Too bad Margaret Spellings and Arne Duncan didn’t know about this research when they decided that the best way to help low-scoring students was to close their schools. Too bad Rahm Emanuel didn’t know about it when he closed 50 public schools in a single day.
School mobility has been shown to increase the risk of poor achievement, behavior problems, grade retention, and high school drop-out. Using data over 25 years from the Chicago Longitudinal Study, we investigated the unique risk of school moves on a variety of young adult outcomes including educational attainment, occupational prestige, depression symptoms, and criminal arrests. We also investigated how the timing of school mobility, whether earlier or later in the academic career, may differentially predict these outcomes over and above associated risks. Results indicate that students who experience more school changes between kindergarten and twelfth grade are less likely to complete high school on time, complete fewer years of school, attain lower levels of occupational prestige, are more likely to experience symptoms of depression, and are more likely to be arrested as adults. Furthermore, the number of school moves predicted above and beyond associated risks such as residential mobility and family poverty. When timing of school mobility was examined, results indicated more negative outcomes associated with moves later in the grade school career, particularly between fourth and eighth grade.
Doesn’t this seem like common sense? Your child is in a school where he or she makes friends and has a good relationship with teachers. You take the child out, and he or she has some trouble readjusting. Maybe the family moved, and it was necessary. But why would the government inflict it on children, call it “reform,” and celebrate the harm to the children?
Historian and retired teacher John Thompson is a close observer of the state’s bizarro GOP leaders. There is a small core of “traditional” GOP legislators, who have not lost touch with reality. But the loud and boisterous MAGA faction, led by Governor Kevin Stott, inhabit an alternate universe.
Thompson writes:
Both houses of the Oklahoma legislature, the Governor, and his State Superintendent are engaged in a Battle Royal. Politicos on all sides are asking whether it is merely surreal, or a performance art tactic to gain a political victory – or deflect attention from a political defeat. But there is virtual unanimity that it is bizarre; even in a state known for crazy politics, there seems to be a bipartisan agreement that this weirdness is unprecedented.
This week, Gov. Kevin Stitt said, “I cannot, in good faith, allow another year to go by without cutting taxes and reforming education.” His education plan features tax credits (vouchers), and an extremely regressive funding formula. Then, Stitt vetoed 20 Senate bills “with identical veto messages that said he ‘will continue to veto any and all legislation authored by senators who have not stood with the people of Oklahoma and supported this plan.’”
His vetoes included legislation “intended to renew Oklahoma Education Television Authority’s (PBS’) authorization for another three years.” Stitt also questioned whether there was a reason for the OETA to survive. The Republican Senate Pro Tem’s office also criticized the veto of a bill which would have “allowed people receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families to own a vehicle worth more than $5,000, which is the current limit.” Other bills that had previously been routinely signed would extend agencies like the Board of Governors of the Licensed Architects, Landscape Architects and Registered Commercial Interior Designer, the Board of Chiropractic Examiners, and the State Board of Examiners of Psychologists.
Sen. Pro Tem Greg Treat responded, “Hopefully he’ll calm down and sober up,” and “look at this through the lens of policy, and not through the lens of emotion.” He also said Stitt’s vetoes were “appalling” and “beneath the dignity of the office.”
Then Treat “swiftly rejected” the nominations of Stitt’s secretary of commerce and the CEO of the Oklahoma Health Care Authority. The Republican leader explained:
“If (Stitt) continues down this road of killing policy, we will be forced to exercise our constitutional authority, as well,” … “He has chosen to exercise his veto authority. We are choosing to exercise our confirmation authority.”
Then the Senate briefly excluded the governor and house members from a discussion on education bills. So, the Tulsa World reports, “House Republicans closed shop and left in something of a huff after their Senate GOP brethren told them they couldn’t come on the floor in that chamber for awhile Thursday afternoon.” Rep. House Majority Leader Jon Echols complained that senate Republicans had thus made, “the most juvenile move I’ve ever seen” during his 11 years in the Legislature.
That week, Stitt supporter, State Superintendent Ryan Walters, also ramped up his attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) which he said“is Marxist at its core.” Walters stressed “that it is a top priority of this administration to ensure that every parent has full parent choice — that parents decide for their kids where their children attend school and are the ones making those decisions that most impact their children,” Walters said. “This has to get done this session.”
So, what is happening here? Will the Republicans get out of this battle unscathed, reaching a compromise between traditional conservatives and the MAGAs? Or will these performances result in an effort to push back against this chaotic politics of destruction?
It seems to me that Republicans who abhor this rightwing campaign against the norms and principles of our democracy have remained silent because they understood how powerful emotions of hatred and fear have been helping their party. The extremists want to turn back the clock to the pre-civil rights era of the 1950s. The traditional Republicans may or may not care that, back then, Oklahoma was one of the most corrupt and most racist states in America. They don’t seem worried that Christian Nationalists are now welcoming the return of that era’s corruption, violence, and racism.
But today’s Battle Royal-style theatrics reminds me of the cruel joke played on Ralph Ellison when he grew up in Oklahoma City. (If Stitt or Walters are aware of the Battle Royal, I doubt they would want it taught in school.) Ellison was ambiguous about the actual facts he faced that inspired the story of the brutal, surreal charade presented in his novel, The Invisible Man. He tells the story of ten young Black men who “are ushered into a boxing ring. Then they are all blindfolded and instructed to fight each other all at once until only one is left standing.”
This week’s ridiculous fight, a metaphorical Battle Royal that featured affluent Whites who were funded by the super-rich, should embarrass Republicans. It echoes the previous cruelty promoted by the Robber Barons and the Ku Klux Klan that survived until I was a child. Now it’s the billionaire privatizers who are funding a destructive 21st century propaganda campaign. This week, it resulted in conservatives and Trumpians blindly humiliating themselves as political fights are being transformed into performances demonstrating that they are angry and hateful enough to get reelected.
The silliness promoted by Stitt and the House has virtually nothing to do with improving education. For instance, the combatants are much more focused on not making the mistake that the narrator (based on Ellison) made when giving his post-fight speech. There is no way that these conservatives will offend the MAGAs by accidently using the words “social equality.”
Postscript: At the end of the week, compromises were being discussed. It looks like modest increases in school funding will be distributed more fairly. The vouchers for families making over $250,000 per year will be capped at $5,000 while homeschool tax “credits” will be capped at $1,000. But the governor remains committed to income and corporate tax cuts (as well as sales tax cuts.) So it looks like the chaos was intended to be performance art to advance the agenda of the rich. The elites are on track to get what they want. But the surreal week still degenerated into a Battle Royal where even influential White men humiliated themselves in order to advance their donors’ interests.
Then, Stitt condemned OETA, which has the highest viewership of any of the nation’s PBS stations, for shows like “Clifford the Big Red Dog,” and PBS NewsHour for interviewing parents of transgender children.
He said such shows “over sexualize” children. What next? A list of banned films? More dangerous TV programs? A police investigation of every state employee’s computer to search for porn?
FOX “News” posted a slanderous, absurd, dim-witted article about public schools, based on the complaints of a rightwing fringe group group called “No Left Turn in Education.” This group specializes in scare tactics and has a long list of books that they think should be banned.
In their eyes, educating “the whole child” is a nefarious plot to take away the role of parents. Social and emotional learning—like teaching children to be kind, to be considerate of others, to talk instead of fight—is insidious. No wonder people who watch FOX nonstop turn to homeschooling or religious schools, where their kids will get an inferior education.
FOX reports:
Educators at over 120 districts across the country are implementing a pervasive school curriculum that has been denounced by opponents as an effort to manipulate children’s values and beliefs and replace parents as the primary moral authority in their child’s lives, with many critics specifically pointing to similarities with programs from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a major point of contention.
The School Superintendent’s Association (AASA), with the help of superintendents, board members and school administrators, is implementing the Learning 2025 program, which calls for an equity-focused, “holistic redesign” of the United States’ public education system by 2025, in districts across the country
The parents’ advocacy group, No Left Turn in Education (NLTE), is sounding the alarm about the curriculum’s alleged ties to the CDC, especially since Learning 2025 outlines its plans as a solution to the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Learning 2025 frequently references the idea of a “Whole Child” educational framework to promote the notion that school districts should focus on a collective, whole community vision that is strikingly similar to the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) educational framework devised by the CDC.
Both programs place a strong emphasis on students’ and teachers’ social and emotional health, including employee wellness programs, as well as psychological and social services like school-based health and counseling centers.
NLTE Chief Operating Officer Melissa Jackson said Learning 2025 is just a new way to make money on the same CDC product because “the components are still the same” with the emphasis on utilizing the community to influence and curate the “Whole Child” and their personal ideals beyond reading, writing and arithmetic.
The CDC’s “Whole Child” approach places its focus on psychological counseling and social services for students and teachers to further the “collaboration between education leaders and health sectors to improve each child’s cognitive, physical, social, and emotional development,” which is often referred to as social emotional learning (SEL).
SEL is advertised as a way to teach students social skills in support of their mental health and emotional wellbeing, but it has been criticized as a way to implement controversial topics like Critical Race Theory and Gender Theory. As a result, it has become a point of contention among parents, teachers and politicians who advocate for a strong academic emphasis at school and against classroom discussions that they feel should be left up to parents’ discretion at home.
NLTE refers to SEL as “socially engineered learning” because instead of placing the emphasis on reading, writing and arithmetic, they argue it moves the focus away from academics to center on higher cognitive skills, like self-awareness, empathy and control of emotions.
When reached for comment, the CDC told Fox News Digital that Learning 2025 “is not a CDC program,” but a document about the program indicates a connection between the CDC and AASA.
“AASA is using the new model with our superintendent cadre,” a document about the CDC’s Whole Child program states. “We’ve updated all of our coordinated school health training materials to include the new model as the model for coordinated school health” and “We’ve created a booster session and updated training materials to reflect the WSCC [CDC] model.”
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been criticized and mocked from all sides after a series of muddled messages have baffled Americans amid a record surge in COVID-19 cases and the spread of the omicron variant. (iStock) (iStock)
NLTE’s Chief Research Officer Apryl Dukes pointed out that most people abided by the rules of the CDC and shut down when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, but she doesn’t believe their framework is the answer to getting students back on track.
“Learning 2025 is [billed as] the answer to what has happened to the children,” but “the root of the problem is not the COVID shutdown … goes back to the attack on culture,” Dukes said.
“I have a problem accepting a program from the very same people that caused the problem,” she added. “That’s what I want parents to know, is that these organizations were part of it, and now they’re offering you a solution to the problem.”
Holly Terei serves as NLTE’s National Director of Teacher Coalition and attended a Learning 2025 conference last summer, where she observed the curriculum’s framework in action. She said she also noticed the similarities between Learning 2025 and the CDC model.
The article goes on with more baloney, fear-mibgering, and lies. Parents who believe this garbage are being programmed to distrust and hate public schools.
Insensitivity and indifference to racism seem to be deeply embedded in the Republican Party. Especially, though not exclusively, in the South.
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey just forced Secretary of Early Childhood Education Barbara Cooper to resign over a book designed to train teachers to be aware of the different backgrounds and challenges of their students.
In a Friday afternoon news release, Gina Maiola, communications director for the governor’s office, said Ivey had accepted Cooper’s resignation after learning of a pre-K educator resource book that included “woke concepts.”
The book is the National Association for the Education of Young Children Developmentally Appropriate Practice Book, 4th Edition. It focuses on teaching children up to age of 8.
Cooper was unable to be reached Friday afternoon. The NAEYC said in a statement Friday evening that the program had been used for almost four decades and served as “the foundation for high-quality early childhood education across states and communities.”
“While not a curriculum, it is a responsive, educator-developed, educator-informed, and research-based resource that has been honed over multiple generations to support teachers in helping all children thrive and reach their full potential, ” the statement said. “Building on the good work that is happening in states and communities, NAEYC looks forward to continuing its partnership with families, educators, and policymakers to further our shared goals of offering joyful learning environments that see, support, and reflect all children and their families.”
In her email, Maiola said the governor’s office received a complaint about the book teaching white privilege, structural racism and messaging promoting “equality, dignity and worth” around LGBTQIA+ identities.
An Alabama Reflector review of the book, running over 800 pages in electronic form, found it focused on encouraging teachers to be aware of inequities, implicit bias and the diverse backgrounds of children in order to be better teachers and create welcoming environments for their students.
The book does not appear to tell teachers to discuss these issues with children directly.
“Teachers need to be particularly aware of providing supporting environments and responses to children who are members of marginalized groups and those who have been targets of bias and stereotyping,” one passage said.
Please open the link and read the rest of this shameful episode.
The Texas Signal has figured out the Republican plan for education. Defund the public schools. Send public money to greedy charter operators who have their eye on the bottom line. Send public money to voucher schools that indoctrinate their students. The goal: Dumb and Dumberer. Members of the Texas House of Representatives—both Democrats and Republicans—voted against public funding for private schools just a few days ago (after this article was posted), but the Governor is likely to try again.
For decades, Texas Republicans have been hoping you won’t notice how much public education is underfunded. Now that the far right is in the driver’s seat, we can see it was a failure by design.
Under Republican leadership, Texas has long underfunded our teachers and schools. For a while, this worked for Texas Republicans – at least politically. If someone complained, they could always point their fingers at the need for property tax relief or blame our failing schools on underpaid teachers. And if that didn’t work– blame Black and Brown communities. And if that didn’t work – hell blame the kids themselves.
Of course, they could also avoid the topic altogether. Instead of allowing the light to shine on our school, they could simply redirect their high beams to some unfortunate Texas group as a distraction in their signature Texas Republican culture war two-step. Anything to avoid responsibility.
Texas Republicans have been happy to keep up this understanding during their 6-month stay in Austin every odd year. The Texas Republican culture war two-step: bully some women or LGBTQ kids and do the bare minimum so that they can say they’ve done their part for our kids while they find ways to build personal wealth.
That worked for a while until the failures of the Texas Education Agency (TEA) started to show.
Republican failures, TEA Takeovers, and Privatization
In 2018, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) was placed under federal oversight by the Department of Education for its failings regarding special education. This was due to the illegal actions of the Texas Education Agency that put a limit on the percentage of students it would allow into special education programs, impacting countless kids.
This normally would be a wake-up call for any elected official who had the interests of their constituents at heart. But then again, we’re dealing with Greg Abbott.
Instead of fixing the root of most issues, underfunding, Governor Greg Abbott made a hard right turn led by party extremists. Greg Abbott decided to turn to Republicans’ trusted distracted dance, except now he created a new cultural war two-step. Step 1: Blame teachers at struggling schools in our most diverse cities and 2) funnel money into the pockets of his rich donors who put their kids to private Christian schools through the scheme known as vouchers.
While Abbott has been on a statewide tour pushing his voucher scheme, he simultaneously had TEA take over the Houston Independent School District (HISD) takeover earlier this year. The takeover was blasted by civil and racial rights advocates, including the ACLU of Texas. “The state takeover of HISD is not about public education — it’s about political control of a 90 percent Black and brown student body in one of the country’s most diverse cities,” they wrote on Twitter.
Then in late March, Abbott continued his strategy with a new diverse (and Democratic-run) city: Austin. State Representative Gina Hinojosa (D- Austin) is a leading voice on public education and sits on the prominent House committee. And late on the last Friday of March, she sent an explosive alert on social media to activate pro-public education Texans. She announced that the TEA recommended conservatorship over Austin Independent School District (AISD).
This means that a team selected by Commissioner Morath will have the power to take action over our local school district indefinitely, similar to the Houston Independent School District (HISD) takeover earlier this year.
According to Rep. Hinojosa, the agency has cited the district’s failings regarding students receiving special education. And in November, the voters of Austin elected four new trustees and an interim superintendent has since been hired. Most folks agree AISD is heading in the right direction. “Specifically, we know that many of AISD’s challenges are due to staffing shortages, “ said Hinojosa. “Additionally, the TEA has acknowledged that the state underfunds special education in AISD by close to $80 million annually.”
Of course, facts would only matter if Republicans cared about improving the lives of children. The solution seems simple: more funding equals better results. However, this is all a ruse toward the larger direction right back to the voucher scheme pushed by the extreme right.
As we’ve noted, current proposals that could become law give families enrolling in private or parochial schools $8,000 per student, per year to cover tuition and other related expenses.
This would be devastating to our public schools. Texas ranks near the bottom of national rankings of per-student funding, with the basic allotment totaling around $6,160 per student.
The Governor and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick are fully on board, leaving only the Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan left as a question mark. While Phelan generally is a pushover when it comes to right-wing agenda items, some rural Republicans may force his hand into a fight.
The solution to most of our public education problems is simple: funding. Simple solutions are usually welcome news. However, with the growing issues of sexual assault problems for Texas Republicans and other issues that plague the state, Republicans go for what they’re most familiar with for answers. The ole’ culture war two-step.
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There is a popular stereotype of librarians: Mild-mannered, quiet, unassuming, and of course, bookish. But the Republicans in the Texas legislature seem to think that behind that compliant demeanor lies a sinister purveyor of dangerous ideas and books. What other explanation can there be for proposed legislation that would place book selection in the hands of a parent committee? And why strip away the legal protections accorded to librarians doing their job?
As a former school librarian and mother, I have always believed parents have total control over what their children select to read from the school library.
SB 13 transfers the decisions for acquiring library materials into the hands of a council of parents, the majority of whom do not work for the district but only have children attending. What possible experience or credentials or rights does this committee have to make decisions on what children can and can’t read in an entire school district? After a long, convoluted process spelled out in the bill, the school board must then approve the list of library books before they may be purchased.
First of all, it is clear the authors of this bill have a poor understanding of school library programs. In Austin ISD, there are 116 schools. This Local School Library Advisory Council, appointed by the school board, is required to meet only twice a year to decide on the library collections for all 116 schools. A single campus librarian purchases materials throughout the year. It’s not a one and done process.
This bill will greatly delay the timeline between ordering books and getting them into the hands of children. The additional 30-day waiting period further impedes the process. As a librarian, I had the freedom to pre-order the next book in a popular series so that I could add it to our collection the very day it was published. Kids clamoring for the next book in a beloved series will now have to wait for months if not all year.
The bill also invites parents to opt in to a program in which the librarian emails them each time their child checks out a book, including the book’s title and author. One elementary school in south Austin averages 196 checkouts per day. How is it possible for the librarian to send these emails while also running her library program? Instead, why not integrate the library catalog information into the parent portal, the website which parents already access to see their child’s grades? Parents can then look up their students’ library records. It would even help librarians with the bane of our existence: long overdue books.
The portion of the bill that enables anyone to prosecute individual librarians for distributing “harmful material” under the Texas penal code (Sec. 43.24) is the most shocking and destructive piece in this bill. It removes affirmative defenses for educational purposes. Does this also remove legal protections from members of the advisory council if a “bad” book slips through the cracks?
I can’t believe the state of Texas wants to allow frivolous lawsuits against librarians, school boards, principals, and teachers. We are already experiencing a teacher shortage, with at least 59 districts switching to four-day weeks.
If passed, this bill will bring a culture of fear and intimidation to our schools.
The men and women who choose to serve as school librarians are among the most intelligent and ethical people I know. They are not just serving the children of the five parents on the Local School Advisory Committee; they are representing the interests of all children and the parental rights of all families at their schools, upholding their First Amendment Rights to read.
If the Senate Public Education Committee had only consulted in good faith with the vast majority of school librarians whose patrons are extremely satisfied with the library collections they curate, this bill would have been able to find a balance between respecting parental rights and ensuring better oversight in purchasing materials without adding unwieldy, impractical layers of bureaucracy and red tape that will prevent children from having ready access to the books they want and need to read.
Sara Stevenson is a former school librarian in Austin ISD. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.
Republicans have gone stark raving mad. They are terrified that their children might read a book that will turn them gay or transgender or might make them feel bad about racism. of course, their children have access to the internet, where they can see stuff far more sensational than anything in a book.
Somebody has to be punished for the racy books in the libraries.
A bill that would allow parents to sue libraries and school districts for allowing books containing material considered “obscene” on their shelves is one step closer to becoming law.
The “Children’s School and Library Protection Act” passed the Idaho House on a 40-30 vote Monday afternoon.
The bill lays out a proposed definition for what it calls material that is “harmful to minors,” including material that contains description or representation of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement or “sado-masochistic abuse.”
The bill also specifically mentions representations of “intimate sexual acts, normal or perverted” along with descriptions of “masturbation, excretory functions, or lewd exhibition of the genitals or genital area.”…
One legislator made a good point:
A representative from Latah County says libraries are not the main place where kids are being exposed to mature content.
“This telephone and this computer has more damage than any library is ever going to have to our children,” Lori McCann (R), representative of Legislative District Six, said.
How many of those voting went home to watch porn on their phone or computer?
Late Tuesday night, the Missouri House of Representatives voted for a state operating budget with a $0 line for public libraries. While the budget still needs to work its way through the Senate and the governor’s office, state funding for public libraries is very much on the chopping block in Missouri.
This comes after Republican House Budget Chairman Cody Smith proposed a $4.5 million cut to public libraries’ state aid last week in the initial House Budget Committee hearing, where Smith cited a lawsuit filed against Missouri by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri (ACLU-MO) as the reason for the cut.
That will teach them a lesson! Reading is dangerous! Stay home and watch unfiltered porn on your computer, and you don’t need to learn any new words. Why read a book when you can get the real deal at home and be completely illiterate?
The latest wave of book banning in Texas high school libraries is led by people who don’t read much. Now, they’ve gone and set up a bar that even the beloved classic Texas novel—Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry—can’t get past.
In a recent legislative hearing, the book banners put their aliteracy on public display.
State representative Jared Patterson has never claimed, through campaign literature or any other medium, to be a reader. If he had, he might not have walked into the trap set for him last night during a House Public Education Committee hearing on his inaptly named READER Act. That proposal would add several new bureaucratic controls on the kinds of books that could be kept in or borrowed from public-school libraries. When Democratic state representative James Talarico, of Round Rock, prodded the Frisco Republican during debate, Patterson took the bait. “There should be no sexually explicit books” in a high school library, he said.
Talarico replied that there’s content that could be viewed as sexually explicit in many very good books. (Though he didn’t mention it, the Bible ranks high among them.) Take Talarico’s favorite book, Larry McMurtry’s 1985 novel Lonesome Dove, about two retired Texas Rangers on a cattle drive during the twilight years of the Old West, which has become totemic to generations of Texans. The book includes characters who are prostitutes and scenes of sexual assault and its consequences. It includes birds and bees and all that kind of filth. Talarico asked: Would Lonesome Dove be banned in Texas high schools under Patterson’s bill?
Patterson hadn’t read Lonesome Dove, he replied, committing his first error. But if it contained the ribald passages Talarico indicated it did, well, then, “they might need to ban Lonesome Dove.” There were a lot of interested parties following this hearing, and it was widely understood among Patterson’s allies and enemies alike that he had stepped in it. Lonesome Dove is an easily comprehensible example of the kind of book that deals with difficult subjects but enhances the reader’s understanding of life, and of other Texans. The thought of the novel coming out of high school libraries in a brown paper bag, like a copy of Maxim, made Patterson’s whole bill seem more ridiculous than it already was.
Patterson’s allies apparently thought he needed help digging himself out of his hole, so they jumped in with him. Christin Bentley, a member of the State Republican Executive Committee, had an idea. Apparently not having read the book either, she tweeted that she had “bought Lonesome Dove on Kindle and did keyword searches.” She searched for “f—,” “p—y,” “sex,” and “vagina,” which don’t appear in the novel, and posted screenshots to prove it. After this deep engagement with the text, she was happy to report on Twitter that the book was not sexually explicit and, therefore, would not be banned under the bill.
Of course, Lonesome Dove is set in the 1870s: Bentley was searching for the wrong words. Twitter users helpfully suggested she search for the word “poke.” (Hard to picture Gus yelling “p—y” across the range.) But even a better search would have been of limited value. With a short summary, you can make Lonesome Dove sound like smut or a wholesome novel. The only way to evaluate it properly, as with any book, is to read it and think about it in its totality. That’s the point of books: You can step into the lives of characters unlike you. You can think about what it’s like to be a woman or a man, consider issues you had never given thought to, and step back into your life at the end of it, your horizons a little wider.
Some folks, however, prefer their horizons narrow and dark. For several years, the crusade against books in school libraries has had the most power when targeting literature that discusses LGBTQ issues and racism. Few animated by this debate actually seem to care whether kids are reading about heterosexual sex. Indeed, Patterson has put rhetorical emphasis in his pitch for his bill on books that have “sexual indoctrination,” a euphemism for ones about gender-nonconforming or gay kids. The fear he and allies are stoking seems to be that by reading these books, formerly immaculate daughters and sons will become transgender. His bill’s case depends on circling off “scary” books from “normal” ones. This works well enough for him because few adults have encountered, say, Gender Queer, a graphic novel he’s also put in his cross hairs. But enough Texans have read Lonesome Dove to know that while the book is challenging, it is enriching, and being able to make sense of its challenges is part of growing up, especially in this state.
Patterson’s snafu makes clear that the bill’s sponsors don’t really care about books—or that they don’t understand them. Which is fine. That’s why we have Netflix. But maybe they should leave the regulation of literature to Texans who read.
Please open the link and read the rest of the article. It’s a good one!
Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee recently signed the most restrictive bill in the nation to ban drag shows, where men dress as women or women dress as men. Anyone who dares to do it will be charged with a felony and thrown in the clink. No drag shows in Tennessee!
Governor Bill Lee (R-TN) signed one of the country’s most restrictive anti-drag bans into law on Thursday, despite criticism and backlash from LGBTQ advocates denouncing the legislation as harmful and discriminatory.
The Republican-controlled legislature ran roughshod over the democratic process, pushing through an amendment to the previously passed anti-transgender bill, Senate Bill 3 ,which now includes drag performances under a category reserved for adult businesses like strip clubs.
This inclusion will make appearing in public, or “anywhere where a minor could view it,” dressed in drag a criminal offense.
While first offenses will be charged as misdemeanors, subsequent violations will incur felony charges that could land a performer in prison for up to six years.
I sure hope the hit Broadway show “Some Like It Hot” doesn’t plan to visit Nashville. The cast will be arrested.
The Hawkins County GOP must be pretty upset too. Some years back, the county Republicans put on a drag show, and it was their most successful fund-raiser ever. You gotta open the link and see the GOP leaders in drag!
Diane Ravitch's blog 