classroom-library-books-for-references-to-racism-sexism-oppression https://www.wlrn.org/education/2022-06-09/palm-beach-county-...
- tomcam 4y ago
  So “review” now means “purge“?
  - shadowfacts 4y ago
    Oh, I wonder what could possibly happen based on the results of the initial review. Let's see: > District staff sent out a list of questions teachers have to answer, like — does a book encourage students to believe that people are racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously? [...] If teachers answer “yes” or “unsure” to any of the questions in the district’s guidance, the book is to be removed from the classroom for further review. Gee, would ya look at that
    - tomcam 4y ago
      “Further review” means purge? Since when?
- intimidated 4y ago
  Countless districts have a de-facto ban on fascist books—and all of their books about racial politics likely lean the same ideological direction. I don't see how this is any different.

imgabe 4y ago

Florida is a state. Several counties in Florida are removing books from school libraries. There is no statewide policy in Florida to ban books from libraries in general. Libraries are generally managed at the city / county level.

honkdaddy 4y ago

> Florida is purging libraries of unpopular political opinions I think the fact that you deliberately expressed what's been a complicated, and almost exclusively school-board driven, phenomenon in such a simple way shows you either haven't read much outside the headlines, or are just hoping to pull people to your side while discouraging them to do any actual research. Either way, your comment comes across as just as transparently politically motivated as the actions you're criticizing. If you don't like DeSantis and want him voted out, please just say that, it's not necessary to beat around the bush.

klyrs 4y ago
> If you don't like DeSantis and want him voted out, please just say that No, I want him voted out because of specific actions and I also want every politician inclined to take those specific actions voted out. I don't hate him because he's a Republican, I don't hate him because he's a straight white Christian man, I don't hate him because he's from Florida, I don't hate him. I hate the actions that he's performed (funny thing about that MLK quote; some people just cannot tolerate being judged by the contents of their character). To pretend that the people behind these "school-board driven" actions are not motivated by, encouraged by, and supportive of DeSantis is completely ludicrous. Anti-LGBT activists are clamoring to join school boards around the country, looking to effect the same policies.
- honkdaddy 4y ago
  Thank you. Admitting your perspective on this topic is based in personal politics is ultimately a good thing, and makes for more better reading for other users.