Peter Greene tells the ignominious story of the Spottsylvania, Virginia, school board. One of the school board members, Kirk Twigg, is a conservative Christian who is very fearful of books that might have any sexual content. He wants them burned. He was recently elected chairman of the school board and promised to fire the superintendent. Which he did.
Greene writes:
You may recall the story about Spotsylvania school district in Virginia, where books were being protested and pulled and two board members thought maybe the books should be burned.
Well, one of those guys is now the board chairman, and things are blowing up in a hurry.
The board is a 4-3 board (though those who didn’t want to burn the books were supportive of banning them), and the 4-person conservative majority installed Kirk Twigg as the president.
Scott Baker has been with district in various capacities for years before becoming superintendent in 2012; he won some awards for his superintendenting prowess, but there’s a portion of the local populace that are not fans. There’s a whole blog devoted to laying outhis many alleged sins, but not being hard enough on dirty books has drawn the most criticism in the recent past, along with agitation over school closings.
Baker was on his way out, with departure negotiated for the end of this school year. That was not fast enough for Twigg, who has been vocal in his opposition to various books. The ban was centered on “sexually explicit” books, but Twigg, besides expressing his interest in burning objectionable material also added that he would like to broaden the criteria for rooting through the school libraries, saying, “There are some bad, evil-related material that we have to be careful of and look at.”
Twigg promised that, if elected chair of the board, his first action would be to fire Baker effective immediately. Last Monday night, in a meeting characterized as chaotic and contentious, he did just that. He called an unscheduled closed session during the meeting, then came back to announce that Baker had been terminated–before being reminded that the board had to take an actual vote.
No reason has been given for the firing, but it’s Virginia, a right to work state, and no reason has to be given.
Keep your eyes on Spotsylvania, where one day soon there might be a public book burning.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Meanwhile, your side , delights is banning Huckeberry Finn. Get off your high horse.
A few fools on “our side,” but only a few
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/book-burning
Jacquilenhardt,
Who are you addressing?
My side doesn’t ban Huck Finn or anything else. Read my book THE LANGUAGE POLICE about the history of censorship.
Jacky, please hold the bit while I maneuver my way off this tall steed.
Good Thing Someone Filmed This Board Meeting. Not To Be Believed.
!!!!!!
This is what is called the New OK. Get used to it. Especially the speed with which it will happen if when the the reactionary cult takes complete power. While the rapid Gleichschaltung will have moments of extreme violence, by and large it will be pretty much like the actions in this video.
A favorite German comedian of mine sums it up quite well in one of his monologues acting as a right-wing politician, this is will also be part of the New OK: “Of course I believe in minority rights. The minority has the right to attach itself to the majority!”
He also has a good one on tolerance: “Those hippies getting beat up by the police learn how to tolerate it!”
Wow. Embarrassing.
This is what happens when not enough people get involved in local politics.
Perhaps you might want to check out the definition of the word banned. If Huck Finn was banned that would have been in the late 19th and early 20th century by right wing prudes concerned about language. The language they were concerned about was never the use of the N word
Removing a book from a require reading list or banning the use of the N word in class discussion is not the same as not allowing a teacher to use the book. Nor is it the same as removing it from the school Library .
Good morning Diane and everyone,
I wish cell phones would be banned in schools. Talk about sexually explicit material. And our lust for technology in schools is doing more to ban books than any book burning ever could. I know of schools that have thrown away all their books, changed the name to “media center” and hauled in a bunch of computers. Have you ever seen what most kids do on their free time in study halls? I can tell you it’s not reading books.
Cell phones actually illustrate a problem of education and society. I have had students use cell phones in good and powerful ways. I have had students become so distracted that I wanted to grind them under my feet. Like a shovel, which can be used to dig a foundation for a house or a trench for a war, a cell phone is a tool to be used for good or evil. We have to teach the kids to use the phones for good. Like it or not, they are here.
Mamie, that’s the high irony in banning books. What kids may see online is a million times more violent and sexually explicit than anything they read in a school library.
Shhhh. . . . !!!!
Don’t tell the xtian fundies about that fact.
Mamie: My fellow teacher, who teaches chemistry, forbids the cell phone. He has a sign that reads “act like it was 1995”
Ahhh, 1995. Remember when a fax was an exotic thing? Especially when it made the move from curly to regular paper! I miss standing by the machine feeding in forms and then repeating for another number. Good times.
The march of fascism in the United States is not over. That fascism will not die easily. Even when the traitor is long gone, the surviving fascists will still be here doing all the damage they can wherever they may be.
A facebook post I saw:
Sacha Baron Cohen quoting historian of the Third Reich Ian Kershaw:
“The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.”
Then his own words:
“I know it’s not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but I think it’s an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be apathetic.”
The far right neo-fascists have convinced their folks not to be apathetic anymore. The far right neo-fascists find useful “enemies”- scapegoats – for those now passionate folks to direct their extreme anger toward. CRT, BLM, “libs”, whatever works at that time and when it stops working they create a new “enemy”.
Those now very passionate Americans have been given scapegoats that are entirely created by right wing Republican propaganda. They are given ONLY the scapegoats that serve the right wing agenda and empower it.
And meanwhile, our side far too often just reinforces that propaganda by conceding that there is a reason for those people’s anger and it’s our fault, or the democrats’ fault. Too often our side find scapegoats that also serve the right wing agenda.
Virginia is becoming conservative, our side says, because democrats are “too woke” and “too focused on identity politics”. In other places our side “takes Latino voters or Black voters for granted”. Right wing propaganda agrees! No wonder people who don’t support this right wing takeover are apathetic.
Our side is apathetic about how easy it has become to be complicit with the far right propaganda’s goal of creating useful scapegoats to arouse people’s passions to support them. Our side too often actually amplifies and legitimizes that right wing propaganda by always conceding that the human imperfections and honest compromises made by whoever the far right finds use to scapegoat are very troublesome and worrisome and their actions are concerning, but…..
And then our side wonders why people don’t passionately support our side.
A teacher in North Carolina sent me an article written by a school board member in her district comparing the Democratic Party to the Nazi Party. We have entered the Twilight Zone. https://nsjonline.com/article/2021/12/levy-from-roosevelt-to-biden-fascism-as-an-american-experience/
This is actually a conscious tactic. As soon as language is used to describe you or something you do, immediately use that same language–the meaning behind it is largely irrelevant–against them. Do it often, over and over again, and soon the language will become meaningless and predictable background noise for most people.
A better example would be the consistent effort to portray perpetrators as victims and vice versa in just about any issue area.
It appears that on the Spotsylvania School Board the inmates have taken over. What’s next, burning at the stake?
So, what did the teachers and librarian say/do about the “burner”?
[…] From Diane Ravitche’s blog comes this posting: (Quote) Peter Greene tells the ignominious story of the Spottsylvania, Virginia, school board. One of the school board members, Kirk Twigg, is a conservative Christian who is very fearful of books that might have any sexual content. He wants them burned. He was recently elected chairman of the school board and promised to fire the superintendent. Which he did. Greene writes: […]