Thousands of books in Duval County schools in Florida are subject to review due to three state laws impacting certain subjects in education, including race, gender and sexual orientation, according to county officials.
\nThe books are under review based on several laws that restrict classroom topics, including the Stop WOKE Act and the Parental Rights in Education law, which was called the \u201cDon\u2019t Say Gay\u201d law by LGBTQ activists.
\nA report by the anti-censorship group PEN America claims specific titles under review include books about historical Black and Hispanic figures like Robert Clemente, a Puerto Rican baseball player who became a Major League Baseball icon despite facing racism and segregation in his career.
\nA book about Celia Cruz, a Cuban singer known as the \u201cQueen of Salsa,\u201d was also removed from shelves, PEN America found, as well as a book about Hank Aaron, a Black baseball player who holds the second-highest total of home runs in history and was outspoken against racial discrimination, was another removal.
\nA story about Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic and the third woman to serve on the court, was also reported to be under review by PEN America.
\nHouse Bill 1467, which has also prompted book reviews, prohibits books that contain \u201cpornographic\u201d content or are “inappropriate.\u201d
\nThe “Stop WOKE” Act restricts lessons and training on race and diversity in schools and in the workplace, particularly anything that discusses privilege or oppression based on race. WOKE in the bill stands for “Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees.”
\nThe Parental Rights in Education law states instruction on “sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards,” according to the bill’s language.
\nAccording to Duval County officials, the Florida Department of Education is training \u201call Florida schools districts to \u2018err on the side of caution\u2019 in determining if a book is developmentally appropriate for student use.\u201d The county joins at least one other in heavily scrutinizing its book collection based on state laws.
\nManatee County schools are also set to “remove or cover all materials that have not been vetted” in classrooms, according to a copy of the guidance previously obtained by ABC News.
\nAcross the country, schools and libraries are facing challenges to books, predominantly affecting titles written by or about people of color and LGBTQ people.
\nFlorida’s comes amid a growing movement against certain lessons or discussions concerning marginalized groups in Florida classrooms.<\/p>\n
Abcnews<\/p>\n
Tags\uff1aEducation, Review Books<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thousands of books in Duval County schools in Florida are subject to review due to three state laws impacting certain subjects in education, including race, gender and sexual orientation, according to county officials. The books are under review based on several laws that restrict classroom topics, including the Stop WOKE Act and the Parental Rights […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5780,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1152],"tags":[2427,2429,2428],"class_list":["post-5779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humanrights","tag-books","tag-laws","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5781,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5779\/revisions\/5781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}