With Book Bans Now Extending to Science Texts Addressing Climate Change and Vaccines, What's Next in Fake Christians' Moral Crusade to 'Save the Children'?

It's not really about books. Books are merely another tool to be exploited.

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Photo by Boston Public Library on Unsplash

No one really believed groups like “Moms for Liberty,” “No Left Turn in Education,” “MassResistance, “Parents Defending Education,” “Independent Women’s Forum,” and other ideological right-wing activist groups that launched their book-banning crusade two years ago were going to stop at texts written by Black writers, right? No one assumed their end goal was work by LGBTQ+ authors, right?

Of course not. 

Once the proverbial genie was out of the bottle, it was open season on teachers, school boards, and librarians.

While our attention has been on other concerns — like whether or not the twice-impeached, four-times indicted adjudicated sexual assaulting former host of Celebrity Apprentice out on bail will actually become the first former president to be a convicted felon — local school boards that packed their ranks with public education opponents have been steadily widening their pseudo-”Christian” nets.

In Texas this month, the Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District board of trustees voted 6–1 to redact chapters in science textbooks that address vaccines, human growth, diversity, and climate change.

Those are scaaaaaarrry subjects for some republicans. One of whom is board vice-president Natalie Blasingame, who stated she didn’t have a reason for making the motion to remove the chapters other than that they surpass state requirements and create “a perception that humans are bad”.

Trustee Todd LeCompte added he couldn’t “support anything teaching our kids about depopulation.”

No coincidence that in accordance with the state’s updated science curriculum, Texas eighth graders are slated to start learning about climate change next year.

(Find a list of the “offending” textbooks here.)

But that’s not all.

The board also voted to cut 600 staff personnel including 42 curriculum coaches, dozens of librarians, and 278 teachers.

Which then raises an important question Julie Hinaman, the lone trustee to cast a vote against the draconian changes: How is the district expected to meet the new changes with much fewer staff?

Hinaman explained:

We are literally in the process of reducing our curriculum and instruction staff. At the same time, we’re recommending that they do additional work.

Associate Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Linda Macias added that banned chapters containing state-mandated material have to be supplemented with an alternate textbook.

What will be the fate of that? we wonder.

Texas Freedom Network is a nonprofit organization pushing back against censorship and fighting to increase equity. Communications director Emily Witt, responding to the claim the challenged chapters are “controversial,” said:

We’re seeing that the radical right’s attack on facts and accurate information is really permeating like every single part of our daily lives as Americans and especially in the education system. Scientists are very clear about the facts around vaccines and climate change, and I think that we should trust scientists who have been trained to speak on these topics.

Local parent and activist Brian Henry, who formed the non-partisan group Cypress Families for Public Schools, warned:

Will trustees at the local school board level be able to just delete chapters about civil rights because they just mentioned the history of same-sex marriage? It’s really kind of alarming what this could mean for ideological influence and control over what is taught in schools. A lot of Republicans in the Cy-Fair area, who are very conservative but are pro public-education, are having to now grapple with the fact that [the] governor, state representatives — they’re really not pro public–education. And so people are struggling with how to reconcile that, because they don’t want to vote for Democrats.

That’s the point. 

It’s not really about books. This whole hysteria about our poor American students being indoctrinated into a “woke” empowerment propaganda campaign is just another piece of a decades-long right-wing sabotage of public institutions. Books are merely another tool to be exploited. 

Just look at what Florida has done with the “Parental Rights in Education bill,” aka the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Look at all the right-wing pearl-clutching over “Critical Race Theory” (“CRT”). Look at what Donald Trump’s education secretary Betsy DeVos did to erode protections for LGBTQ+ students and the Biden administration has thankfully reinstated and strengthened. Look at all the faux-outrage over transgender athletes in sports. Look at calls to arm teachers instead of passing legislation to curb gun violence.

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After the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision ending legal racial segregation in public schools in 1954, we started seeing the rise of “Christian academies.”

From this we started hearing more about “charter schools” — private schools paid for with taxpayer money supposed to be reserved entirely for funding public education.

The effect of this, of course, is that public schools that educate all students — African American, white, Asian, heterosexual, homosexual, disabled — perpetually receive less than they need to function efficiently.

Moreover, since school taxes are linked to property taxes, more affluent (i.e., white) districts receive more funding, leaving urban (i.e., minority) populations chronically underfunded.

There is no “woke agenda” or plot to “make kids feel guilty” about being Americans, no agenda to create “a perception that humans are bad,” no “teaching our kids about depopulation.” 

Many of the “parents” showing up at school board meetings threatening teachers, board members, and administrators — and those who ran for and won school board races--are just shills for dark-money organizations with seemingly admirable names.

Armed with righteous terms like “school choice,” “parental rights,” and, naturally, “freedom,” they are being exploited to promote an agenda that will ultimately harm them and their children as much as others’.

Wealthy dark-money groups have always duped people into doing the groups’ bidding and then walking away with the spoils when the system has been taken down another peg.

It’s no longer Jim Crow; it’s now, as the late, great activist Joe Madison said, “ James Crow, Esquire”.

It’s a con job steeped in white supremacy and exemplifies the cancer of money in politics.