I hope they still have Fahrenheit 451 on their library shelves

Last week, as part of Arizona's 2010 termination of the teaching of "ethnic studies, "the Tucson Unified School District released an initial list of books to be banned from its schools today. According to district spokeperson Cara Rene, the books 'will be cleared from all classrooms, boxed up and sent to the Textbook Depository for storage'" (Biggers). This shocking news left me wondering: how did this ban come to be in the first place? Well the original ban was signed into law in May of 2010 by Arizona governor Jan Brewer and officially it "prohibits the teaching of any classes that promote 'the overthrow of the United States government,' 'resentment toward a race or class of people,' 'are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group' or 'advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals'” (Barr). Ah, so the reason this ban came into existence may be because it doesn't initially sound all that bad. After all, children shouldn't be taught to overthrow the government; that would be completely counter-intuitive to one of the purposes of a public school education in this country (to create a compliant workforce). Students shouldn't be taught to resent a certain race or class of people- is resentment something we ever want taught in our public schools? And a class designed for a particular group of students doesn't seem fair. And that last part is downright lovely- of course people should be treated as individuals! That's what America's all about :)

Now to the book ban. The initial banned books include Paolo Friere's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Joseph Bruchac's A Friend of the Indians, N. Scott Momaday's The Delight Song of Tsoai-Talee, Like Water for Chocolate, and Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven, just to name a few.

Why would all that uniting of Arizona school children have to be done alongside the banning of more books from schools? Why would fifty-some-odd books, such as Sandra Cisneros' masterpiece The House on Mango Street, need to be banned from Arizona school campuses? These books all involve issues relevant to ethnic groups or that raise questions pertaining to ethnic solidarity. In order to not be encouraged to overthrow the government, not promote resentment toward certain races or classes, not teach design classes for certain ethnic groups, and to treat people as individuals, books need to be banned? Authors, who are attempting to express their opinions and particular viewpoints about ethnic issues, need to be silenced? In order to see people as individuals, and not primarily as part of ethnic categories, we must lose sight of the fact that these books represent the viewpoints of individuals and the experiences of individuals? Huh.

Believing that an idea cannot be presented without being promoted is ridiculous- is teaching about the holocaust promoting it? And, by the way, according to the wording of the ban, the teaching of the holocaust could be classified as an attempt to make Jewish students feel united and resentment toward their non-Jewish classmates. This law, and its seemingly well-intentioned wording, is incredibly dangerous. It could be applied to almost any teachings that present a viewpoint of American history (or any other country's history for that matter) that is counter to the ones we were presented as children…you know, like all that shit about Johnny Appleseed and the first Thanksgiving. In fact, one of the already banned books is banned for that very reason: telling the darker side of Thanksgiving (Michael Dorris's Why I'm Not Thankful for Thanksgiving).

The history of the oppressed is not an alternate history; it is the history of the human race. If we begin to believe that the stories of the oppressed are dangerous stories that will only serve to incite our nation's children to believe they are oppressed, we are only working to silence those who have gained their voices and learned to speak out against injustice and make the experience understood and recognized for what it is.

So, what do the people who support this law really hope to accomplish? Well, some of them simply don't understand the ugliness lurking beneath its wording and are somehow missing the blatant slime covering the action of book banning. And to those people, I politely implore you to remove your heads from your asses. As for everyone else, the ones who truly believe that this law is good because it will promote solidarity among school children, I ask you to seriously consider how limiting the resources of knowledge and literature available to the children of Arizona is really going to accomplish anything like that? I agree with some of the wording of the law because parts of it attempt to eradicate viewing history from one vantage point (in this case the vantage point of the oppressed); however, the answer is not to silence those voices. The answer is to add more perspectives, not block out more. And you have to recognize that censoring viewpoints will not increase solidarity, it will only work to make certain students, the ones who feel that you are censoring their viewpoints, to see what you're doing as oppression, the very oppression you may think you've eradicated.

On this Martin Luther King Day, do not let yourself be misled by these people who attempt to silence others, with good intentions or not, with awareness of what they are really doing or not. Do not let voices be silenced and books be banned. Do no support a school system that wants to further the goal of creating compliant/non-thinking young citizens rather than the goal of promoting free-thought, exploration of all perspectives of history, and young people who grow up with an eager desire to continue learning and to not be oppressed by bullshit such as that happening in Arizona right now. Oppression is not a monster under the bed that if we just stop believing is there, will go away.

Until next time,
Leena

Works Cited
Barr, Andy. "Arizona bans 'ethnic studies.'" Politico.com. 12 May 2010. Web. 16 Jan 2012. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37131.html
Biggers, Jeff. "Who's afraid of 'The Tempest'?" Salon.com. 13 Jan 2012. Web. 16 Jan 2012. http://www.salon.com/2012/01/13/whos_afraid_of_the_tempest/
Norrell, Brenda. "Tucson schools bans books by Chicano and Native American authors." The Narcosphere. 14 Jan 2012. Web. 16 Jan 2012. http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/brenda-norrell/2012/01/tucson-schools- bans-books-chicano-and-native-american- authors#.TxOEmuBLVKr.facebook