The Escambia County School District, located in the Florida panhandle, has removed several dictionaries from its library shelves over concerns that making the dictionaries available to students would violate Florida law.
Wait. The purpose of public schools is to “convey the government’s message”?? (Because it’s not just books, curriculum is banned too.) I thought so-called conservatives were all about less government in your lives, yet you promote nothing but laws which force individuals to give government their decision-making rights. Next up-punishments for not conveying the government’s message as government wants it conveyed.
I guess when school children are no longer being taught, but being indoctrinated by DeSantis and his minions, there is no reason to know how to spell. This school system and this fascist who calls herself a teacher are preparing the next generation to fail in the face of the 21st century. Why? To make good little MAGAs out of their children.
As the number one book banner in the area, she is setting up all students, not just those who have the misfortune of being in one of her classes, for failure.
Perhaps call this indoctrination by omission? Do any of them know that these kids have phones with internet access? All of this is so performative for headlines. Gaslighters gaslighting gaslightees.
WHAT! Banning dictionaries and encyclopedias because they include the words "sex" and "sexual intercourse"! Once the general public learns of his peculiar anti-sexual beliefs, DeSantis should have NO chance of ever being elected to any political office again. You've done yeoman's work on this topic, Judd, and the details are brilliantly recorded and available to the entire reading public.
First ban sex. Then the word, or derivatives like "intercourse" won't be needed, and without what these things refer to, the race will die out and that will end socialist policies. Presto! Logical end to stupid logic from stupid people.
Hopefully someone will ask DeSantis about the dictionaries at one of his town halls. But my bet is he’ll lie and deny any dictionaries have been removed.
This just leaves me speechless. I'm grateful I don't live in Florida and I'm grateful I was raised in a time when people valued knowledge found in books. We moved around a lot while I was growing up. I went to eight schools in 12 years. The only constant I had was reading. I constantly had my nose in a book. Books taught me how to make friends, how to deal with adversity, how to accept others and their differences, how to survive the teen years, and how to get back out there and start over each time I moved. Books add a whole other dimension to life. I can't imagine a childhood bereft of the imagination and knowledge found in books.
An ultra conservative group successfully banned the American Heritage dictionary? That’s ... not even ironic. That’s just blatantly stupid. By this logic, any book containing the letters p, e, n, i, s, v, a, AND g are also “pornography”.
No information, so far, about banning Christian bible, which, of course, co gains all manner of things objectionable these strange people. Why they might even object to the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, those between Jesus and the apostles. Why they might even object, tho' it's not pornography, to the very teachings of Jesus, whose words seem to have fallen on deaf ears.
In Iowa when they instituted banning books, they made it explicitly clear that the new law would exclude all christian texts like the bible - "Iowa: Xtian Sharia, always thinking ahead to End Times"
Somebody in Florida has sought to do that, and as far as I can tell the request is still pending.
And, yes, they do object to the very teachings of Jesus. At least some ministers are reporting that when they preach on Matthew 25:31-46, which is at the heart of the teachings of Jesus, some parishioners are surprised to learn that Jesus said those words and have responded in such ways as, "Well, that doesn't work anymore."
Adam was created from clay. Eve was created from Adam's rib. After that came sex and see how terrible it is now. Ban the words and what they refer to will disappear! Great thinking in the Panhandle.
A variety of people have tried since the law was implemented. A rabbi, social justice organizations, an attorney, atheists, and whoever. Obviously it didn’t take. In Palm Beach “I am not comfortable banning any book for the sake of making a point or sending a message," Schools Superintendent Mike Burke said Wednesday 😂 The entire point of the law is to “send a message”.
🥳 Florida will install an internet Chinese Firewall to keep out any and all un-Republican influences. A Chinese state company will bid for this contract as the Chinese have a lot of experience at keeping the world out of their own country. 🥳🥸
It is difficult to believe, when considering his own educational opportunities, that DeSantis has so thoroughly turned the Florida education system into a disturbingly dystopian exercise resembling really bad and ham-handedly conceived TV programming from the 60's or 70's. It is mind boggling, and like so much of the poisonous Orange Diaper Man Era, will have history books causing head scratching and hee-haw inducing derision long into the future.
Knowledge is power, and Republicans will do anything to obtain it, including brainwashing and dumbing down the hearts and minds of developing brains of our young humans, and poisoning the brains of those who are older.
Vote Blue, volunteer to work in our election system, and SHARE articles like Popular Info with those who need exposure to intelligent thought.
Things are quickly getting ridiculous in Florida. Tongue in cheek, I think they should ban the Bible since there are some really offensive things in there. Sodom and Gomorrah, so often used to bash gays should be banned to, then, right? It becomes amusing that these folks won't even be able to quote the Bible to put forth their own arguments.
Kidding aside, this is indoctrination, not teaching, and we should all rise against this tide of fake prudery.
At least as long as Mike Johnson and his son monitor each other's consumption of pornographic material].
Or as long as Boebert gets groped and gropes her new beau in dark movie houses and vapes...
Or as long as the founder of Moms for Liberty and her husband indulge in threesome while not thinking that they are gay... It is extremely dangerous. The books in Public Schools are paid for with Public money. What right do these politicians have to ban us for reading them after we have paid for them?
What about the argument that the First Amendment allows lying to the Public? Is Lying OK? Is that OK to teach to our kids?
I hope they ensnare themselves completely in this nonsense.
Would love it if anyone has connections and can get this asked about in tonight’s debate. Would probably lead to a dance that would make Gregory Hines look like an amateur.
This piece brought on a flood of memories from the century I spent in Pensacola in 1968. In the words of my late first wife, "If they were to give the world an enema, they'd do it at Pensacola."
My problem with the reported action is that it doesn't go far enough. I believe they need to apply modesty panels to all maps of the United States to cover the highly sexually suggestive shape that is Florida. The Legislature needs to set up a panel to examine world maps to identify and expunge any other such obscenities. Alas, I fear the disappearance of Italy and most of Scandinavia. x /s
History repeats itself. In 1968, it was the adult American Heritage, and Texas wanted them to remove all the adult words. To their shame, American Heritage did that in a “clean green” edition just for Texas.
Unfortunately as time went on it got worse. Because these large states control such a large share of the textbook market, other schools are impacted because it is expensive for publishers to print a different version for different districts. (Not to mention it prevents us from teaching one reliable version of history.)
wow wow wow!!! "Attorney General Ashley Moody argued that the school board could ban books for any reason because the purpose of public school libraries is to "convey the government’s message," and that can be accomplished through "the removal of speech that the government disapproves."
They can't help but expose the ideological program ... good luck FL!
Interestingly, the 1st Amendment free speech provision applies specifically to the government and prohibits the gov’t from limiting speech. They can control classroom content and curriculum but not censor libraries for political agendas per a 1982 SCOTUS ruling. That’s one reason for the ridiculous arguments for removing books. Ridiculous arguments exploiting the ‘loophole.’
—School libraries cannot remove books for political reasons
Although challenges have increased since the 1950s, few end up in court (see Burress 1989; American Library Association, “Challenges”). However, there are legal precedents for resolving these challenges.
In Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico (1982), a plurality of Supreme Court justices affirmed that students have a First Amendment right to receive information and school boards cannot remove books from school libraries for political reasons. The Court did add that school boards could remove books that were “pervasively vulgar.”
Wait. The purpose of public schools is to “convey the government’s message”?? (Because it’s not just books, curriculum is banned too.) I thought so-called conservatives were all about less government in your lives, yet you promote nothing but laws which force individuals to give government their decision-making rights. Next up-punishments for not conveying the government’s message as government wants it conveyed.
And the last line reads "This is a novel argument about the purpose of school libraries."
Hardly novel. Russian students in the 1920s on, German students from circa 1933, all would say it sounds very familiar to them.
This is exactly what I was thinking! The government has no business forcing anyone to convey a message.
O M G. This sounds like something I read in a book about the Soviet Union. Next we’ll be arrested for telling the wrong joke.
I guess when school children are no longer being taught, but being indoctrinated by DeSantis and his minions, there is no reason to know how to spell. This school system and this fascist who calls herself a teacher are preparing the next generation to fail in the face of the 21st century. Why? To make good little MAGAs out of their children.
She is "definately" setting up her students for failure.
As the number one book banner in the area, she is setting up all students, not just those who have the misfortune of being in one of her classes, for failure.
Same
If she used a dictionary, she could learn that the root of "definite" is "finite". Then she would never have trouble spelling that word again.
Perhaps call this indoctrination by omission? Do any of them know that these kids have phones with internet access? All of this is so performative for headlines. Gaslighters gaslighting gaslightees.
They don't understand the intertubes, and they certainly don't think that little Billy Bob and Peggy Sue watch the youTubes, the TikToks or PornHub.
Actually, the RNC agenda is to make KKKoch suckers of its students, K-College.
Helping China take over the world economy.
Read the headline and started laughing. Know it's not funny but so incredibly ridiculous! If these folks think this is a "win" for their children...
WHAT! Banning dictionaries and encyclopedias because they include the words "sex" and "sexual intercourse"! Once the general public learns of his peculiar anti-sexual beliefs, DeSantis should have NO chance of ever being elected to any political office again. You've done yeoman's work on this topic, Judd, and the details are brilliantly recorded and available to the entire reading public.
First ban sex. Then the word, or derivatives like "intercourse" won't be needed, and without what these things refer to, the race will die out and that will end socialist policies. Presto! Logical end to stupid logic from stupid people.
Hopefully someone will ask DeSantis about the dictionaries at one of his town halls. But my bet is he’ll lie and deny any dictionaries have been removed.
This just leaves me speechless. I'm grateful I don't live in Florida and I'm grateful I was raised in a time when people valued knowledge found in books. We moved around a lot while I was growing up. I went to eight schools in 12 years. The only constant I had was reading. I constantly had my nose in a book. Books taught me how to make friends, how to deal with adversity, how to accept others and their differences, how to survive the teen years, and how to get back out there and start over each time I moved. Books add a whole other dimension to life. I can't imagine a childhood bereft of the imagination and knowledge found in books.
An ultra conservative group successfully banned the American Heritage dictionary? That’s ... not even ironic. That’s just blatantly stupid. By this logic, any book containing the letters p, e, n, i, s, v, a, AND g are also “pornography”.
No information, so far, about banning Christian bible, which, of course, co gains all manner of things objectionable these strange people. Why they might even object to the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, those between Jesus and the apostles. Why they might even object, tho' it's not pornography, to the very teachings of Jesus, whose words seem to have fallen on deaf ears.
In Iowa when they instituted banning books, they made it explicitly clear that the new law would exclude all christian texts like the bible - "Iowa: Xtian Sharia, always thinking ahead to End Times"
The FL law has some provision allowing teaching religion in school. I believe that was used to scuttle one ban the Bible request.
Somebody in Florida has sought to do that, and as far as I can tell the request is still pending.
And, yes, they do object to the very teachings of Jesus. At least some ministers are reporting that when they preach on Matthew 25:31-46, which is at the heart of the teachings of Jesus, some parishioners are surprised to learn that Jesus said those words and have responded in such ways as, "Well, that doesn't work anymore."
Adam was created from clay. Eve was created from Adam's rib. After that came sex and see how terrible it is now. Ban the words and what they refer to will disappear! Great thinking in the Panhandle.
Just like banning abortion will end abortions for all time! /s
A variety of people have tried since the law was implemented. A rabbi, social justice organizations, an attorney, atheists, and whoever. Obviously it didn’t take. In Palm Beach “I am not comfortable banning any book for the sake of making a point or sending a message," Schools Superintendent Mike Burke said Wednesday 😂 The entire point of the law is to “send a message”.
https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/education/2023/07/19/palm-beach-county-school-leaders-keep-bible-in-libraries-after-challenge/70410466007/
Thank you!
Next to be banned in FL will be most websites, for example, Wikipedia, because of the information they provide.
🥳 Florida will install an internet Chinese Firewall to keep out any and all un-Republican influences. A Chinese state company will bid for this contract as the Chinese have a lot of experience at keeping the world out of their own country. 🥳🥸
It is difficult to believe, when considering his own educational opportunities, that DeSantis has so thoroughly turned the Florida education system into a disturbingly dystopian exercise resembling really bad and ham-handedly conceived TV programming from the 60's or 70's. It is mind boggling, and like so much of the poisonous Orange Diaper Man Era, will have history books causing head scratching and hee-haw inducing derision long into the future.
Knowledge is power, and Republicans will do anything to obtain it, including brainwashing and dumbing down the hearts and minds of developing brains of our young humans, and poisoning the brains of those who are older.
Vote Blue, volunteer to work in our election system, and SHARE articles like Popular Info with those who need exposure to intelligent thought.
DeSantis briefly taught history after Yale before Harvard.
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/ron-desantis-teaching-career-b2398380.html
Wow. Gotta wonder about Civil War teaching. Think he mentioned the great job training program of slavery?
I can see it now. Some poor mope of a teacher in Escambia County telling the children;
"y'all don't NEED no dic-tionary cause we'll jest TELL y'all what the words mean (with the exception of a few)!"
And I shouldn't need to tell ya to refer to it as that "Banned Woke Definitions Book," m'kay?
Things are quickly getting ridiculous in Florida. Tongue in cheek, I think they should ban the Bible since there are some really offensive things in there. Sodom and Gomorrah, so often used to bash gays should be banned to, then, right? It becomes amusing that these folks won't even be able to quote the Bible to put forth their own arguments.
Kidding aside, this is indoctrination, not teaching, and we should all rise against this tide of fake prudery.
At least as long as Mike Johnson and his son monitor each other's consumption of pornographic material].
Or as long as Boebert gets groped and gropes her new beau in dark movie houses and vapes...
Or as long as the founder of Moms for Liberty and her husband indulge in threesome while not thinking that they are gay... It is extremely dangerous. The books in Public Schools are paid for with Public money. What right do these politicians have to ban us for reading them after we have paid for them?
What about the argument that the First Amendment allows lying to the Public? Is Lying OK? Is that OK to teach to our kids?
I hope they ensnare themselves completely in this nonsense.
Amen.
It’s book banning, plain and simple. Florida at its backwater best.
Oh, your comment makes me itch.
Would love it if anyone has connections and can get this asked about in tonight’s debate. Would probably lead to a dance that would make Gregory Hines look like an amateur.
True. A fair commentator to ask such questions might be as scarce as a dictionary in an Escambia school library.
This piece brought on a flood of memories from the century I spent in Pensacola in 1968. In the words of my late first wife, "If they were to give the world an enema, they'd do it at Pensacola."
My problem with the reported action is that it doesn't go far enough. I believe they need to apply modesty panels to all maps of the United States to cover the highly sexually suggestive shape that is Florida. The Legislature needs to set up a panel to examine world maps to identify and expunge any other such obscenities. Alas, I fear the disappearance of Italy and most of Scandinavia. x /s
Manhattan should be expunged for sure. Along with the Brooklyn scrotum.
History repeats itself. In 1968, it was the adult American Heritage, and Texas wanted them to remove all the adult words. To their shame, American Heritage did that in a “clean green” edition just for Texas.
Unfortunately as time went on it got worse. Because these large states control such a large share of the textbook market, other schools are impacted because it is expensive for publishers to print a different version for different districts. (Not to mention it prevents us from teaching one reliable version of history.)
So true, Ann: the Gablers and their ilk have never completely disappeared.
What on earth qualifies as "adult words"?
Any word that sets Ms. Baggett’s hair on fire.
What we used to call Anglo Saxonisms. Since the Sixties they have become ubiquitous and anodyne.
wow wow wow!!! "Attorney General Ashley Moody argued that the school board could ban books for any reason because the purpose of public school libraries is to "convey the government’s message," and that can be accomplished through "the removal of speech that the government disapproves."
They can't help but expose the ideological program ... good luck FL!
Pravda, brother 🇷🇺⭐️👨🏭
Interestingly, the 1st Amendment free speech provision applies specifically to the government and prohibits the gov’t from limiting speech. They can control classroom content and curriculum but not censor libraries for political agendas per a 1982 SCOTUS ruling. That’s one reason for the ridiculous arguments for removing books. Ridiculous arguments exploiting the ‘loophole.’
—School libraries cannot remove books for political reasons
Although challenges have increased since the 1950s, few end up in court (see Burress 1989; American Library Association, “Challenges”). However, there are legal precedents for resolving these challenges.
In Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico (1982), a plurality of Supreme Court justices affirmed that students have a First Amendment right to receive information and school boards cannot remove books from school libraries for political reasons. The Court did add that school boards could remove books that were “pervasively vulgar.”
https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/libraries-and-intellectual-freedom/#:~:text=Pico%20(1982)%2C%20a%20plurality,that%20were%20“pervasively%20vulgar.”