In 2019, I vividly remember my son Luke’s 3rd grade teacher in our public elementary school in California who had the most wonderful mini library of books in the corner of his classroom. Luke had been struggling with literacy since Kindergarten. Despite that, he loved to spend time crouched on his knees in that nook browsing and learning how to pick from a wide array of books. His teacher always reiterated the importance of letting him pick books out with themes, topics, and characters he was interested in. It got him to be more interested in reading! Additionally, the diversity of the books in the library represented the diversity of the students in his classroom. That’s what it was all about—grade-level books for everyone. No censorship by the government.
Not the case in Florida.
It’s hard to believe that in 2023, schoolchildren and teachers in the state of Florida have to abide by right-wing, politically-motivated laws enacted by Governor Ron DeSantis. It is now required by a “curriculum transparency” law that all classroom and library books be reviewed by online trained and certified “media specialists”. Books that don’t align with his culture-war style politics can now just be removed off the shelves, history textbooks re-written, and teachers can be punished with a third-degree felony if they don’t comply with the law.
Why are they doing it?
This is a political project that sees public education as dangerous because it could actually challenge the traditional hierarchies of race, gender, religion and wealth.
There is a growing assault on public schools and in a time where far-right extremist elected officials are trying to obliterate truth and knowledge from our education system for their own political purposes. It’s not just Florida. Hundreds of bills are being brought forth across other states trying to enforce censorship, book-banning, and purging anything that dares to challenge a white nationalist understanding of our country’s past or present. According to Jennifer Berkshire, education, journalist, teacher, and host of the podcast “Have You Heard”, she says what the far right is really trying to figure out is how to expand the number of youth that will vote for their political and economic platform because they know it is not popular with the majority of the people in our country. The crazy thing is that at the same time, they want to privatize education. Seems somewhat contradictory if you want government control over education curriculum.
BigTentUSA will be focusing on book banning and other tools being used by state governments as a means to realign public school education to fit their ideological program. We promote democratic principles which include free speech.
