Mark Lane: State argues it can ban what it wants in libraries
In 1961, the Red Scare was going strong in Florida and legislators passed a law saying students should be indoctrinated with good propaganda so they wouldn’t be indoctrinated by bad propaganda. The result was a required-for-graduation course called “Americanism versus Communism.”
The statute mandated 30 hours of indoctrination. It said teachers were to instruct students in “the dangers of communism, the ways to fight communism, the evils of communism, the fallacies of communism, and the false doctrines of communism.” J. Edgar Hoover’s book, “Master of Deceit,” was often used as a textbook. Needless to say, the course’s definition of what constituted dangerous communist ideas was pretty broad.
I was a graduate of that course in the 1970s. I came away from 30 tedious hours of lectures on the evils of the left and the AV Club’s regular showing of scary black-and-white 16mm films on the evils of the left with a B grade and an appreciation for how mind-deadening official propaganda can be. An appreciation that stays with me to this day. So I guess the course accomplished something.
The Red Scare was long ago. We are now in the grip of the Woke Scare and public schools are feeling similar effects.
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Fighting the evils of Woke is the cornerstone of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ run for president and the Florida Legislature is legislating accordingly. The state now stresses patriotism and American exceptionalism in its civics standards, requires 45 minutes of instruction each year on “the victims of communism,” and has scrutinized textbooks ― even math textbooks ― for potentially subversive ideas. And it has empowered book banning in school libraries on an impressive scale.
Recent legislation has handed Book Police badges to anyone who cares to pin one on. In Clay County, one activist challenged more than 300 books and more than half of those books were pulled from the shelves.
In Escambia County, a single teacher forced the district to pull more than 100 books for review and close to 200 books have been challenged. Whole sections of school libraries were closed off to students.
The school district’s library services coordinator resigned and moved to another state. She had it with Florida’s Woke Scare drama.
PEN America, Penguin Random House, authors of pulled books, and Escambia parents sued the school district in May over the book removals and closed-to-students library shelves.
“Books are being ordered removed from libraries, or subject to restricted access within those libraries, based on an ideologically driven campaign to push certain ideas out of schools,” the lawsuit charges. “Further, the school board is ordering the removal against the recommendations of experts within the school district.”
How has the state responded? Attorney General Ashley Moody put forth a starkly authoritarian reply: Libraries belong to the state and therefore exist to advance state leaders’ political ideas.
“Viewpoint-based educational choices are constitutionally permissible because public school systems, including their libraries, convey the government’s message,” Florida’s amicus brief argued. The state made a like argument in another federal case involving Lake County and Escambia schools.
In other words, school libraries are not public forums; they can be government propaganda outlets.
If the courts adopt this argument, expect Woke Scare book bans to spread to public libraries as politicians feel empowered to exert tighter ideological control over which books are available.
But I’m hoping, as I always do, that the courts rule on these cases with the First Amendment in mind. And I hope, too, that the Woke Scare might already be winding down. One sees signs of that already in the mid-term election results and the lack of public enthusiasm for DeSantis’ foundering presidential campaign.
In the meantime, I’ll see you at the library. I want to go there while I can still read something politicians won’t like.
Mark Lane is a News-Journal columnist. His email is mlanewrites@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Mark Lane: State argues it can ban what it wants in libraries
