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The Governor is good for at least a dozen comments from readers, and at least half are nasty. My last article title, “Florida School Censors Play…About A Censored Play,” really hit readers’ nerves.
Many of them said I had some nerve suggesting that the play Indecent was canceled for other reasons besides being inappropriate for high school students “due to adult sexual dialog that is inappropriate for student cast members and student audiences, the district said in a statement.”
BOO
I will say one thing about DeSantis; he understands his brand to a tee. And while still, the Governor continues to overhaul higher education in Florida using his scare tactics as a test run for what he would do as president.
All of his education decisions are scary at best. However, the book bans are the most frightening, if that’s even possible, to rank. And it’s not just here. Some of DeSantis’ kindred spirits and governor buddies are in other states doing the same.
A few high-profile examples: In January 2022, a Tennessee county school board voted unanimously to remove the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Maus from eighth-grade lessons on the Holocaust. Fall of 2021, Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin made book banning a focal point of his successful 2021 campaign, targeting Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved. And Texas legislators passed HB3979, which prohibits teaching materials that could result in “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual’s race or sex.”
IT’S GETTING HOT OUT THERE
For many of us, the history of book banning brings to mind the images of Nazi book burnings of the 1930s, which was fictionalized a couple of decades later in Fahrenheit 451.
In fictionalizing the practice, we’ve allowed ourselves to think it’s something that couldn’t happen again. Yet, the antagonists committed to book banning right now are using many of the same strategies we saw in the past. So now we must push back this veiled attempt at parental control before we go back to the future.
One thing I don’t think we have to worry about (or perhaps we do) at the moment is having today’s students find the naughty books and report them to the book ban police. However, it wasn’t too long ago when students were given the job of finding books that fit the criteria set by the Nazis – there weren’t lists of titles like there are now; there were qualities or types of books.
And students were in charge of finding those books and leading the whole ritual of burning the books in public. I’m sure it was a pretty enticing handover to invite young people to lead this theatrical ritual.
REAL STUDENT INVOLVEMENT
But now it’s the same problem, new time. Students are indeed involved, but this time with their teachers in schools across the country — and now in public libraries — waging a brave fight against the organized book-banning campaigns that once seemed only the province of the worst kind of totalitarian governments — or dystopian YA science fiction.
And while those behind these campaigns hide behind the mask of “parental control,” what I think they’re concealing is fear: Fear of a country and world that’s changing around them, fear of voices that were kept silent too long who are now speaking up and demanding their seat at the table of power, and, mostly, fear of the erosion of their privilege.
YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP
But the scariest form of censorship once again comes from the creative minds of Florida’s top education office. A new state guidance in Florida is directing school districts to cover up books in classrooms that have not been approved under the law, restricting instruction and books on race and diversity and making it a felony for teachers to share pornographic material with students.
Can you imagine that a collective of adults has mandated books to be covered with cloth or paper?
I only wish I could show you a picture of this. It’s so embarrassing you will want to cover up.
This column is by Ritchie Lucas, Founder of The Student Success Project and Think Factory Consulting. He can be reached by email at ritchie@thinkfactory.com and on Facebook and You Tube as The Student Success Project.
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