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, and Merriam-Webster's Elementary Dictionary are among
  • HikingVet@lemmy.ca
    114·
    10 months ago

    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.

    • Dreadnaught@sh.itjust.works
      651·
      10 months ago

      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

      • HikingVet@lemmy.ca
        52·
        10 months ago

        That’s why they have an overly broad definition of what is prohibited. So they can pick and choose what they will allow.

        • orclev@lemmy.world
          71·
          10 months ago

          In this case I think the district is doing this in protest. The legislators intended to pick and choose, but the district is applying it as written, so Dictionaries are out. They’re highlighting how absurd the law is.

          • CobblerScholar@lemmy.world
            38·
            10 months ago

            That was my impression, similar move to schools banning the Bible citing all the beastiality, rape and mass murder in there

          • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
            5·
            10 months ago

            Perhaps, but…

            Penguin Random House, five authors, two parents of Escambia County students, and the non-profit group PEN America sued the Escambia County School Board last May, alleging that the board’s actions violate the First Amendment. The lawsuit relates to decisions by the school board, prior to the passage of HB 1069, to permanently ban several books from Escambia schools.

            The Escambia County School Board banned most of these books at the request of Vicki Baggett, a high school English teacher in the county. Baggett is responsible for hundreds of challenges in Escambia County and neighboring counties. She also appeared at the June 2023 board meeting and spoke in favor of the emergency rule.

              • be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social
                8·
                10 months ago

                That’s literally and explicitly the point.

                From the end of the article:

                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.”

          • prole@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            22·
            10 months ago

            Pretty bad way to protest by making your students dumber… If they want to protest, they could ban the Bible and I’m sure countless other Christian-themed books that happen to be just fine.

            • orclev@lemmy.world
              3·
              10 months ago

              They did ban the Bible, that was one of the thousands of books they removed. Ultimately the school administrators have limited power in this case. They’re state employees, they have to follow the law. They’re providing the ones who have the actual power here, the voters, with as much ammo as they can which is bad optics. They’re doing their best to make the politicians look like incompetent morons.

              The politicians crafted this legislation to be super vague in order to let them pick and choose arbitrarily if a book violated it because they didn’t want their actual opinions on record. They had wanted this to be applied to a couple dozen existing books and then to have veto power on any new book to be added. Instead the administrators are using malicious compliance to apply it to literally any book that even remotely matches the vague wording. This does two things, first it highlights how completely arbitrary this law is, and second it bogs the censorship board down by burying them in work.

        • tacosanonymous@lemm.ee
          13·
          10 months ago

          They have already stated they want “their people” to be the deciders. It’s just textbook fascism.