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Tuesday
As I noted last week, rereading Philip Pullman’s Book of Dust series has been an unnerving experience. Pullman is targeting Christian fascism, and while the rise of the religious right has not taken America into fascism yet, there are plenty of people who want to go there. Chief amongst these appears to be Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who Fox and others are declaring to be Trump’s heir apparent and who is burnishing his Trumpist credentials by going after women who want abortions, voters of color, the LGBTQ community, state colleges and universities, reporters, and social media users who criticize him. Also, of particular interest to this blog, he has declared war on books his supporters don’t like, along with the teachers and librarians who share them with students.
Headlines from the past two months capture what’s going on in this last area: “Florida’s School Book Bans Have Teachers “Walking On Eggshells” (Buzzfeed); “New Training Tells Florida School Librarians Which Books Are Off-Limits” (Treasure Coast Palm); and “Hide your books to avoid felony charges, Fla. schools tell teachers” (Washington Post). As Buzzfeed reported,
Though the law, HB 1467, went into effect in July 2022, it wasn’t until January that the Florida Department of Education published training on the new law, leaving many schools in limbo for months, uncertain how to proceed. HB 1467 allows parents, or even any resident of the county, to lodge objections to course material, and right-wing organizations are already taking advantage: One group, Moms For Liberty, has lobbied for more than 150 books to be removed from Florida school libraries, including The Color Purple, The Handmaid’s Tale, and many others that deal with race and LGBTQ issues.
The Washington Post, meanwhile, explained how the books are to be vetted. If you see echoes of 1984 in Florida’s plans to have people specially retrained to “properly” determine which books are desirable, you’re not alone:
House Bill 1467, which took effect as law in July, mandates that schools’ books be age-appropriate, free from pornography and “suited to student needs.” Books must be approved by a qualified school media specialist, who must undergo a state retraining on book collection. The Education Department did not publish that training until January, leaving school librarians across Florida unable to order books for more than a year.
And then there’s an older law that puts teeth into the new one:
The new law comes atop an older one that makes distributing “harmful materials” to minors, including obscene and pornographic materials, a third-degree felony — meaning that a teacher could face up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine, a spokeswoman from the Florida Department of Education said Tuesday. She suggested violating House Bill 1467 might yield “penalties against” an educator’s teaching certificate.
And:
[B]ecause of uncertainties around enforcement and around what titles might become outlawed, school officials have warned teachers that their classroom libraries may expose them to the stiffest punishments.
DeSantis, meanwhile, is doing the classic authoritarian two-step, claiming he wants no more than to keep students safe, even while being so vague about what “safe” means as to leave plenty of room for interpretation amongst rightwing groups. Check out these remarks from a recent press conference:
Earlier Monday, Gov. Ron DeSantis weighed in on the issue during a news conference in Vero Beach. He said he was unfamiliar with the local book challenges, but said it’s important to have age-appropriate restrictions in school libraries.
“No one’s saying ban anything,” DeSantis said.
Books dealing with critical race theory — an academic curriculum that examines the intersection of race, law and equity — also should be reviewed because of the way some content is presented, DeSantis said.
“We want robust education,” he said. “We’re not going to spend tax dollars to have kids hate our country. Not on our watch.”
In Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage, the first work in the Book of Dust trilogy, there’s an organization that sounds like a cross between 1984 and Moms for Liberty, the citizens group that is targeting books, teachers, and librarians. Called the League of St. Alexander after a child convert who ratted out his pagan parents, the organization goes into schools, provides badges to those kids who join, and then encourages them to inform on their teachers. Like Moms for Liberty, every success they register fuels their bloodlust. Here’s the consequence in one school, which has just seen the headmaster sacked and imprisoned for standing up to the League:
Malcolm’s headmaster, Mr. Willis, was still away on Monday, and on Tuesday Mr. Hawkins, the deputy head, announced that Mr. Willis wouldn’t be coming back, and that he would be in charge himself from then on. There was an intake of breath from the pupils. They all knew the reason: Mr. Willis had defied the League of St. Alexander, and now he was being punished. It gave the badge wearers a giddy sense of power. By themselves they had unseated the authority of a headmaster. No teacher was safe now.
And:
[T]here was a sort of swagger among the badge wearers. It was rumored that in one of the older classes, the Scripture teacher had been telling them about the miracles in the Bible and explaining how some of them could be interpreted realistically…One of the boys had challenged him and warned him to be careful and held up his badge, and the teacher had backed down and said that he was only telling them that as an example of a wicked lie, and the Bible was right…
One effect of Florida’s laws is that some teachers have begun to self-censor. The same is happening in Pullman’s novel:
Other teachers fell into line as well. They taught less vigorously and told fewer stories, lessons became duller and more careful, and yet this seemed to be what the badge wearers wanted. The effect was as if each teacher was being examined by a fierce inspector, and each lesson became an ordeal in which not the pupils but the teachers were being tested.
It remains to see how many Florida teachers will be actually fired. There have only been a handful so far. But if the law intimidates, it will work as intended. As teachers empty their classrooms of books (or, in some cases, cover them over), definite messages are being sent: authoritarian forces, not the teachers and librarians, are dictating what is best for Florida’s students.