When PEN America released its latest national report on book banning, the state with the worst record was Florida. If you hear any bragging about test scores in Florida, think twice. Educated people typically don’t fear books; uneducated people do.
Chris Tomlinson, columnist for The Houston Chronicle, reports that book banning is getting more absurd in Texas. Why do school board members think they can censor ideas and images that are widely available on the Internet? At the same time, the state has barred public universities from administering programs that promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
Tomlinson writes:
The Fort Bend Independent School District superintendent would have to ban department store catalogs and National Geographic magazines if the school board goes through with its latest book ban measure.
My colleague Elizabeth Sander reports that school trustees debated giving the superintendent sole authority over library books and textbooks, mandating that none “stimulate sexual desire” among students.
Have none of them encountered an adolescent? The only books left would center on mathematics; even then, geometry would be iffy.
Fort Bend ISD is not the only public school system in which activists have seized control. Parents are challenging books at Lake Travis ISD, and a citizen panel will review books at Montgomery County public libraries, not librarians.
Nationwide, PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for free expression, this week reported more than 4,000 instances of book banning during the first half of the current school year, more than in the entire previous 2022-23 school year.
Conservative book banners continue to shock and dismay with their absurdity, anti-intellectualism and renunciation of reality. Before there was online porn and young adult books about LGBTQ love, there was Sears Roebuck selling lingerie and National Geographic photographing semi-nude indigenous women.
Book bans don’t stop at nudity and sexuality; extremists are also targeting ideas they don’t like. For example, teachers may not discuss anything that might make a child uncomfortable lest they face a penalty under state law.
If my fourth grade teacher were subject to the same law, she could have lost her job for telling me enslavers brutalized the African Americans they held in bondage, contradicting my grandfather, who taught me our ancestors were “good slaveholders.”
Lately, it seems any state employee who acknowledges racism in our nation’s history or our present will lose their jobs. The University of Texas is cleaning house, firing dozens of educators dedicated to helping people from disadvantaged communities succeed in higher education.
UT-Austin President Jay Hartzell says the ideological purge is necessary to protect the long-term outlook of the institution. His shameful cowardice in the face of fascist bullies will forever mark him as a collaborator, not a hero.
Free speech and decades of progress toward a more honest assessment of who we are and where we come from are under attack. The wannabe oppressors are organized and winning, and yet, too many of us still don’t take the threat to our liberty seriously.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It might be time to change the foil in your hat if you think banning books could somehow limit what is read. There is no shortage of studies spotlighting the hours of screen time spent per day, by children or adults. I’ve yet to see a braille computer, smartphone, or tablet. Read the words of all the “wise” ever known to mankind. Review the plays and poetry of all time. Quote the “masters”. It remains, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for the “good” to do nothing that stops it.
“Even then, geometry would be iffy”
Geometry: a Love Story | Bob Shepherd
Posted on February 5, 2021
“Imagination can . . . arrange for parallel lines to meet in secret.” –Shelley Jackson, on Italo Calvino
Once upon a time, there were two parallel lines, and they couldn’t stop looking at one another.
My lord. Such beauty, each thought. Who would have believed, in all the world, that such perfection existed? If only. . . .
And so they went on, each longing.
So close, yet so far away.
Perhaps, one said, there is a certain purity in this. Holding the line.
F that, said the other.
Yeah, came the reply. F that.
I know, for I ran across them both. I found one shy and acute, the other bold and obtuse. But they were just right for each other.
It’s good, at least, to have you by my side, said one.
Yes, said the other, and sighed. Perhaps we could meet in secret?
No, damn him.
Damn who?
Euclid, the other expostulated.
You contain infinities within infinities, said the first.
You, too, said the other. You are my horizon. Aside from you lies only the abyss.
That is very beautiful. And true, said the first.
Yes, said the other. It is. But I’m not sure that the intensifier is necessary when talking of essential characteristics or archetypes.
On and on they went like this. . . . until, until,
Their longing warped space itself. Or perhaps it was one of the gods, taking pity, crumpling space and time.
And they lived happily ever after.
Copyright 2021. All rights reserved. For more poetry by Bob Shepherd (and writing about poets and poetry), go here: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/category/poetry/
Now I’ve heard everything . . . poetry about geometrical sex. It’s all gone to the dogs. Where are the banners and moderators when you need them. Bob and Diane . . . I always thought you were nice people. CBK
CBK, I would edit the comment but I can’t find it! What did you mean to say?
Diane . . . I guess it was a bad attempt, but I meant my comment about geometric sex to be funny–it was in response to Bob’s poem, which I thought was wonderful. CBK
Always loved a cute angle.
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Rather than focusing on banning books, people should be focusing on allowing and demanding books on both sides of the political aisle be allowed in schools which at the present time are not allowed. How about books by conservative commentatorssuch asMichael Savage with his book “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder” whose books always on the NY Times best seller’s list along with, Sean Hannity, Candice Owens, Michael O’Reilly and a host of others. This is where the focus should be. What say you?
Mband2008,
I believe that a library should represent the best of human knowledge without regard to political point of view.
Diane and Mband2008: It’s nothing new to education that making comparisons between, say, political orders, is a central part of becoming, in this case, politically educated.
On the other hand, if it’s propaganda some of these brick-brains want, then they can give them only one side of the “aisle”–theirs. I have often wondered if some of these people, even the totalitarian rich, Congresspeople, and SCOTUS, know the difference between (a) educational material and teaching, and (b) fascist propaganda and its similarly brick-brained gurus.
BTW, if your local area does public TV or PBS, or cable, or wherever you might see it, there is a must-see film simply named: “Mr. Jones” that is about a real Welshman who spoke Russian and was a journalist circa late 1930’s/early 40’s who traveled in Russia and Ukraine during Stalin’s famine time. A most fascinating and telling film. Someone should pay money for Tucker Carlson to watch it. CBK
I loved “Mr. Jones.”
These discussions never get beyond what I call “superficial thinking driven and controlled by emotion” which is engaged in primarily by America’s younger generations who were educated by the same inadequate, ineffective, post-1970 system of failed reforms that they believe they’re trying to fix.
First, based on our laws and Supreme Court decisions, a book ban is very different from removing certain books from elementary school libraries. That difference is huge. So, until that distinction is made and understood by everyone, all discussion about what’s going on in various states and in various school districts is pointless and unproductive, i.e. a colossal waste of everyone’s time.
Second, absent a comprehensive understanding of child development and learning and what it’s like to be a growing child, articles and essays on which books belong in K-6 libraries are also pointless and unproductive.
A few yrs. ago, the Beaufort, SC school board received complaints about and demands that some 90+ books in elementary school libraries be removed as inappropriate. They addressed the matter by enlisting the help of about 100 volunteers from the community who spent about a year reading, reviewing, analyzing and discussing each of those books. Their conclusion: only a few — like 3-6 — of the 90+ books are too pornographic or otherwise inappropriate for elementary school libraries.
The method they used for solving the issue did as much as humanly possible to eliminate undue bias and decisions driven by emotion.
Those books are not banned, as they’re still available in book stores and other libraries. Removing certain books from a school library does NOT ban the books; it merely takes them off the shelves of elementary school libraries.
Chris Tomlinson indicates “[c]onservative book banners” are absurd and anti-intellectual, I guess b/c everyone of every age has access to “online porn and young adult books about LGBTQ love.” But, removing certain books from K-6 school libraries isn’t about preventing all kids from being exposed to the content of said books. That’s never been possible and never will be.
It’s about not making the material so accessible that it’s like shoving it in the faces of kids for whom it’s (1) irrelevant to their daily lives and (2) beyond their comprehension to the point that it could actually be disturbing to most if not all of them.
Just last week during a casual conversation with an 8 year old, he suddenly said something like ‘ya know how kids don’t care about stuff.” It reminded me of all the stuff they’re pushing on K-6 kids — like how to be an activist and that being white is bad, etc. It reminded me of the story I heard last fall about a school district that decided they had to ban the wearing of Halloween costumes to school — a very traditional American custom — because it might offend a Muslim student.
No. Wrong. Immigrants are in America b/c they prefer our culture, so the whole point is to assimilate. They can practice whatever religion they choose in whatever lawful manner they choose, but we don’t owe any immigrant a change in one of our traditions b/c said custom might offend one of them.
Tomlinson also writes that “extremists are…targeting ideas they don’t like,” but, absent examples, his statement is itself extreme. What ideas? About which age group is he referencing? And what’s relevant about photos in the Sears Roebuck catalog or National Geographic coverage of tribal cultures around the world? How does that inform the discussion? It doesn’t. Those items can be discussed during a school board meeting unlike the removed books that are too pornographic to be shared in a public meeting of adults (videos have aired showing board members trying to stop the reading aloud of these books b/c they find the text too offensive).
All things considered, Mr. Tomlinson’s statements above miss the point entirely, and, absent in-depth analysis of specific examples, his adjectives are very misleading at best and partisan propaganda at worst.
Martha,
I wrote a book about 15 years ago called “The Language Police,” about censorship of language contests and in textbooks. Among the many banned topics was anything related to Halloween, because it offended evangelical Christians, not Muslims. The publishers heard complaints from people on the right and the left. On the right were people who hated evolution and anything referring to the supernatural. Halloween fell under the latter ban. In the early 2000s, the bans had little to do with racism and gays. They were concentrated on placating purists on both ends of the ideological spectrum.
Banning books [from libraries] is not banning books. Quite an interesting argument Martha makes. By the same logic, I suppose that refusing to rent to black people at the Trump apartment complexes was not refusing to rent to black people. After all, other apartments were available. ROFL.
Repugnicans are not strong on logic.
Excellent point, Bob. By her logic, refusing to admit Black students to your church school is not racism. Other schools will accept them.
The books are available elsewhere. Apartments are available elsewhere.
Same brilliant argument.