10.33 Book Banning
A high school student I know was given a printout in her class of an executive order that Donald Trump made. The handout didn't give his reasons for making the order and had text added to it that said it would result in the banning of books.
Donald Trump after he was elected president for a second term issued an executive order titled "Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling" which removes federal funding for schools that teach Critical Race Theory. The executive order, instructs the secretary of education, secretary of defense and secretary of health and human services to work with the attorney general to enforce “patriotic education” and eliminate federal funding for schools promoting “indoctrination” based on “gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.”
The high school teacher is probably right. His executive order probably will result in certain books being removed from schools. It's important to understand why he issued that executive order. He wrote in the text of the order that:
Parents trust America’s schools to provide their children with a rigorous education and to instill a patriotic admiration for our incredible Nation and the values for which we stand.
In recent years, however, parents have witnessed schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight. Such an environment operates as an echo chamber, in which students are forced to accept these ideologies without question or critical examination. In many cases, innocent children are compelled to adopt identities as either victims or oppressors solely based on their skin color and other immutable characteristics. In other instances, young men and women are made to question whether they were born in the wrong body and whether to view their parents and their reality as enemies to be blamed. These practices not only erode critical thinking but also sow division, confusion, and distrust, which undermine the very foundations of personal identity and family unity.
Imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation’s children not only violates longstanding anti-discrimination civil rights law in many cases, but usurps basic parental authority. For example, steering students toward surgical and chemical mutilation without parental consent or involvement or allowing males access to private spaces designated for females may contravene Federal laws that protect parental rights, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), and sex-based equality and opportunity, including Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX). Similarly, demanding acquiescence to “White Privilege” or “unconscious bias,” actually promotes racial discrimination and undermines national unity.
My son's ELA teacher started 8th grade by teaching about book banning. She told his class that Governor DeSantis of Florida banned a lot of books that were LGBTQIA++ from schools. She said a lot of book bans have to do with older white Republican politicians who don't want kids to have ideas of LGBTQIA. There are plenty of online videos of parents confronting school administrators about porn books in the schools and many of them are not men and not white. See message to parents and school indoctrination. She also said it was an emotional thing for Republicans. She said that the reason that DeSantis banned the books was not because he felt that kids shouldn't be exposed to that but was so he could win people over for when he tries to run for president in an upcoming election. How does she know what DeSantis feels? She doesn't. Also if DeSantis banned books because it would win people over that means those people want him to do it. How does she know those people are wrong and she is right?
The teacher said one of the books that was banned in Florida was anti-racist baby and another was called Beloved. Beloved is about escaped slaves who live in fear that they will be captured by bounty hunters and sent back to their plantations. Some of the scenes in the book are very violent. "Beloved" is extremely violent, particularly towards children, and contains graphic sexual content. Another book banned is called Icebreakers. That was on the list of banned books that 7th graders are reading in my son's schools. It has a lot of graphic sex between a male and female ice skater.
What you don't hear is the leftists who complain about right wing banning of books, have banned books themselves. Many books the left doesn't like disappear from school shelves.
Ramona Bessinger a school teacher in Providence Rhode Island wrote:
"This past 2020/21 school year was a sad and worrisome turning point for me as
an educator. Providence K-8 teachers were introduced to one of the most racially
divisive, hateful, and in large part, historically inaccurate curriculums I have
ever seen in my teaching career.
Previously vetted books were removed from our classroom and sent to recycling.
Gone was the diverse collection of American and World Literature: House On Mango
Street by Sandra Cisneros, James Baldwin Go Tell It On The Mountain,
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, essays by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., poetry by
Maya Angelou, Robert Frost, Anne Frank, Night, The Boy In The Striped Pajamas,
Macbeth, Walt Whitman, The Salem Witch Trials, The Crucible , Holocaust studies,
world genocide, world art, universal themes, universal characters and any book
or short story from the literary cannon.
What saddened me most was that I would not be teaching the Holocaust any longer.
The Holocaust unit included one of the following: either Anne Frank, The Boy In
The Striped Pajamas, and depending on reading level, Elie Weisel’s Night When I
asked the school reading coach where all the Holocaust books were, she said “we
do not teach the Holocaust because kids can’t relate to the story.” What? Kids
can’t relate to genocide, hate, discrimination, and prejudice? Yes children can
relate to these universal themes, we all can. Children would never learn about
the evils of hatred during the Second World War? Why? What was it about the
truth and perspective that seemed to escape us during the 2020/21 school year?
Exactly why was all this great literature removed from our curriculum?
Then sometime around January 2021, hundreds of new leaflet style
booklets arrived, all poorly written, historically biased, inaccurate, and
pushing a racial narrative. I noticed the book covers right away. They were odd.
In some cases the book covers browned out the faces of historical characters
like Lincoln to look black or brown, none of the books were recognizable, and
all the booklets seemed to revolve around slavery or oppression."
One might wonder why people on the left would remove the essays of Martin Luther King. The reason probably is that Martin Luther King didn't want special favors for black people, he wanted blacks to be treated equally to whites. The left sees blacks as oppressed people and believe that there should be discrimination for blacks and against whites.
Note how the excuse for removing books on the Holocaust was that kids can't relate to the story but for some reason kids are supposed to relate to the slave trade. Perhaps the pushers of these new books don't want Jews to be viewed as an oppressed group since oppressed groups are at the top of their victimhood hierarchy who they believe should get special privileges and they don't want Jews to get special privileges.
Ramona Bessinger speaks in the video below.
Bethany Mandel created a conservative Heroes of America series. Ads for her
books were banned by the leftist censors at Facebook. She speaks about that in
the next video.
You can see a list of books that were banned in the U.S. before Trump became president by clicking here.
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