Eager to comply with Ron DeSantis’ and his fellow Republicans’ book-banning mania, a Florida school district has pulled dictionaries from its school libraries because they contain words that may describe “sexual conduct.”
As reported by Judd Legum, writing for Popular Information:
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 more than 2800 books that have been pulled from Escambia County school libraries and placed into storage. The Escambia County School District says these texts may violate HB 1069, a bill signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis (R) in May 2023.
As Legum observed on his X feed (formerly known as Twitter):
As Legum notes, the Escambia County school district has adopted a broad-based, shotgun approach, pulling out all stops to forestall such prurient information from being read by school students.
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. Rather than considering complaints, the Escambia County School Board adopted an emergency rule last June that required the district's librarians to conduct a review of all library books and remove titles that may violate HB 1069.
Legum reports that 2,800 books have been removed from the district’s libraries and are currently under review. That review, however, is proceeding at a snail’s pace, with less than 100 titles having been scrutinized by intrepid school officials over the last seven months. Presumably the review of entire dictionaries will entail an even more substantial expenditure of time.
The dictionaries, according to the school district's data, remain locked away. Their exclusion demonstrates the preposterously broad language of HB 1069. Dictionaries do contain descriptions of "sexual conduct." Merriam-Webster, for example, defines sex as a "sexual union involving penetration of the vagina by the penis" or "intercourse (such as anal or oral intercourse) that does not involve penetration of the vagina by the penis."
As reported by Molly Sprayregen, writing for LGBTQ Nation, the Escambia County district, which includes 69 schools and over 37,000 students, has distinguished itself by the sheer energy and effort of its censorship:
Escambia County is known for its strict response to H.B. 1069, as well as for the antics of a certain English teacher, Vicki Baggett. Baggett has become notorious for her crusade to ban over 100 books from Escambia school libraries and submitted almost every single one of the 150 book challenges being reviewed by the district in 2023. Many of the challenged books are by Black authors or deal with LGBTQ+ topics.
Baggett’s actions have been successful in banning many of the books she has challenged and have led to a federal lawsuit against Escambia County. In May, book publisher Penguin Random House sued, accusing the district of violating the Constitution. The publisher sued alongside the free-speech organization PEN Ame
Legum observes that “[T]he idea that we need to exclude dictionaries from schools to protect children defies all logic.”
In fairness, however, banning dictionaries does have particular advantages for Florida Republicans. That’s because a student’s decision to consult a dictionary (as opposed to a thesaurus, for example) to determine the spelling or definition of a word invariably comes after the student has already heard or read it. Prohibiting that student from determining its definition, spelling, and correct pronunciation encourages its continued misuse and miscomprehension.
For instance, if the student hears or reads that the former chairman of the Florida Republican party and his “Moms for Liberty” Don’t-say-gay wife are involved in a messy “three-way,” the student might justifiably conclude they were involved in some type of car accident. If the student hears that Florida’s surgeon general is being accused of anti-vaccine “quackery” they might conclude that he literally sounds like a duck. Or if the immigrant-bashing Florida governor is described as a “racist,” a dictionary-deprived student might mistakenly believe he likes to ride bicycles.
So perhaps other Florida schools will follow Escambia county’s example, if only to keep the state’s schoolchildren ignorant as long as possible about the type of people who control their government.