{"id":2920,"date":"2017-10-14T14:06:43","date_gmt":"2017-10-14T18:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=2920"},"modified":"2017-10-14T14:06:43","modified_gmt":"2017-10-14T18:06:43","slug":"dixie-countys-inappropriate-subject-matter-book-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2920","title":{"rendered":"Dixie County’s “inappropriate subject matter” book ban"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>On the Gulf Coast of Florida, west of Gainesville, is Dixie County, which recently attracted attention from the National Coalition Against Censorship. According to the NCAC, the school district’s superintendent, Mike Thomas, issued a directive<\/a> “which prohibits the school district from purchasing and\/or using ‘instructional materials (textbooks, library books, classroom novels, etc.)’ that ‘contain any profanity, cursing, or inappropriate subject matter \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6’<\/p>\n

The NCAC notes:<\/p>\n

Excluding material because it may be subjectively considered “inappropriate” and “questionable” potentially affects a wide range of materials that address race, gender, religion, sex, political violence, history, science, politics, the environment, or any other issue on which people may disagree.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, the subjects I perk up at are “science” and “the environment.” I’m not aware of science materials being directly targeted in Dixie County, but I also don’t know much about what’s going on there as information about this issue is scarce on the Internet. However, I am concerned when I see in the NCAC letter that the superintendent tells teachers to make instructional materials choices based on “community standards.” NCAC says:<\/p>\n

The vague notion of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153community standards\u00e2\u20ac\u009d offers educators no clear guidance and impermissibly imposes the viewpoints of some community members on every student in the District.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why am I concerned? Because the argument for matching textbooks with local community standards was used by proponents of Florida’s new instructional materials law. (See our Instructional Materials bills ’17 blog category<\/a> for more on the law.) Can you imagine the argument that “we didn’t come from no monkey” being used as a community standard to ditch certain science materials? I can.<\/p>\n

The president of the Florida Library Association is also concerned<\/a>:<\/p>\n

School officials are bound by constitutional considerations, including a duty not to discriminate against unpopular or controversial ideas. The U.S. Supreme Court has cautioned that, ‘Local school boards may not remove books from library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books …’ Board of Education v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the Gulf Coast of Florida, west of Gainesville, is Dixie County, which recently attracted attention from the National Coalition Against Censorship. According to the NCAC, the school district’s superintendent, Mike Thomas, issued a directive “which prohibits the school district … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[32,26],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-L6","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2737,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2737","url_meta":{"origin":2920,"position":0},"title":"Textbook battles: a glimpse into the future","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"May 11, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the most controversial issues in recent years when it comes to textbooks used in Florida schools is the coverage of religion in history books. The topic was the spark that started the whole instructional materials bills fiasco we're now facing. And the subject is obviously still white hot.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Instructional Materials bills '17"","block_context":{"text":"Instructional Materials bills '17","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=32"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2725,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2725","url_meta":{"origin":2920,"position":1},"title":"Creationist-enabling bill passes; what can you do now?","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"May 6, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The Florida Citizens for Science membership is dismayed that House Bill 989, a proposed law that will affect how instructional materials for our schools are selected and challenged, passed its final vote in the Senate 19 to 17. We believe that should this bill become law with the governor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s signature,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Instructional Materials bills '17"","block_context":{"text":"Instructional Materials bills '17","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=32"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/textbookskulls-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2901,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2901","url_meta":{"origin":2920,"position":2},"title":"Marion County to review and approve textbooks on their own","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"September 24, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"There's a new wrinkle in the Florida instructional materials world. We already know that the Florida Department of Education is in the process of reviewing and approving new science textbooks that school districts could then pick from to purchase for their schools. We already know that two new laws could\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Textbooks"","block_context":{"text":"Textbooks","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=26"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2011,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2011","url_meta":{"origin":2920,"position":3},"title":"Proposed changes to textbook selection process","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 5, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"State Sen. Alan Hays filed a bill that will change the way textbooks are selected in Florida. If approved, the bill would give local school boards full control over the process and the state Department of Education would have no role. The Gradebook blog notes the bill's filing: Florida senator\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2011#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3210,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3210","url_meta":{"origin":2920,"position":4},"title":"March is a busy month for science textbook adoptions","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"March 4, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Many school districts are having meetings and public hearings and votes throughout March about new science instructional materials. In some districts that have already approved their new list of science materials, there have been some controversy and close votes. In other districts, the recommended materials were approved without a fuss.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Textbooks"","block_context":{"text":"Textbooks","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=26"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/TJ434tDCzKI\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2997,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2997","url_meta":{"origin":2920,"position":5},"title":"Nassau County textbook challenge: “Bacteria to man evolution is not supported by science”","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"December 9, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Nassau County is the first school district I'm aware of that has been faced with a citizen's challenge to topics in the schools' science instructional materials. I told you about this back in early November (Nassau County complaint: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153stop promoting this scientifically inadequate theory of evolution as fact to our\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Instructional Materials bills '17"","block_context":{"text":"Instructional Materials bills '17","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=32"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2920"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2920"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2923,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2920\/revisions\/2923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}