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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

#201

Post by adamsmith143 »

jackson1442 wrote: post #2

One of the requirements for book approval: > Appropriate for the grade level and age group for which the materials are used or made available If I was in grade school when this happened, this would have hampered my ability to learn. I was generally reading above the standard level and loved reading in class. Reading this post just makes me sad. Kids aren't getting the same opportunities I got to nurture my curiosity.

You probably got books from the library then or brought them from home. Which isn't affected by this law from what I can tell. I think I read a book from a "classroom library" like once during school while I was loaning books from our actual library non-stop. Wouldn't have affected me at all.

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#202

Post by ceejayoz »

notch656c wrote: post #125
fnordpiglet wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Felony inflation is rampant, and horrendous.

It's to make sure you can't be re-licensed in a profession, like teaching. Anywhere.

In this case, it's to make the potential consequences so severe everyone takes the extremely careful approach, to the detriment of the students.

See also: vague abortion bans, where doctors have to wait for conditions to become acutely life-threatening before removing dead fetuses.

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#203

Post by crooked-v »

mfer wrote: post #144
CydeWeys wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not in Florida but I'll give you a local example to me that's come under debate. A book with sexually explicit material was recently pulled from an elementary school. What book was it? I ask because the first real science fiction book that I ever read, that inspired a life-long love for the genre, and which I read under the age of ten, was Rendezvous With Rama, which did contain a sex scene. And the presence of…

Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the book. It was one I was not familiar with. The discussion noted that the book discussed using "toys". They also noted that there was an add for buying sex toys as part of the book. These are elements that really caught my attention. I have a hard time seeing most parents in the US being ok with this material being put in front of kids who are 5-10 years old.

So what you're saying is, rather than have actual data or even a single concrete anecdote, you're happy just passing along word-of-mouth gossip when we already know that the people pushing for these laws are happy outright lying about their intent.

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#204

Post by gregwebs »

The last paragraph of this article explains that the rest of the article is kind of FUD or at least something to try to understand about why one county is taking a different interpretation than the rest.

> This interpretation of the law runs directly counter to the arguments the DeSantis administration is making in court. In federal court filings, lawyers representing DeSantis insist that the Parental Rights in Education Act does not apply to library books. Nevertheless, the DeSantis administration, through its media specialist training, is encouraging a much more expansive interpretation of the law.

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#206

Post by mcv »

notch656c wrote: post #163
CydeWeys wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, this isn't democracy, it's republicanism. Laws get passed in republicanism all the time that the majority of the people don't agree with, because their representatives aren't actually representing their interests.

If the government doesn't have the assent of the people is it not illegitimate? I thought the whole presumption under our system was the representatives have the assent of the majority.

I still remember that in 2010, the approval rating of US Congress was 10%, and yet 90% of incumbents was reelected. How the hell is that possible?

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#207

Post by jeffbee »

jonathankoren wrote: post #136
OrvalWintermute wrote: post #28

The problem is that some of the libraries are hosting sexually explicit material that is accessible to younger children that some parents claim is sexually grooming the children. Some of these books have been included on reading lists. The book that is the poster child for this is the cartoon book Gender Queer https://www.westernjournal.com/book-depicting-child-pornogra...

The fact is the VAST majority of these books are not sexually explicit, nor “grooming” in any way. The books simply admit that non-straight people exist. A much more representative list is https://pen.org/report/banned-usa-growing-movement-to-censor... which tracks the 2021-2022 school year. Applying this “sexually explicit” logic, then your left saying the network television comedy “Modern Family” is indistinguishab…

[flagged]

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#208

Post by dylan604 »

ch4s3 wrote: post #74
toomuchtodo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It looks like Florida public school enrollment is increasing[1] by quite a lot. It's up to 3,032,800 for Fall 2023 from 2,903,500 in 2020[2], only beat by Arizona, Alaska, and Utah. [1] https://www.fldoe.org/finance/fl-edu-finance-program-fefp/ft... [2] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_203.20.a...

Alaska? It seems like if you a family of 5 moved there increasing the student population by 3 would be like 10% increase. /s

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#209

Post by aaronbrethorst »

yamtaddle wrote: post #19
Pulcinella wrote: post #10

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.

Destroying public education is the point, or at least a nice fringe benefit to this whole thing.

Re: Unapproved books now a felony in Manatee County schools

#210

Post by cwmma »

luckylion wrote: post #45
yamtaddle wrote: post #19

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.

What's the difference between a classroom library and the school library? I'm German, I've never heard of classroom libraries or anything similar in Germany. We have school libraries that provide the standard text books and most of the novels etc, but they're generally not walk-ins where you pick something to read.

In English Library can just mean a collection of books, so you can talk about some person's "library" to mean their book collection. When people talk about a classroom library they're really meaning the collection of books in a classroom.

That being said school libraries in America do tend to be walk in places where you can pick something up to read.

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