banning books, the school curriculum and critical race theory in the united states

The United States is banning books - led by Florida.

This is from the news:

Florida school districts removed approximately 300 books from library shelves last school year, according to a list of “removed or discontinued materials” that was quietly released by the state’s education department late last month. The removals were prompted by more than 1,200 objections raised by parents of public school students or other Florida residents, according to a 16-page Florida Department of Education document that included the book list.

Florida school districts removed roughly 300 books last school year

Book Bans in Florida Schools: The Complete List | Miami New Times

Now that books are being banned and disappearing from school libraries, students and parents are showing up to school board meetings in Florida to argue for access to books that take on difficult subjects. But they are losing out to a new state law that makes it easier for opponents to get books off shelves. The conservative Moms for Liberty and allied groups turned board meetings into spectacle, reading out explicit passages from books without context to argue that they should not be available to minors. This summer, a Florida law went into effect stating that if a board member stopped a reading because it was offensive, the book could be removed immediately.

Children and parents begin uphill fightback against book bans in Florida | CNN

This summer, Iris Mogul – a junior at a Miami high school – found out that she wouldn’t be able to take an AP African American history course that she had planned for the coming semester because it had been blocked by the state’s department of education. “As presented, the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value,” the department said in a statement. “It felt so far away when I first heard about all of this,” says Mogul, who only had a passing knowledge of book challenges and changes to school curriculum previously. “But that is really when it hit me – when it started to affect me directly.” Now, Mogul is prominent among the growing number of students and parents in Miami-Dade county and across Florida who are speaking out in opposition to book challenges, the capture of Florida school boards by conservative activists and this summer’s latest policy changes, which includes the expansion of DeSantis’s Parental Rights in Education Act.

‘Reading is resistance’: students and parents take on DeSantis’s book bans | Florida | The Guardian

It's not just Florida:

Recent debates across the country have pushed for book banning and the adoption of politically motivated laws and policies on school curricula. Such measures seek to prevent teachers from providing a thorough curriculum on American history, civics, and government in U.S. public schools and deny students their rights to a complete education. At least 17 states have introduced bills containing gag orders or taken other steps that would restrict how teachers can discuss American history and current events, including pulling books off library shelves in an effort to suppress so-called “divisive concepts”—a shorthand affectation nearly always referring to issues about race and identity.

Book Banning, Curriculum Restrictions, and the Politicization of U.S. Schools - Center for American Progress

Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Ban Books - PEN America

Here's some background:

In late September 2021, Carrie Damon, a middle school librarian, celebrated “Banned Books Week,” an annual free-speech event, with her working-class Latino students by talking of literature’s beauty and subversive power.

A few weeks later, State Representative Matt Krause, a Republican, emailed a list of 850 books to superintendents, a mix of half-century-old novels — “The Confessions of Nat Turner” by William Styron — and works by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Margaret Atwood, as well as edgy young adult books touching on sexual identity. Are these works, he asked, on your library shelves? Mr. Krause’s motive was unclear, but the next night, at a school board meeting in San Antonio, parents accused a librarian of poisoning young minds.

Days later, a secretary sidled up to Ms. Damon and asked if district libraries held pornography. “‘No, no, honey, we don’t buy porno,’” Ms. Damon replied.

Texas is afire with fierce battles over education, race and gender. What began as a debate over social studies curriculum and critical race studies — an academic theory about how systemic racism enters the pores of society — has become something broader and more profound, not least an effort to curtail and even ban books, including classics of American literature. In June, and again in recent weeks, Texas legislators passed a law shaping how teachers approach instruction touching on race and gender. And Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican with presidential ambitions, took aim at school library shelves, directing education officials to investigate “criminal activity in our public schools involving the availability of pornography.” “Parents are rightfully angry,” he wrote in a separate letter. They “have the right to shield their children from obscene content.”

In Texas, Panic Over Critical Race Theory Extends to Bookshelves - The New York Times

One of the issues pushing these bans is CRT:

Critical race theory (CRT) is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing how laws, social and political movements, and media shape, and are shaped by, social conceptions of race and ethnicity. CRT also considers racism to be systemic in various laws and rules, and not only based on individuals' prejudices.[1][2] The word critical in the name is an academic reference to critical thinking, critical theory, and scholarly criticism, rather than criticizing or blaming individuals.[3][4]

Critical race theory - Wikipedia

Critical race theory - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Critical race theory (CRT) is a radical ideology asserting that races can be put into different categories: That white people are the opressor and black people and minorities are the opressed. Critical race theory is Postmodernist that pins races against each other. Critical race theory also asserts that America was founded on racism and slavery, as well as that any attempt to end racism in America, such as Brown vs. Board, is just an attempt to maintain White supremacy. Many parents have rightfully protested against critical race theory being taught in public schools.

Critical race theory - Conservapedia

Critical Race Theory (CRT) makes race the prism through which its proponents analyze all aspects of American life—and do so with a degree of persistence that has helped CRT impact all of American life. CRT underpins identity politics, an ongoing effort to reimagine the United States as a nation riven by groups, each with specific claims on victimization. In entertainment, as well as the education and workforce sectors of society, CRT is well-established, driving decision-making according to skin color—not individual value and talent. As Critical Theory ideas become more familiar to the viewing public in everyday life, CRT’s intolerance becomes “normalized,” along with the idea of systemic racism for Americans, weakening public and private bonds that create trust and allow for civic engagement.

Critical Race Theory, the New Intolerance, and Its Grip on America | The Heritage Foundation

It is very political:

Critical race theory (CRT), taught primarily in higher education and law school, is the study of how laws and policies can drive and perpetuate racial disparities and inequities. Even though Critical Race Theory is not taught in K-12 schools, it is being attacked and subsequently banned by many state legislatures to score political points, using misinformation and fear to drive a wedge between people. The intention of these state measures is to limit and prevent teachers from discussing sexism, racism and other forms of systemic oppression. It is troublesome because teachers should be encouraged to teach about those important concepts--through social studies, literature and other parts of the curriculum... 

We know the importance of children’s books as both mirrors and windows for young people. “Mirror books” help children see themselves reflected in those books so their lived experiences are acknowledged, appreciated, and valued. "Window books” assist young people to learn from and about the experiences of others who don’t share aspects of their identity. Starting at a very young age and up to the teen years, children’s books open doors to conversations about identity, diversity, bias, and social justice—conversations that are an integral part of a young person’s education. Over the last ten years, progress has been made in the publishing of more diverse books and by authors who are representative of that diversity.

Schools Are Using Anti-Critical Race Theory Laws to Ban Children’s Literature | ADL

Last year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed HB 1557, which LGBTQ rights advocates call the “Don’t Say Gay” law because it bans classroom discussion of sexuality or gender in kindergarten through grade three, and allows parents to sue if they believe a teacher has violated the law. DeSantis also signed the Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act, or the “Stop WOKE” Act, which prohibits the teaching of critical race theory in schools. The laws do not outright ban books, but due to their broad language, Florida schools are removing books that could be in violation. Teachers are stuck in the middle: they can distribute only approved books in the classroom or they could face dire consequences.

Books banned from libraries sit on a table at a Florida flower shop, June 2022 [Courtesy of Adam Tritt]

With a video discussing the issues in the States...

How teachers and librarians are subverting book bans in the US | Education News | Al Jazeera

The ban includes some classics:

Shakespeare and penguin book get caught in Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' laws | AP News

Florida schools remove books by John Milton and Toni Morrison and restrict Shakespeare under DeSantis rules | The Independent

This is not a very good example from the leader of the free world:

These efforts to censor books are an affront to the core principles of free expression and open inquiry that US democracy swears by. But equally worrying is the fact that this pattern of attacks on public education in the US appears to be inspiring similar efforts in other countries, even though such censorship campaigns haven’t had as much success there yet.

In the United Kingdom, officials are raising the spectre of critical race theory in schools — an issue that was not previously a topic of debate or concern — to try and stop the teaching of histories that explore systemic racism. That’s part of what authors and others have described as a mood “shift” in the UK — a budding “culture war” that is leading to the censorship and removal of books from school shelves. Books being removed are often children’s books that look at institutional racism, diversity and LGBTQ+ identities.

Echoes of US-based group tactics are also manifesting in Canada, with parental groups asking school boards to ban certain books — again with LGBTQ+ content — and seeking to change curricular topics that they see as being part of the teaching of critical race theory. The movement is also gaining the attention of politicians. Australia’s Senate voted against the inclusion of critical race theory in the country’s school curriculum in 2021.

Of course, educational censorship laws and book bans, particularly those aimed at silencing certain peoples, religions, or viewpoints, are tactics that have long been used by governments.

The US is inspiring education censorship elsewhere | Censorship | Al Jazeera

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