This post is a Paul Thomas classic. Thomas, a professor at Furman University, writes powerfully about race, social justice, and literature. It was written in 2013 but remains timely.
This post is about why books and libraries are important. It is about why Ray Bradbury’s classic, “Fahrenheit 451” still matters.
It is science fiction, but it is about the world we live in. It is a warning. “Fahrenheit 451” can be read again and again, like Orwell’s “1984” and Huxley’s “Brave New World.” It is not just because they were so prescient about the future, but because they remind us of the power of literature to change our lives.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Our school library is being purged. I expect that only about 20% of the books we had two years ago are still there. There has been no explanation of why. It is truly like Fahrenheit 451.
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Are your classrooms/book rooms being purged as well? The amount of time I have spent trying to subvert this nonsense over the past 6 years or so is truly astounding and obviously took time away from creating better courses for students.
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I read this aloud to my eighth grade class of mostly Mexican immigrant family students in the 90’s. I often wonder if any remember.
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I can just imagine Gates and his mates reading “1984” and saying ” Hey, chaps, there’s some damn good ideas here”
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howardat58: or as Bill Gates might say [see his Sept. 2013 WaPo interview]:
“There’s some damn good ideas here, let’s give it ten years to see if this STUFF works.”
*Caveat: according to the latest unconfirmed rumors emanating from rheephorm circles, I am engaging in vitriol.*
😎
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So not only are you crazy, KrazyTA, but now vitriolic. Does that now make you BitchrioTA????
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Like!
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Yes Huxley, Orwell, Bradbury worse nightmares have come true earlier than they ever thought possible.
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Read this, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/opinion/sunday/my-friend-the-former-muslim-extremist.html
He says what teachers are saying at Diane’s recent posts about what they can and cannot say in a classroom, thanks to the CC AND THE POLITICIZED ATMOSPHERE IN OUR NATION’S COMMUNITIES.
” It’s possible to be too glib about the IMPACT of education: Osama bin Laden was an engineer. Ayman al-Zawahri, the current leader of Al Qaeda, is a trilingual surgeon. Rafi notes that Pakistani doctors or engineers are sometimes extremists because in that country’s specialized education system they gain the confidence of a university degree WITHOUT THE CRITICAL THINKING (ideally) comes from an acquaintance with the liberal arts {i.e. humanities} .Donor countries should support education, Rafi says, but PAY FAR MORE ATTENTION TO THE CURRICULUM.”
I said this recently to Laura Chapman in a post, on Diane’s ‘Singer’ post:
“Under the guise of offering a curriculum for all teachers, one that raises standards, THEY HAVE ENSURED THAT THE AMERICAN TEACHER CAN NO LONGER TALK TRUTH TO THEIR STUDENTS, nor introduce children to the once sacred values that ALL HEALTHY SOCIETIES passed on to their kids. (Has anyone read, “In The Absence of the Sacred,” by Jerry Mander.
http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/mander.html
By sacred he means the values that home, neighborhood and community once showed our youngster: here is what good folks do to improve our lives as a society. T V tells them what they should fear, what they should covet and desire, and how they should react and behave when something crosses their path which IS different! Trump tells them trump-truth.”
Yes, the conversation about ‘kids,’ ‘schools,’ curricula and testing is obscuring the one that must take place about WHAT SCHOOL ACCOMPLISHES when it comes to the social skills…THE ’S-O-C-I’ in society.. School is more than a ‘training’ facility where future citizens learn to do math, spell, and maybe write code, but know very little about human history, or what really makes a democracy flourish.
It is impossible for THE AVERAGE PERSON TO RECOGNIZE what learning looks like, THEY ARE CLUELESS about how their children (our FUTURE CITIZENS) learn TO THINK CRITICALLY so they can participate in a democracy. How easy it has been for Gates to end the most crucial value of an education… to think critically about ones world!
Minus real information about our Constitution and with critical analysis gone from the humanities, how will a voting citizen be able to choose. Koch and pals know this.
AND THEY KNOW THIS:
These learners will NOT be kids for long… they will be CITIZENS! Now, that sends shivers down MY spine.
And what they are learning in MR GATES PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM will never prepare them for the dangerous world that has sprung up around them… a world of full-time war, from which these death merchants profit. If not in school, how will a citizenry that is addicted to a ‘screen’ ever know what is happening? Eh? Is that an essential question, friends?
Our future citizens NEED rich conversations FROM TRUSTED EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS, so they can compare WHAT THEY SEE & HEAR with the things THAT THEY KNOW (Prior knowledge).
Geeze, COMPARE AND CONTRAST is the first step in Bloom’s hierarchy of analytical skills.
“Ideas” are the meat of books, and THUS, it is IDEAS THAT are being fed to them,not only on the television and on their screens, but in the schools, where the choice about the conversations that take place is OVER– th kind of CONVERSATIONS THAT OCCUR when a teacher reads a story or book with a class.”
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