Issue 2

As an educator and a committed life-long learner, I am an avid reader. Even if I were not, I would encourage others as reading leads to exposure to ideas, creativity, and challenging one's perceptions of the world. Reading anything allows us to grow as humans, experience a world beyond our own, and simply provide escape. Books can allow humans to feel seen in ways they may not otherwise experience day-to-day. To limit this is to limit humanity.

A frightening trend is the banning of books and forms of censorship in school districts and public libraries across the states, to include Florida. In Washington state it has been reported that a principal began soft pulling books relating to LBGTQ issues claiming "sexual explicitness" without due process or following procedure. In the same state, another district pulled To Kill a Mockingbird citing racial concerns. In Tennessee a school district pulled the book Maus citing nudeness......of mice, and profanity. In Orange County School District, Florida books like Gender Queer were recently pulled for sexual concerns. The list goes on. In Osceola School District, curriculum was provided to students in high school which had been clearly censored removing references by Martin Luther King Jr. in his writing to police brutality.

Let me be perfectly clear: The censorship or banning of writing by a school district, a form of government, explicitly goes against the First Amendment which prevents government from creating laws against forms of speech. This issue aside, which is clearly being ignored, educators have a responsibility to educate all students. True education should be challenging, enlightening, thought-provoking. It should be all inclusive. When we limit text or books, we limit education and do students a grave injustice. In some communities, students are not able to travel the world or to other locations, meet new and different people; books allow them to do that.

Many times, most of the time, adults want to ban books simply because they want to limit those experiences to maintain the status quo or are afraid of

having difficult conversations with their children. Perhaps, they have limited experiences themselves, limited views of the world and the idea of their children challenging that exposes their inadequacies or failings/failures. These parents and individuals do not take to change easily and right now the world is changing in drastic ways. We are, as a society, becoming more open-minded, more tolerant, more inclusive, more equitable. Those who are not of that mindset find the changing world scary and are seeking to reverse course. How best to do this but through banning and censoring the world their children are

exposed to that would change and challenge this plan?

As educators this is a trend we need to fight with desperation. Education is not education if it is censored or banned. What are we doing if we allow this to happen? For some of our students, books are the only way to lift them from their circumstances, to save them from desperation, to normalize their very existence. As adults, I encourage you to read these books as well, so you are aware of the struggles our students are going through that they may not feel comfortable discussing, but perhaps a book will connect you to them and open such discussions safely and comfortably. For instance, I recently read a book called Once & Future. It takes place in a future human society where the idea of gender fluidity and sexual orientation of all kinds is entirely normalized. Although I consider myself incredible open-minded, the way the book normalizes it is so normal that you see how easy the world can be if we just stopped putting up barriers. Having grown up being taught that the pronouns "they/them" are inherently plural learning to use these terms in reference to an individual binary person has been challenging. Reading this book helped me grow, helped me view how things could just be different. It helped me as an educator of students who identify as binary. This is what reading books does for our students. To take this away from them limits their understanding of the world, limits their growth as individuals, which limits their development and academic growth.

Censoring what we teach, what students are exposed to is a scary trend both happening with books, curriculum, and in legislation. Currently there are multiple bills being discussed in Florida which would limit conversations teachers can have with students and the history they are allowed to teach. We will be discussing that in the next issue. It is a scary time to be a teacher and student. Education should not, cannot be allowed to be censored. Take time to pay attention, to stand up. If you cannot fight big, fight small. Purchase a banned book, put out a banned book in your classroom, discuss books with students and ask what they are reading, write to your school board. For those of us in Florida, there is a group of teachers, parents, and concerned citizens working tirelessly to combat the banning of books and censorship throughout our state. Please take a moment and check them out, join, and/or share: Florida Freedom to Read Project (Facebook) or @FLFreedomRead (Twitter). If you have experienced any instances of censorship, book banning, or would like to comment on current Florida legislation, please send in a message through Contact or via email found on the home page.