You knew it was coming. You knew it had to be soon.
Republicans just have to ape each other's suppression. It's almost required. They go into the rabbit hole to see how much they can emerge as morally pure in their intentions.
What is done in one state has to be done in another. "Wisconsin's trying to be Mississippi," said a teacher colleague of mine, Bob Reynolds. He was right. He said it about 30 years ago.
Wisconsin's Republicans fall right into line. The objects of their desires (I have to be careful about how to use that word) are the state's public and school libraries.
They love free speech as long as they approve of it. When they don't, the walls go up high and quickly. You can hear the breast-beating for miles.
They trade on fear--fear that has been addressed before. They pretend that nothing like it has been attempted before, that they have the answers now, that they will save the state from plunging itself into the vestiges of immorality and decadence.
They've panicked about being panicky. Once again, they're trying legislation that includes words that are too broad in meaning to be effectively enforced. Once again, they're trying to play the one-size-can-fit-all game.
Senate Bill 15 and Assembly Bill 10 (they are one and the same) try to limit materials from entering our libraries, whether public or school, that have bad intentions to them, mostly sexual, but also relating to human abuse. Sounds noble, and the proponents would like you to regard them as brave defenders of decency.
They are trying to prohibit "1) any picture, photographs, drawing, sculpture, motion picture film, or similar visual representation or image of a person or portion of the human body that depicts nudity, sexually explicit conduct, sad masochistic abuse, physical torture, or brutality that is harmful to children; or 2: any book, pamphlet, magazine, printed matter however reproduced or recording that contains matter described in item 1, or explicit and detailed verbal descriptions or narrative accounts of sexual excitement, sexually explicit conduct, sadomasochistic abuse, physical torture, or brutality and that, taken as a whole, is harmful to children."
Whew. That about covers anything whatsoever that could be considered naughty. Good thing they came to the rescue. From now on, then, no child will be exposed to anything like this in any library.
Oh, but there's more: "Beginning in the 2024-25 school year, the bill requires each school board and operator an an independent charter school to adopt a policy that specifics criteria for determining whether certain material is offensive material, which, under the bill, means the material is offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable for children. Under the bill, if a public school pupil will view or otherwise have access to offensive material as part of classroom instruction the school must provide the parent or guardian of the pupil with an outline of the curriculum and a summary of the instructional materials that contain the offensive material, information regarding how the parent or guardian may inspect the complete curriculum and instructional materials, and an explanation of the exemption available to parents and guardians under the bill. The bill requires peach public school to make the complete curriculum and all instructional materials available for inspection by parents or guardians upon request."
Okay. So parents can see everything that will be taught in every class in every public school (doesn't allow for private, as if their intentions will and have always been clean and pure), just in case they have questions about what's going on there. This is in response to the old bromide that parents don't have enough say in schools.
One more time: Parents will never have 'enough say' in schools, because they're parents. Schools are not child care. They are schools. That's their main job. They're supposed to reflect, in some sense, the world they're teaching kids about. You don't like that? Change that world.
But why now? Why is this suddenly a big deal? Have our libraries been selectively, or secretively, bombarded with prurient reading material, with naughty pictures?
Of course not. This falls under the vague notion that curricula that includes, say, critical race theory will be designated "harmful" if it implies that white kids should feel bad about themselves. Which, even if critical race theory is taught in our schools (it isn't; again, it drills too deep and there's no time for it), nobody can prove what's considered "harmful," outside of someone's feelings being hurt (not accounting for any minority kids' feelings being hurt because they have to sit there and take everything that happened to their ancestors, which was forced upon them by mostly white people).
This will fail, but only because Tony Evers is governor and will veto anything like this that comes across his desk. Did you need a good reason for electing him over the pathetic, narrow, intolerant bully Tim Michaels last fall? Here's one that sticks out like whatever's presently floating above us. Evers is basically an educator, and he knows that there should be a looser, not tighter, rein on the information that kids are allowed to absorb.
Besides, the language of these bills muscles out such things as the Holocaust (which included physical torture, as sponsored through the evil Josef Mengele in his experiments with Jews as guinea pigs), and the Japanese 'rape' of Nanking, in which soldiers competed to see how awful they could treat the Chinese they had brought under their control, particularly women. It cannot, as well, or isn't supposed to allow, descriptions of waterboarding, which this country's troops not only performed on Arab prisoners in this very century, but at the opening of the 20th Century, also did to Filipinos to get them to reveal information.
These are some of the worst aspects of human behavior, including some that this nation performed. So we cannot now require students to read about that? We cannot discuss it in classes? Really? We cannot allow descriptions in print of some of the worst kind of treatment of human beings by other human beings, to show students that, under certain circumstances, people are capable of such disgusting acts?
The other reason should be that the state Supreme Court would throw something like this back at them with proper disdain. But that now can't be guaranteed because its judicial philosophy might easily tilt toward those making such horrible proposals.
That may change, though. There's a state Supreme Court election coming up, and two of the four candidates (for one spot, and money's flying around like snowflakes) are likely to be those with a more tolerant view of education than the one espoused by these repressive proposals. I've spoken with one of them, and he's worked with students and schools.
Another reason to get out there and vote in this normally poorly-attended campaign: We can avoid the deep end. You can still vote early, and you can still vote in the primary next Tuesday, too. Make your voice heard.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
No comments:
Post a Comment