Teaching 101. If you don't want your child reading a particular book, work with the teachers for an alternative, but do not deny the rest of the young people the opportunity to question, inquire, explore, discover, and learn. And if you don't want them in an environment where curiosity, skills, critical thinking, and wonder are upheld and encouraged, pull your kid out of school. Home school them. Enroll them in private schools aligned to your restrictive values. Bring your child back to the cave where you can chain them up and teach them about the false shadows you want them to know and believe in. Keep them away from the Plato, because shaping the world into something better is obviously not your intent.
I am unsure if the paranoia is another symptom of Covid-19, or this is more reactionary knee-jerking from minds who have chosen non-enlightenment as a way of being, but it's getting insane. And it's wrong.
As a lawyer scholar said to me yesterday, these decisions will go county by county, school by school, board by board. Courts side with the local in the case of censorship and the only power a community has is to promote open-minded, forward thinking individuals to serve their school districts. This means that teachers, thinkers, students, and doers need to be active. It's the only way to counter Voldemort and his minions.
The mood from this weather has trickled into my mood about this phenomenon. It's so outrageously dumb and horrible, that I don't even want to acknowledge it. I feel Garfield on a Monday morning.
Both/And. Teach everything. Read everything. Question everything. KNOW.
That is the heart and soul of teaching. Every child arrives with wonder and schools should NOT be the place where this is squashed. If you want to abolish thinking and knowing, keep your children home and become the educator you want them to have. Don't destroy schools because you live with a closed mind. Just leave. Do a better job because you know you can. Most of us trust that you DO have what it takes to raise an exceptional child. Your superiority is obvious.
But leave intellect, knowledge, and truth-finding to libraries and the schooling spaces that encourage diversity in thought, exploration, and deep questioning. Leave that to the professionals, the teachers, and the very individuals who most believe in democracy and the values of the United States.
Period. End Stop. The End.
I'm going back to grading.