The screaming backlash against the Critical Race Theory boogeyman is now resulting in school districts banning books again, this time in Wichita, Kansas.
The Goddard school district has removed more than two dozen books from circulation in the district’s school libraries, citing national attention and challenges to the books elsewhere.
The list of books includes several well-known novels, including “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood, “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky.
It also includes “Fences,” a play by August Wilson that won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1987, and “They Called Themselves the K.K.K.,” a historical look at how the white supremacist group took root in America.
Julie Cannizzo, assistant superintendent for academic affairs in Goddard, sent an email to principals and librarians last week with the list of 29 books.
“At this time, the district is not in a position to know if the books contained on this list meet our educational goals or not,” Cannizzo wrote in the email. “Additionally, we need to gain a better understanding of the processes utilized to select books for our school libraries.
“For these reasons, please do not allow any of these books to be checked out while we are in the process of gathering more information. If a book on this list is currently checked out, please do (not) allow it to be checked out again once it's returned.”
Cannizzo said in the email that the district is assembling a committee to “rate the content of the books on the list” and to review the selection process. She did not say how long the process is expected to take.
Cannizzo said Tuesday that one parent objected to language he found offensive in “The Hate U Give,” a novel about the aftermath of a police officer killing a Black teenager. The parent then submitted a list of books he questioned, and district officials agreed to halt checkouts and complete a review.
"We're not banning these books or anything like that as a district," she said. "It was just brought to our attention that that list of books may have content that's unsuitable for children."
We're not banning books, we're just taking them out of circulation indefinitely and making them completely unavailable until we can assess them at some indeterminate future date.
It's not just Kansas, oh no. They want to literally burn books in Virginia now.
The Spotsylvania County School Board has directed staff to begin removing books that contain “sexually explicit” material from library shelves and report on the number of books that have been removed at a special called meeting next week.
The directive came after a parent raised concerns at the School Board’s meeting Monday about books available through the Riverbend High School’s digital library app.
The board also requested a report next week on the process by which books are selected for inclusion in digital and hard copy library collections at the different school levels and indicated that it will consider a division-wide library audit.
The criteria for pulling books from circulation this week is “sexually explicit,” but the board plans to refine how material is determined to be “objectionable” for a further review of library holdings.
The board voted 6–0 to order the removal. Berkeley District representative Erin Grampp was not in attendance for the vote on that issue.
Two board members, Courtland representative Rabih Abuismail and Livingston representative Kirk Twigg, said they would like to see the removed books burned.
“I think we should throw those books in a fire,” Abuismail said, and Twigg said he wants to “see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.”
Literally tossing these books into the fire so everyone can see them being torched.
But let's be honest. In effect, we're canceling these cultural icons because white parents are very, very angry at awful mean lying Democrats.
The left’s CRT denial is intellectually dishonest. Just because grade-school students are not studying academic treatises on critical race theory does not mean it is not being taught in schools. Most of these students are also not reading Karl Marx, but if they were being instructed by teachers trained in Marxist thought to see everything through the prism of class struggle, they would be learning Marxism. Well, today children are being instructed by teachers trained in CRT to see everything through the prism of race; to believe that the United States is a systemically racist country; and to believe that society is divided into two classes — oppressors and oppressed — and that which you are is determined by the color of your skin. That is critical race theory.
Democrats are gaslighting American parents — telling them not to believe what they can see with their own eyes. Before the pandemic this might have worked. Most parents didn’t know firsthand what their children were being taught. But during last year’s lockdowns that changed. Millions of parents were stuck working from home while their kids were attending school online — which allowed parents to see for the first time what their kids were learning in the classroom. Many did not like what they saw. Nor did they like being told that the promotion of CRT is a figment of their imaginations, when in Virginia, it is right on the Department of Education’s website for all to see. So, they rose up to demand change.
Yet even after their electoral shellacking last Tuesday, Democrats are doubling down on the strategy of denigrating parents for raising legitimate concerns about their children’s education. Sorry, parents know that critical race theory is a real problem — and if Democrats continue telling parents their concerns are imaginary, they will continue to pay a price at the polls.
By the way, that's not a screed from the Daily Wire or Breitbart or National Review, that's Marc Theissen at the Washington Post now saying this.
When thinking about next year’s elections, a mere 3 percent of Americans — including just 2 percent of Republicans and 5 percent of parents with kids under 18 — say schools are the most important issue to them, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.
Those meager numbers suggest that while some sliver of the electorate may continue to fixate on COVID restrictions, critical race theory (CRT) and other so-called violations of “parents’ rights” — the issues that supposedly drove Democrats to defeat last week in otherwise blue Virginia — widespread school backlash would appear unlikely to define or decide the 2022 midterms.
At the same time, Democrats could face serious setbacks one year from now unless they restore faith in their economic stewardship — and unless President Biden can revive his cratering approval numbers.
The survey of 1,673 U.S. adults, which was conducted from Nov. 4 to 8, indicates that an emphasis on school curricula, particularly when it comes to lessons on race and racism, isn’t necessarily the GOP’s best bet for winning back control of Congress and state capitals next November.
As prices rise and shortages persist, the number of Americans who say the economy is the most important issue to them when thinking about the 2022 elections (31 percent) is 10 times higher than the number who say the same about schools. The number who choose health care as their most important issue, meanwhile, is four times higher (13 percent); those who say climate change (10 percent) or the coronavirus (10 percent) is three times higher. Immigration (9 percent) and changing the balance of power in Washington (8 percent) also outrank schools.
The reason schools languish near the bottom of the list is simple: 54 percent of Americans — and, more to the point, 60 percent of parents — rate schools in their area as either excellent or good. Less than a third (32 percent) of either group describe their schools as only fair or poor.
Dems are indeed in real trouble of another 1994/2010/2014 House blowout by the GOP, but it's not because of what Junior's learning in school.
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