From masks to book banning, conservatives take on educators
By: Tiffany D. Jackson (MyNorthwest. com)
.....when things took an abrupt turn and a parent started reading aloud sexually explicit passages from a book available in school libraries.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Updated: Dec 19, 2021, 8:11 am
Amanda Darrow, director of youth, family and education programs at the Utah Pride Center, poses with books that have been the subject of complaints from parents in recent weeks on Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021, in Salt Lake City. Parents who first packed school board meetings to express their opposition to mask mandates and other COVID-19 measures have since broadened their focus to other issues they say clash with conservative values, including teachings about social justice, gender, race and history. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — A recent Wyoming school board meeting was again packed with opponents of mask mandates when things took an abrupt turn and a parent started reading aloud sexually explicit passages from a book available in school libraries.
"Parents like myself had no idea this stuff was here," the parent, Shannon Ashby, told trustees of Laramie County School District No. 1 in the capital city.
The push to remove objectionable books from school libraries is part of a renewed conservative interest in public education as a political issue since the start of the pandemic. Parents who first packed school board meetings to express their opposition to mask mandates and other COVID-19 measures have since broadened their focus to other issues they say clash with conservative values, including teachings about social justice, gender, race and history.
Such issues played a key role in last month's Virginia governor's election and are now poised to be in the Republican spotlight in the 2022 midterms.
"If you put pictures to the material that was read, our superintendent would be in jail for trafficking in kiddie porn," said Darin Smith, a local attorney and former Republican congressional candidate whose wife is on the school board. "I would never have known these extreme leftists that are controlling our school district had I not gone to voice my opposition to the masking."
The award-winning book Ashby wants pulled from Cheyenne high school and middle schools, "Monday's Not Coming," by Tiffany D. Jackson, is a novel about the mysterious disappearance of a Black teenager. Supporters say it contains important messages about topics such as poverty, child abuse and friendship, though it does includes scenes such as a boy and a girl having sex on a teacher's desk.
Ashby also read allusions to sex acts in "Traffick," by Ellen Hopkins, a novel about teenagers victimized by sex trafficking.
Similar disputes over public school curricula and books arose recently in Virginia, where with help from former Vice President Mike Pence they became a major issue in Republican Glenn Youngkin's successful campaign for governor.
They've also been a political issue in the Carolinas and Texas while school officials in Kansas pulled almost 30 books from shelves after a complaint but soon returned them.
In Utah, the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union opened an investigation in November after a suburban Salt Lake City district removed several books including "The Bluest Eye," by Toni Morrison, pending investigation into a parent complaint. Other books that have been the subject of complaints in the city's schools include titles with LGBTQ characters and plot lines.
"There is a wave of well-funded, well-organized attacks in our schools and looking to remove library books from the shelves," Utah Education Association President Heidi Matthews said.
Library organizations are pushing back, pointing out that many of the books in question depict struggles of minorities. Efforts to remove them send a message to minority youth that their views don't matter, said Deborah Caldwell Stone, director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom.
"It's a terrible message to send to young people," Stone said. "For me, it's just astonishing that so many groups that use 'liberty' in their names, that claim that they're all for freedom and the individual right to exercise freedom, resort so quickly to use censorship."
Ashby belongs to Moms for Liberty, a conservative group that says it challenges "short-sighted and destructive" policies in public schools.
Wyoming's top education official, however, questioned whether the book disputes are a fundamentally conservative cause.
"Labeling this as a 'conservative' issue is a disservice to parents and their children. We should embrace parents wanting to engage with their children's education, not label them," Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow, a Republican, said in a statement Thursday.
In September, Balow joined Wyoming's Republican legislative leaders in supporting proposed state legislation to counter the teaching of " critical race theory," which has become a catch-all term for efforts to teach that systemic racism remains a persistent problem in the U.S. Opponents of those efforts say they are divisive and counterproductive.
Balow noted that disputes over books aren't new. Since the 1970s, for example, several books by children's and young adult author Judy Blume have been banned from schools and libraries for everything from sexuality to endings people didn't like. Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is another frequent target due to racist language.
Ashby said she first heard about the books in the Cheyenne district after tuning in to conservative podcasts. She then checked an online school library book database to see which books mentioned in the podcasts were in Cheyenne.
"I figured living in Cheyenne, Wyoming, we would be safe," said Ashby, who removed her three children from the district at the start of the school year because of the mask mandate.
Cheyenne school officials haven't begun reviewing the books Ashby opposes because nobody has filed a formal complaint, Superintendent Margaret Crespo said.
Crespo said book opponents at school board meetings represent a small fraction of the community and not those who've written or spoken to school officials in support, though the district has begun adjusting its policies for books, including how they are purchased and checked out.
Opponents of the books gained one school board member's sympathy after district officials deleted Ashby's reading of the sexual material from an online video out of concern YouTube could suspend the district's account.
"If we have books in our system that are not appropriate to be read at our school board meeting, then maybe they're not appropriate to be read in our school district," Trustee Christy Klaassen said to applause and cheers at a school board meeting Dec. 6.
The district has an opt out policy for parents who don't want their children to check out books with mature content but should consider an "opt in" policy instead, said Klaassen, whose husband was the Donald Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Wyoming until January.
On the night Ashby read to the school board, just one person spoke in favor of the mask mandate or keeping the books.
"Parents should read what their kids are reading, and if they don't approve it, don't let them read it. That doesn't mean that they have the right to make that decision for every other family," Dr. Renee Hinkle, a local obstetrician, said over heckling.
Mendee Cotton, a grandparent of seven local students, told the Cheyenne school board that what was in the books was "pornography, pedophilia" and parents wouldn't stop until they were gone.
"The sleeping giant is awake. You affected our kids and now we are angry," she said. "Make no mistake, this is a war."
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Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst in Salt Lake City contributed to this report.
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Follow Mead Gruver at https://twitter.com/meadgruver
Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Make no doubt about it, Middle America is beginning to wake up to what has been going on behind their backs... In some cases for over a decade...
And they are not happy....
No, we are not happy and we will keep on our local school boards cases until they listen to us or get voted out of office and replaced by those that will. From mask and covid vaccine mandates for minors to porn in school libraries to trans in girls bathrooms and on their sports teams to 1619 propaganda and CRT, we’re not going take it anymore.
So now the 'right' are all for burning books I see.
Not all the right and not all books. Only some the "left" feel are okay. Big difference.
So you agree that the 'right' is all for burning books that they don't agree with.
If you think it is the right that is all for burning books,then it must be outside agitators that are doing it.
“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” (A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens)
“A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon.” (Captain Beatty,- Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury)
"The sleeper has awakened" (Moa'dib - Dune, by Frank Herbert)
Don't you just LOVE the movies?
Sure; but it seems the left forgot what books are really for.
Certainly do...
Lets try this one as an example... (there is a subsequent specific purpose for posting this one in relation to censorship that is completely apropos...)
And as far as books go... I give you Mark Twain....
Mark Twain :
Another Movie quote? I give you...
LoTR "PREPARE FOR BATTLE"
That is what parents around the nation are saying to the school boards...
Another voice in the wilderness...
Yes, voices in the wilderness is quite accurate, since pretty well everyone on this site knows I'm unable to open Youtube. I may be living where censorship is routine, but I thought America glorified its "free speech", although I can't quite reconcile that with its unbelievable extradition of Julian Assange who had exercised his right to free speech from afar.
By the way, I think Samuel Clemens was quite right, the bible probably contains more that young minds should avoid reading than Lady Chatterly's Lover, but that'll be the day that anyone would prevent a kid from reading the bible, even as early as once a kid knows how to read.
CRT isn't being taught in schools, so there's that.
So then you have no problem having laws that bar CRT from ever being taught, since it's not being taught anyway, right?
I'd be interested in hearing the answer to that one.
Crickets are chirping loudly...
And they will continue...
She doesn't have to answer to any of us, dontcha know!
Again, CRT isn't being taught in schools, so there's that.
Superintendent says Detroit schools 'deeply using critical race theory' (yahoo.com)
The superintendent of Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) said earlier this month that schools in his district are "deeply using critical race theory," claiming students must learn about historical injustice in the United States "to better understand who they are."
Superintendent Nikolai Vitti made the remarks during a Nov. 9 school board meeting, footage of which went viral Tuesday after being disseminated on Twitter by Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo.
"Our curriculum is deeply using critical race theory, especially in social studies, but you’ll find it in English, language arts, and the other disciplines," Vitti said. "We’re very intentional about creating a curriculum, infusing materials and embedding critical race theory within our curriculum."
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I'm also not the subject/topic of this 'article'
Only one willing to listen?
Then why are you making yourself the subject?
Knock it off... Only warning...
Knock what off?
If I had to wager a guess, I would say your normal bullshit victimhood and childish tendency to reply to yourself instead of the person whom you are addressing. Well there is the constant trolling issue also.
Answering to yourself, especially when you are insulting the person you are really answering to. I know you have been told before today to stop that bullshit.
And your guess is correct
You need to have others stop making me the topic of your 'article'
You need to knock that off!
Well the point being is that the issue is way beyond banning books in the school library at this point... It IS about the government deciding that it CONTROLS what our children will learn... That IS NOT the American way, never has been and never will be...
Government controls the schools now, which ws the point of creating the Department of Education... People were warned about it way back when Carter created it, now the roosters have come home to roost...
Government schools are completely political brainwashing now.... Just ask some of the native members of the board how that turned out for them... The thing is, they can't hide it anymore...
The you Tube video is a conservative black man explaining this to a bunch of white folk... {chuckle}
And I agree with Sam as well... A person should not have the bible driven into their skulls until they are ready to learn it... That's how you create bible thumpers, which do not help the cause at all... That goes for all religions, Koran, Torah, Book of Mormon, etc... etc... God is individual, he will speak to everyone when they want him to... But first they have to make a choice which no one can make for them...
Rather than teaching students to think critically, which is why voters elect avaricious power-hungry representatives for government instead of candidates who genuinely want to improve the lives of the citizens.
But the American education system has always, in the opinion of Canadian students, been deficient. I've told this story before and I'll tell it again When I was a teenager the kids from Canada used to mix with the kids from Buffalo at Crystal Beach, Ontario, just across the Niagara River from Buffalo on the north shore of Lake Erie, where there was a beautiful beach and a huge amusement park with a famous Ferris wheel, and I sure miss the Loganberry drink at the stand where we would all congregate. The American kids would lament that they only got final marks on their exams of 96 or 97% which totally dumbfounded us Canadian kids who had to study our ass off to get an honours mark of 75 or 80%. We Canadian kids had a joke at that time that you could take a course at University of Miami in Basket Weaving. Now I wonder if you could get a B.A. degree majoring in it.
When I was a teen, the US education system was considered one of the finest in the world... Foreign exchange students were vying for high school slots on a very competitive basis, All of our science classrooms were equipped like labs... Each school had their own press room and newspaper... Of course in math class there was no such thing as a calculator, they hadn't been invented yet... Engineering class actually had drafting tables...
Try and find such in most highschools today... Good luck... You guys were dumbfounded? no wonder...
Today? kids going to community colleges fresh out of highschool need remedial reading and math before they are even allowed to enroll.. Schools require you to take tests to see if you can can handle the curriculum... Junior college curriculum... Doesn't matter where or when you got your diploma, it's a blanket policy... I've had to do that several times and the tests are incredibly easy... High school diplomas mean nothing as far as actual knowledge anymore, the education we got in high school you don't even begin get in community colleges today... (except for the major universities, which have to lower their standards to make sure they have enough of the "Right" people) Yet people worldwide fight to get a chance to get into our major universities....
On top of that, the competition to get into a good school means most can't even consider it in their future... Even if you can get in you need very deep pockets to be able to pay for it of bury yourself in debt for the rest of your life...
Books in the library? what a joke, how about direct sexual education in the classroom, anal sex, oral sex, vaginal sex, homosexual sex, it's all directly taught.. (at least here in Washington it is) and if your kid even shows the slighted hint at inquiry into homosexual practices or as they call it "Gender Confusion" they have psychologists on staff which are called in to "Counsel" them on their latent preferences, with the availability of all the various drugs needed to physically manifest there latent transgenderism.. All without ANY information or involvement of the parents, to the point of removing the kids from the parents control if they feel it is needed...
Parent have been arrested for trying to interfere with this sexual transgender brainwashing, they aren't allowing the kid to make a choice, they are pushing the kid toward the choice they want them to make...
Yeah, public school is a wonderful thing today... If your into race hate, gender hate, and sexual hate... Hell they even have children doing political advertisement's for the teachers unions when they go on strike, (which are against the law btw) they have them marching and carrying signs during protests...
Lots of little uneducated political psychophants are what coming out of the schools here in Washington.. Is it any wonder that this state is as fucked up as it is?
And on top it all, the Teachers Unions actually filed suit to keep from being vaxed! YEAH they didn't want the vaccinations, they really didn't want to go back to in person classes either, but it was soon explained to them that if they don't, then it will be awful hard to justify all the taxes they are collecting for them... And look at all those parents who are finding out for the first time what their children are actually being taught!!! Some of them were forced to sign agreements that they wouldn't observe the online learning courses or their kids would be expelled.... Now, they are ok with going back to classes as long as EVERY KID is masked and vaxxed ... (including kindergarteners)
So I'll stand with you and insult the Government Public Schools in America or more factually the Government public political indoctrination centers of America...
They are really fucked up...
Former Gov McAuliffe believes that parents should have no say in what their children are taught in schools and it cost him the election.
The Indian Boarding Schools had nothing to do with what is perceived as the current problem, period. It was the government and the American people's answer to the ''Indian Problem'' and it was cultural genocide nothing less. There were over 300 such schools in the US and the vast majority were run by various religious groups. Do not associate today's issues with one of the darkest moments in American/Indian history.
Why not? what's now going on in our schools is one of the darkest things that has ever happened in America ...
You call it cultural genocide? well so do I... They are trying to kill a culture... It is definitely being run by a religious mob who want's to instill their vision of society...
In my opinion, it's EXACTLY the same thing...
It's not even close, let me know when children are taken from their parents and forced into boarding schools when they suffer from not only physical abuse but sexual abuse, or a total lack of medical care when they are rented out of white families as labor. When they die and are buried without the parents knowing what happened to their children.
It's not the same no matter what your opinion of it is.
As far as transgenderism goes that IS exactly happening.... And parents are being arrested and all other kinds of government oppression for fighting it... the only recourse if to move out of state...
Just because they have changed methods and focus doesn't mean it's any damned different...
Who the hell brought up transgenderism, I didn't so stop with the strawman BS.
Until you can answer my questions in 4.3.2 your comparison is nonsense and a pathetic attempt to tie today to a 100 year genocide of NA children when it isn't even in the same universe.
I brought up the policy, nothing else, you want to use what was done with the indian schools to disparage the comparison.., but the fact is the policy of hate is the same.... it is being done in the State of Washington today to push transgenderism as an example of the same policy in action today... and with CRT race hate as well...
What was done to the indian children over 100 years is despicable, tragic and wrong... But the continuing of the policies of political hate is wrong no matter where or how they are applied...
BS, you compared what is happening today to NA's so stop trying to BS your way through this.
Not everyone in WN thinks the way you do, many, including some relatives of mine are not pissing their pants over what is being taught to their kids.
Not BSing anything... I've ALWAYS been talking about government policies... overarching government policies are ALWAYS damaging/destructive to those they claim to be serving... I understand there is not only a tragic history you want respected and a racist history you wish to expose, there is also a singular political point you want to make with the exposure... I want to make the same point... problem is and why you need to disparage a clear point is it is your political side that is using the policy in modern terms still today...
And since this discussion IS about the policy being WRONG for everyone... it is fair game...
I'm sure your relatives are not worried about it.... That doesn't make the policy issue invalid... Rest assured, there are plenty of other citizens that are extremely disturbed by it...
You are trying to talk to someone that admitted they haven't been in school since before the advent of calculators saying that all public schools are indoctrination centers.
That right there says what you are trying to deal with...
{Chuckle}
Very funny, I GRADUATED High School before there were calculators... you remember? back when they actually, really educated kids on how to deal with the world? Not like today where they teach them to whine and cry about things that have nothing to do with the real world today...
When I was in middle school I was all excited about getting a digital watch. So no, I don't remember.
So what is your solution to the educational system? Stop funding and privatize?
Seems that the Washington state schools are quite good and the general living situations are quite good as well.
It has now being exposed in much of the national media and I don't want to make any singular political point, what I said is quite clear and that is that your complaints about schools is in no way relevant to the boarding school. It's that simple.
It also doesn't make your policy issue valid. According to others that live in WA it's a great place to live including the school system.
So that is all you got?
A generic average weighted polling ranking from USW&WR as to their opinion on how all 50 states statistically ranks reported by the news?
And a self serving report to USN&WR from the Washington Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction?
That's it? You got to be kidding me?
Here's some for you to peruse...
Transgenderism-
(read the comments section on the last one)
Sex Ed-
(The last link, the facebook page, the link to the page on the state Department of Educations website showing the list of books is long gone, but they did cap a section of it before it disappeared)
I would say you haven't a clue about what is happening in the State of Washington..
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The Government policy issue is as valid as it comes, and excuse me, the two links you provide from USN&WR are hardly from people living in the State of Washington and are therefore useless to the discussion...
[Deleted] I'm not really, not touching it at all... Just making a statement that government forcing things on it's citizens and abusing citizens are not new and schools have historically been used to propagate such... That is the only similarity to your Indian School story... That is one particular tragic and horrible chapter in our history and is a story that should be told... But the ideals of it live on today in our government controlled schools...
And that is something that just cannot be argued with... Factually... I'm sorry you feel that this interlopes on your story, it really doesn't...
Seems that you've now concentred on transgenderism and various other books on sex ed. Too bad that isn't what you started out with, but I guess you need to pull up your ''conservative blogs/article/groups to support your nonsense. Facebook as a source..LOL
I would say that your bias opinion is better than no opinion but not by much.
Of course, it can be argued factually, but only to those that understand facts/reality.
Nice selective opinion there, EVERYONE of those links deal with the government's mandates to eduction that they must carry this curricula..
Ignoring that part (the lions share) is acknowledgement that the point is made..
It is exactly what I started out about... and just calling it nonsense doesn't make it nonsense... Proof of that? discrediting the source instead of looking at the evidence it presents is a perfect example of prejudging...
I know the mantra when you can't refute facts and evidence, obfuscate, ignore and disparage.... I don't agree so it MUST be garbage...
Thank you...
Now we have the you must understand it before I can explain it to you argument... that's been coming out a lot recently in debates over liberal policies... and personal insults when the facts can't be disputed rationally..
When you opponent resort to such tactics, they are admitting they cannot support their position...
The issue I raised her is a valid one, the ideological policies of the current government create victims, and teaches them that their only value is their victimhood... And that is sad...
What insults? You are the one that had a couple of violations in the exchange, not me...LOL more facts for you.
In your opinion which isn't a fact.
I'll let you have the last word... Merry Christmas...
So much ado about nothing. These parents need to find something to do with their lives besides complaining about things that aren't happening.
They are seeing it with their own eyes. Their mind will not change no matter how often people from outside their area tell them not to believe what they see..
It's not happening. They're just making shit up
Why don't people understand: sexually explicit =good, Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head= Bad
Thread @3.2 locked for meta.
The left has about a 50 year head start, and universities are probably too far gone at this point, but it's a good start.
Politics is downstream of culture, which includes education, and the left has increasingly dominated the field since the late 60s. Restoring balance starts in the schools.
There is much evidence that there are many places where it is being taught in their schools and some districts openly admit that it is and others are trying over parental objections to implement it. That various forms of CRT are being woven into school curricula even into subjects unrelated to civics or social studies/history is true beyond all doubt.
But yet still some people have mile wide blinders on and keep insisting this is not the case, even when presented with evidence to the contrary.