How Conservative Book Banning Censoriousness Is Holding Florida Back

Republished with permission from Florida Phoenix, by Diane Roberts

A recent column in the Independent Florida Alligator laments how college professors and other educators who teach disfavored subjects or use certain words are beginning to self-censor.

The headline reads, “Think While It’s Still Legal.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis and his angry regime aren’t big fans of thinking. Or learning.

They hate and fear knowledge: How dare these so-called “experts” with their years of study and their graduate degrees dispute the state’s most cherished prejudices?

Many Floridians agree: Expertise is for losers.

That’s why the state surgeon general inveighs against vaccines, alters medical reports, and is now having hysterics over fluoridated water.

That’s why the state commissioner of education rejected an Advanced Placement course in African American History as “woke indoctrination” because it explored the horrors of slavery.

That’s why Florida universities are now under siege from right-wing ideologues—like DeSantis himself—who think “Marxist” professors seduce innocent undergraduates into becoming trans feminist America-hating DEI activists.

The result? Our universities are have fallen several places in the rankings for public institutions.

(Yes, Florida is still called one of the “best” states for higher ed, but that measures level of student debt at graduation, percent who get jobs, etc., not actual intellectual accomplishment).

Our SAT scores are dropping like rocks off a cliff face, too.

Florida now ranks 47th in the nation in K-12 education.

Dedicated teachers have been leaving the profession: Maybe because their pay ranks 50th in the nation—down from 48 last year.

The good news is third grade reading scores are up: 53% can now read at or above grade level.

The bad news: That just a little over half. On a regular test, that’s a D-.

This Isn’t Cheap

The worse news: You, Florida taxpayer, are now shelling out $15.6 million to an education technology outfit in Maryland to put together a “statewide, centralized, easily accessible” system for anyone from parents to random ideologues to “examine” materials in Florida libraries and classrooms.

The state pretends this is about “transparency;” but we all know it’s about finding books to object to, demanding certain instructional documents be removed, and protesting anything they deem “inappropriate.”

It’s a tool to make it easier to ban books—and Florida already bans more books than any other state in the nation.

Not a distinction to be proud of.

We shouldn’t be surprised: The minute somebody shows up at a meeting and hollers about “And Tango Makes Three” (the true story of two male penguins raising a chick), or “Sold,” Patricia McCormick’s novel about human trafficking, or George Johnson’s “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” school boards yank it off the shelf.

Ignorance ain’t cheap: To give just one example, the Escambia County school board has already spent $440,000 plus another $200,000 on a related lawsuit, defending its book-banning habits against the parents, students, PEN America, Penguin Random House, and others who are quite sure reading a book about “gay penguins” will not make kids turn gay.

U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II told the school board they should settle asap, given they “could end up having to pay all or part of Plaintiffs’ attorney’s fees on top of its own attorneys’ fees if Plaintiffs prevail in this case.”

It’s taxpayer money, but conservatives figure protecting Florida’s youth from the painful realities of history and the scary realities of the present day is a great way to spend your hard-earned cash.

Freedom of expression be damned.

Kids Aren’t Stupid

This absurd waste of public money may appease Moms for Liberty, neo-Puritan evangelicals, and everybody else terrified of 21st Century realities.

They fear Their Youth will discover that 1. Racism has been part of the fabric of the U.S. since its founding; 2. Slavery was not vocational training; 3. People have sex; 4. Sometimes gay sex.

What this nonsense does NOT accomplish is advancing education in Florida.

Moreover, these hysterics may deny it, but their children already know about sex.

Their children have cellphones.

Those probably know less about the history of Native American genocide, the slave trade, anti-Asian exclusion laws, lynching, the moral ambiguities of war, and other aspects of our national story that do not proclaim that we are the “greatest country in the world.”

Their solution? Tell kids they can’t read Toni Morrison, Kurt Vonnegut, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and other authors.

Not just their kids—yours, too.

But no matter how much these book-banners try to shield their children from reality. Everyone eventually crashes into it.

The question is: Will they be equipped to handle it?

Will they know how to interrogate what authorities tell them?

Will they know how to think?

Assuming it’s still legal.

There’s a world out there in which war is not peace and ignorance is not strength.