[RANT]
Who knows their history? What happened on May tenth in history?
Maybe this from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum might help with your memory.
On May 10, 1933, university students burn upwards of 25,000 “un-German” books in Berlin’s Opera Square. Some 40,000 people gather to hear Joseph Goebbels deliver a fiery address: “No to decadence and moral corruption!”
Did that jog your memory?
Banned: Books on race and sexuality are disappearing from Texas schools in record numbers
Facing pressure from parents and threats of criminal charges, some districts have ignored policies meant to prevent censorship. Librarians and students are pushing back.
NBC News
By Mike Hixenbaugh
February 1, 2022
KATY, Texas — From a secluded spot in her high school library, a 17-year-old girl spoke softly into her cellphone, worried that someone might overhear her say the things she’d hidden from her parents for years. They don’t know she’s queer, the student told a reporter, and given their past comments about homosexuality’s being a sin, she’s long feared they would learn her secret if they saw what she reads in the library.That space, with its endless rows of books about characters from all sorts of backgrounds, has been her “safe haven,” she said — one of the few places where she feels completely free to be herself.
Disappeared from the selves are…
Gone: “Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts),” a book she’d read last year about a gay teenager who isn’t shy about discussing his adventurous sex life. Also banished: “The Handsome Girl and Her Beautiful Boy,” “All Boys Aren’t Blue” and “Lawn Boy” — all coming-of-age stories that prominently feature LGBTQ characters and passages about sex. Some titles were removed after parents formally complained, but others were quietly banned by the district without official reviews.
[…]
Another parent in Katy, a Houston suburb, asked the district to remove a children’s biography of Michelle Obama, arguing that it promotes “reverse racism” against white people, according to the records obtained by NBC News. A parent in the Dallas suburb of Prosper wanted the school district to ban a children’s picture book about the life of Black Olympian Wilma Rudolph, because it mentions racism that Rudolph faced growing up in Tennessee in the 1940s. In the affluent Eanes Independent School District in Austin, a parent proposed replacing four books about racism, including “How to Be an Antiracist,” by Ibram X. Kendi, with copies of the Bible.
Some legislators have over 850 books on their hit list.
At a subsequent school board meeting, North East leaders said that they had pulled the books for review after Krause, the Republican lawmaker, distributed his list of 850 titles that he said violate new state laws governing how sex and race are addressed in Texas classrooms. North East spokesperson Aubrey Chancellor did not respond to a reporter’s request for comment, but told the Texas Tribune in December that the district asked staff to review books on Krause’s list “to ensure they did not have any obscene or vulgar material in them.”
The first thing that the fascists in Germany did was to try to control the minds of school children. PBS’s the American Experience,
As early as two weeks before, American organizations like the American Jewish Congress knew of the planned book burnings and launched protests. With her books slated for the bonfires, Helen Keller confronted German students in an open letter: "History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them. You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds." Similarly, novelist Sherwood Anderson, best-selling author Faith Baldwin, scriptwriter Erwin Cobb, and Nobel laureate Sinclair Lewis declared their solidarity with the banned writers and publicly protested the book burnings. Many writers called to mind the prophetic observation by 19th century German writer Heinrich Heine that "where one burns books, one will soon burn people."
Meanwhile around the nation Republicans are introducing legislator to micro manage what teachers can teach with vague language like "Divisive concepts" that started in Florida. The Indianapolis Star wrote about some of the laws legislators want to pass.
Senate Bill 167 & 1134:
Indiana Sen. Scott Baldwin, R-Noblesville, is one of the bill's authors. He said the bill is designed to prohibit schools from teaching concepts that "divide and stereotype people."
In the first week of this year's legislative session in Indiana, Baldwin suggested that teachers should remain neutral on fascism, Nazism and Marxism. He later walked back the comments, but has been criticized widely.
[…]
House Bill 1134 differs slightly from its Senate counterpart, but contains the same language that would prohibit divisive content. On Wednesday, Jan. 13, it was amended Wednesday to clarify that teachers can condemn concepts such as Nazism in the classroom.
I end this with a quote from Edward R. Murrow to Senator Joe McCarthy, “Have You No Sense of Decency, Sir?”
[/RANT]
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