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Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

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Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit harsh but I mean, all it boils down to is: Teachers shall teach the curriculum.

That is weird. I guess we can agree to that principle but do we need to be draconian about it? Do we need laws to make teachers focus on curriculum? Didn't you ever read a book that wasn't prescribed by the curriculum?

I don't think so but it's Florida. I don't live in Florida. The majority in Florida must somehow be OK with this and it's their teachers and children.

Don't take my nuance to mean that I approve of this or think it's a good idea.

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#35
post #3

Hey America, is everything okay down there? Y'all have some truly dystopian stuff going on there. Felony prosecution for showing kids books that the Governor didn't approve of? Yikes.

We have an big propaganda issue that is being exploited by our national enemy's (I'm talking about you Russia). All this stuff that upsets our stable society is only good for our enemies. Nobody should care of what other people are reading, unless it poses a threat to our society. Talk about shouting fire in a theater.

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It also drives families with kids out of Florida to more sane educational operating environments. Florida already has the worst teacher shortage in the nation: https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2023/01/22/our-child...

In our sad, bifurcated present I am not sure that’s true on net.

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#37

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

There's actually a very simple argument: The existing system has been used as a workaround by activists to defacto teach things that shouldn't be taught to students. Keeping the books out of the library is the best practical method of stopping this, because directly controlling the contents of the curriculum is hard to enforce.

That argument may or may not be true in this particular case, but it's not some impossible thing that can't ever have a good reason behind it.

Edit: Also, don't confuse school libraries with public libraries. Schools make content-based decisions about what's appropriate for students all the time.

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It also drives families with kids out of Florida to more sane educational operating environments. Florida already has the worst teacher shortage in the nation: https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2023/01/22/our-child...

So they are solving the teacher shortage?

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#40
Teachers are already paid little and dealing with the stress of managing large classrooms with little pay has to be turning off a lot of teachers away from that career path. With laws like this our future pipeline of teachers is essentially getting gutted. I guess republicans are winning on both fronts here. One, they pander hard to the extreme base and two, they kill public education and make private education more attractive.
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