Banned Book Club

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/3460381

A decision to fire an elementary school teacher from Georgia has been upheld, after she read a children’s book on gender identity to her fifth-grade class earlier this year.

The Cobb County School Board of Education voted 4-3 along party lines to uphold Katie Rinderle’s termination, overruling a tribunal that had said she should not be fired. “The district is pleased that this difficult issue has concluded; we are very serious about keeping our classrooms focused on teaching, learning, and opportunities for success for students,” the board of education said in a statement Friday.

Rinderle worked at Due West Elementary School, in Marietta, Ga., and read the storybook “My Shadow Is Purple” by Australian author Scott Stuart to her class in March.

The picture-book is about a child who reflects on his mother’s shadow being “as pink as a blossoming cherry” and his father’s shadow that’s “blue as a berry,” and says their shadow is purple. Some parents complained, although Rinderle said others had also expressed their support for the lesson.

Rinderle, a teacher with 10 years’ experience, was removed from her classroom and the Cobb County School District accused her of violating the district’s policies on teaching controversial issues, and urged her to resign or face termination of employment. She was issued an official notice of termination on June 6.

Rinderle sought to overturn her firing, and a tribunal of retired educators, appointed by the Cobb County Board of Education, determined following a hearing that although she had violated district policies, she should not be fired.

However, on Thursday the Cobb County School Board of Education voted along partisan lines to reject the tribunal’s decision, with three Democrats opposing the decision to fire her and four Republican lawmakers upholding it.

School district lawyer Sherry Culves, speaking earlier this month at the hearing, argued that “the Cobb County School District is very serious about the classroom being a neutral place for students to learn. A one-sided viewpoint on political, religious or social beliefs does not belong in our classrooms.”

Yay!

☹️ Man this is sad as hell

What the fuck?

Source: TOM GAULD: YOU'RE ALL JUST JEALOUS OF MY JETPACK | My cartoon for this week’s Guardian Books.

Tumblr: https://myjetpack.tumblr.com

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I read it as a kid and didn't realize it was a target for censorship and removal until I was older. It was extremely impactful to me because it was the first time I ever read about the holocaust from an exclusively Jewish perspective.

It disturbed me as a kid. A lot.

I had known as a kid about the basic horrors of the holocaust and that people died especially growing up having Jewish family. But what I did not really did grasp until reading Maus is that the people who committed the holocaust weren't these comically evil villains. Nazis weren't these inhuman monsters that everyone just instantly despised, no. They were human beings. Neighbors, doctors, lawyers, friends, family members, most of them were every day people. Realizing that disturbed me more than anything else, that these people years prior could have had a casual conversation on the street or been neighbors with the people they were now murdering.

Realizing that was integral in understanding the holocaust for me, alongside just realizing that parts of it just can't be understood. No matter how much it disturbed me as a child, it taught me more than anything else up until that point.

There's quite a lot of books most kids probably wouldn't be reading, but so many are just because they are being banned. Apparently it's been such an issue locally that my local moms for liberty groups want the school board to advise administrators to start confiscating books, which local parents ripped them a new one for even suggesting that

I absolutely freaking love this.

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/news@lemmy.world/t/271719

People donated more than $15,000 to the library system, which will be matched by the city, providing $30,000 for LGBTQ programming

Seattle Public Library offers to those between the ages of 13-26

Brooklyn Public Library offers to those between the ages of 13-21