Live data from Hacker News

Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

popular.info

11–20 of 500 posts

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#12
This is a remarkably crude and revanchist move from Republican politicians. It’s embarrassing but mostly bluster and spectacle. It won’t work, and there are already for more effective and sophisticated forms of media control wielded by their allies (See Jane Meyer’s Dark Money, or Messengers of the Right). But at the end of the day it’s school-wars red meat for the rubes, and that’s good enough for De Santis.

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#17

If anybody thinks this is a good idea, I'm looking forward to reading your opinions.

I’m not going to suggest it’s a good idea, but I know when math books became a topic it was supposedly because some type of political stuff was being included in the problems. Haven’t followed it closely but I do remember hearing that.

I’ll see if I can find a link.

EDIT: Found one. https://nypost.com/2022/04/22/floridas-banned-math-textbooks...

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#18
post #8

Can someone provide book titles that are affected by this...?

Whatever random book any random teacher bought or was given.

The whole point is that they have to remove ALL books that aren't approved through The Process. Of course there's not going to be a list of those. There isn't some master list of books that are lying around classrooms everywhere.

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#19

In Florida, school librarians are called "media specialists" and hold media specialist certificates. A rule passed by the Florida Department of Education last week states that a "library media center" includes any books made available to students, including in classrooms. This means that classroom libraries that are curated by teachers, not librarians, are now illegal. Prepare for “route around the damage” moment whe…

Classroom libraries are a big deal. Every step taken that makes a teacher's job riskier, less pleasant, or less like what they want to be doing (teaching kids, without having to worry about whether some plainly-positive action is legal), drives good teachers out of the profession.

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#20
We live in a world of “sanctuary this” and “Do not comply with that” and “I will not enforce the other”.

In other words, we live in a world where a nontrivial percentage of the population, especially many in influential positions, have decided that they don’t need to obey laws they disagree with.

How else are you going to get people to comply with the law?

Note that I am not asserting that any law is “good” or “bad”. But the proper way to handle bad laws is to win elections and change them, or use public sentiment to pressure lawmakers to change them.

Post reply on HN