Cross-posted from
Free Exchange on Campus.
A federal judge ruled this week that the Miami-Dade school district has to put the books back on the library shelves. You'll recall that last month the school board had voted to ban a series of books geared at kids because they had the audacity to depict Cuban children smiling. While the school board's decision is shocking--it was made after several attorneys and common sense warned them they wouldn't be able to defend the decision in court--the Judge's is not.
The book depicts no violence, cussing, sexually suggestive anything, etc. The books were banned solely because they did not depict Cuba in an unpleasant enough manner. Remarkably, and apparently shockingly to some of the school board members, the Judge didn't think this was adequate justification for removing books from library shelves. Honestly, if this is all it takes to ban a book, I've got a pretty long list of books we should remove from the shelves in elementary schools. Let's see...I was pretty offended by the idea that vegetables were good for me, Germany was not always depicted as the land of Nazi's, Southeast Asia wasn't even covered...
Um, wait. Again, I ask, are these seriously the things we're focusing on in education? Kids smiling in a book barely anyone reads, athletes posting on myspace, flags in college classrooms, an opinion on one issue from a lecturer teaching one class in a school of over 40,000 students? Seriously?