{"id":31061,"date":"2024-01-11T12:47:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-11T20:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=31061"},"modified":"2024-01-11T12:47:02","modified_gmt":"2024-01-11T20:47:02","slug":"no-this-is-not-a-parody-florida-school-district-bans-dictionaries-under-desantis-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/01\/11\/no-this-is-not-a-parody-florida-school-district-bans-dictionaries-under-desantis-law\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018NO, THIS IS NOT A PARODY\u2019: FLORIDA SCHOOL DISTRICT BANS DICTIONARIES UNDER DESANTIS LAW"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Student<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A student holds a placard at a walkout protesting Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 attacks on public education outside Orlando City Hall on April 21, 2023 in Orlando, Florida. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Photo: Paul Hennessy\/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Webster\u2019s Dictionary & Thesaurus<\/em> and The Diary of a Young Girl<\/em> by Anne Frank are among the books that the Escambia County School District has yanked from library shelves.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

JAKE JOHNSON<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan 10, 2024 (CommonDreams.org)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dictionaries and encyclopedias are among the more than 2,800 books<\/a> that a Florida school district has pulled from library shelves in an effort to comply with a law that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis<\/a> signed last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Judd Legum, author of the Popular Information<\/em> newsletter, reported<\/a> Wednesday that the Escambia County School District said the books that have been banned pending further investigation \u201cmay violate H.B. 1069,\u201d which \u201cgives residents the right to demand the removal of any library book that \u2018depicts or describes sexual conduct<\/a>,\u2019 as defined under Florida law<\/a>, whether or not the book is pornographic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRather than considering complaints, the Escambia County School Board adopted an emergency rule<\/a> last June that required the district\u2019s librarians to conduct a review of all library books and remove titles that may violate H.B. 1069,\u201d Legum noted. \u201cEach school in Escambia County has thousands of titles. As a result, many school libraries were closed<\/a> at the beginning of the school year pending the completion of the review.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/JuddLegum\/status\/1745105570258927747?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1745105570258927747%7Ctwgr%5E24751769dad5507cbc3d2c438e1dbf9b682d15ab%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fflorida-bans-dictionaries<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Florida led the United States in book bans during the 2022-2023 school year, with PEN America documenting<\/a> 1,972 instances of bans across 37 districts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn a state with approximately 70 districts, this means that over half of all Florida school districts experienced banning activity,\u201d PEN noted in a recent report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PEN, Penguin Random House, and a coalition of authors joined parents and students last year in filing a lawsuit<\/a> against Escambia County in federal court, arguing that the mass removal of books from school libraries violates the plaintiffs\u2019 \u201crights to free speech and equal protection under the law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A hearing in the case was scheduled to take place on Wednesday. Florida\u2019s Republican attorney is backing<\/a> Escambia\u2019s school board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn a brief submitted by the state of Florida in support of Escambia, Attorney General Ashley Moody argued that the school board could ban books for any reason because the purpose of public school libraries is to \u2018convey the government\u2019s message<\/a>,\u2019 and that can be accomplished through \u2018the removal of speech that the government disapproves,’\u201d Legum noted Wednesday. \u201cThis is a novel argument about the purpose of school libraries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to Webster\u2019s Dictionary & Thesaurus for Students<\/em> and The American Heritage Children\u2019s Dictionary<\/em>, Escambia County is denying students access to biographies of former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the singer and songwriter Beyonc\u00e9, and talk show host Oprah Winfrey, according to a list obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The list also includes The Diary of a Young Girl<\/em> by Anne Frank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Escambia County School Board banned most of these books at the request of Vicki Baggett, a high school English teacher in the county,\u201d Legum reported. \u201cBaggett is responsible for hundreds of challenges in Escambia County and neighboring counties.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAKE JOHNSON<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full Bio ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A student holds a placard at a walkout protesting Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 attacks on public education outside Orlando City Hall on April 21, 2023 in Orlando, Florida.  (Photo: Paul Hennessy\/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) Webster\u2019s Dictionary & Thesaurus and The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank are among the books… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1710],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31061"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31061"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31062,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31061\/revisions\/31062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}