1y ago

Florida school district removes dictionaries from libraries, citing law championed by DeSantis

The Escambia County School District, located in the Florida panhandle, has removed several dictionaries from its library shelves over concerns that making the dictionaries available to students would violate Florida law. The American Heritage Children's Dictionary, Webster's Dictionary for Students,...

Florida school district removes dictionaries from libraries, citing law championed by DeSantis

88 comments

While I didn't think that they would go after a dictionary, it's not surprising that fascists would go after a book full of definitions.
- After reading a little bit, it's not that they banned dictionaries, but it seems the district got ahead of the curve. The law itself is the problem
  
  That's why they have an overly broad definition of what is prohibited. So they can pick and choose what they will allow.

Check this bit from the end:
In a brief submitted by the State of Florida in support of Escambia, Attorney General Ashley Moody argued that the school board could ban books for any reason because the purpose of public school libraries is to "convey the government’s message," and that can be accomplished through "the removal of speech that the government disapproves."
- What in the absolute fuck?
  
  Bog brother is watching.
- Land of the free 🤔
  
  They keep sayin' we're free, but we're all just loose.
  
  ...Whoever told you that is your enemy.
- The party of small govt (except for pushing christofascism)
- Ashley Moody is a fascist traitor
  
  I initially read that as "fashion traitor" and pictured her wearing Gucci in a Prada zone.
- Jesus Christ
- Ok, I give up. You guys can let me out please. The shit you’re throwing into this simulation is just ridiculous.
- That part stuck out to me, too. That is really terrifying.

I'm not surprised. I haven't read the dictionary but people tell me it talks all about what homosexuals are and what transgender means and it actually defines the word 'lesbian!'
- I hear it even defines "woke"!
- It has all the banned things!
  
  And teenagers across the land learn the dictionary is actually pretty cool.

I hope they've alerted their groundskeepers that all trees, shrubs, bushes, and flowers must be mowed over, because pollen and flowers are Nature's pole-dancers and sluts. Not sure if they can have grass.
- Grass is a euphemism for marijuana so they can't have that or it will give kids ideas
  
  Oh no! We can’t have people, let alone children, getting ideas!
- Grass will flower if you don't mow it.

Parents NEED to lodge formal complaints with the police and school boards in EVERY district that still has dictionaries and encyclopedias in the libraries.
Whittle down every district until they're only allowed to work on coloring books for every grade K-12, or as close as they can get.
Don't forget to target private schools with massive social media campaigns to inform all parents that dictionaries = grooming. If the private schools refuse to respond, convince the dumber wealthy parents to pull their kids and put them into a safe school, without books.
- Conservative = Stupid
  Coloring books in place of books is exactly how you grow the Republican voter base.
  Mindless exploitable industrial scale human production is the end game of the Republican army of the Oligarchy. It's industrial cattle, but humans; eat garbage, consume everything you're told, ask no questions, and barely survive. If anything bad happens, use your gun to take yourself out and/or whatever other farm stock you feel oppressed and frustrated with inside your little pin.
  
  Even if what you're saying is true, and I'm not going to take a position either way, it doesn't have any bearing on my suggestion.
  DeSantis is a reply guy with power. This bill wasn't passed because a majority of FL voters want it, not even a majority of his voters. This bill, like many others, was simply him trying to ride the culture war to the White House, but it failed. The only thing keeping it in place in inertia and the desire to save face. That only changes if the political calculus changes.
  I guarantee you that if these book bans were exploited to force the closure of ALL public school libraries, remove dictionaries and encyclopedias from all classrooms, and basically made to significantly impact ALL FL parents, or even just the wealthier areas, the public outcry from parents would be enough to reverse it.
- But that's their goal, they want kids to be stupid so they'll vote republican when they grow up.
- People, don't do this. This is exactly what they want. This will only make things worse, and accomplish nothing.

because it exposes students to "alternate sexual ideologies." Baggett said she was concerned "a second grader would read this book, and that idea would pop into the second grader's mind… that these are two people of the same sex that love each other."
This is the kind of people we are dealing with. They are literally trying to prevent children from developing accepting attitudes towards minorities. That is their stated goal. It's not often I read such blatant disgusting hatred coming from a teacher. The book she was referencing was And Tango makes three. Which is unbelievable in the context of her statement. Were the penguins, who were real actual penguins, somehow a part of an "alternate sexual ideology"? How badly rotten does your brain have to be to think "sexual ideology" when you see 2 penguins raising a baby together?
- You see, tolerance is a slippery slope. First you tolerate the Irish. Next thing you know Italians are semi-ok. Then Polish?! Eventually Catholics and Jews are acceptable. So long as none of these marry across lines.
  /s
  
  "Whatever you say, Arch." 😆
- Ah, don't you just love when (a part of) the land of freedom advertises propaganda (or censors unwanted ideas more appropriately) against a minority from the early age
  Doesn't even remotely resemble anything else /s

That book defines "racism" and "slavery" and may contain examples. Conservatives definitely don't want white kids finding out their ancestors may have been conservatives.
- Ancestors? I don't think you have to go that far back

Is no one else looking at this line the school district is at this point just pulling every possible book that could match the description of the law in purpose to make a point?
One teacher made a complaint about a couple of books so they said fine, well just remove everything else that this bill could possibly touch. Just to prove how ambiguous and far stretching this law can go?
Of course they shouldn't pull a dictionary but it matches the description. This is to test the law.
- Pulling the dictionary accomplishes what they want: a dumber future generation.
  Pull the Bible, that's what riles them up
  
  In Florida you misspelled 'dummer'. You can only sound out the words now.
  
  The did that too, and conservative figures books.
  Article lays it all out pretty well

/m/MaliciousCompliance is leaking :D
- I don't think this was malicious in any way, just covering their asses since they have a fascist state government.

Fantastic. Now those pesky kids won’t know what fascism means.
- Pesky Kid: I looked up the word "fascist" on my parent's phone, and it showed a picture of Ron DeSantis. Weirdly, it does the same when you lookup "dumbass..."
- More like they’ll be provided with shitty “Christian Approved” dictionaries with all the naughty words taken out.

HB 1069 gives residents the right to demand the removal of any library book that "depicts or describes sexual conduct," as defined under Florida law, whether or not the book is pornographic.
I was going to ask how their bible gets around this, but then I found several instances of its removal in Florida.
These librarians. I like them. Assuming they're doing this as a statement.

Not sure I trust a librarian that writes "indefinately"
- Cut the librarian some slack, they just had their dictionary banned. (I wish I were joking.)
- I read that as a pun/clue to their true motives

The reality in Escambia County serves as a rejoinder to DeSantis, who has described concerns about book removals as a "leftist activist hoax" and a "false political narrative."
If Floridians had a dictionary to look up "rejoinder" with, they'd be very upset.

Guess they got tired tired of hearing "words have meanings" in response to their mindless rambling.

Soon: "All books are now banned because they contain the letters L, G, B, T and Q. Any books containing these five letters will now be banned from public libraries."
- Ernest Vincent Wright: "Hold my beer"
  
  Ernes* Vincen* Wri* h*

Fascism

I thought this was an Onion article when I saw the title.
I wish I was right.

We should also ban math books, and history books. Full of sexual descriptions and imagery. Ban economy books too, full baabout advice on how to rape the poor, and the bible too with its incest and rape stories, and you know, let's ban all the books and then just go to school to hold hands and sing hallelujah and praise Jesus.
I see a number of Republican politicians getting very wet at this idea...
- Math books are full of Arabic numbers. Clearly it's indoctrinating our children.
- Actually they have banned many math books for using examples and problems that are just too close to...race or something I guess?

They did keep guns though. Those are more important.

DeSantis has a stranglehold on people here in FL because he kept stuff open during Covid. So people mindlessly co-sign everything he does and Dems pretty much have given up here. They are going after all forms of education and history they don't agree with.

With rights to request removal of books when they have descriptions of sexual activity, I'd say the bible is definitely a prime target. It has incest, rape, and even those are kind of fan favorites for republican politicians, they too must recognize that Bible's are evil and must be banned.

lol to the bit about Atlas Shrugged. Although yeah there are a few passages in there that are basically erotica, forgot about that. It's been a long time but I remember them being "NC-17" not "R" rated.
(usual thing I have to say here about this book here: I'm aware it's badly written and terrible as philosophy excersize, I just liked my steam-punk sci-fi with trains)

Are they trying to make new speak a reality?

I wish we could do multiple things at once, but it appears we struggle with one. Once Trump goes to prison for trying to steal the election, maybe we can finally send Abbott and DeSatin for human trafficking

I can't imagine a school that banned dictionaries, thesauruses, and encyclopedias.

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