Artwork by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
In the latest in a series of educational innovations from the far-right extremist Republicans—the MAGAs—executing their regressive agenda, a new round of book-banning has been sweeping the nation over the past three years. Along with old favorites like To Kill A Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn, Catcher in the Rye, Fahrenheit 451, The Grapes of Wrath, and Lord of the Flies, an entirely new generation of books, mostly featuring characters dealing with transgender issues, racism, or teenage sexuality have been making the list of MAGA’s most dangerous.
According to a CBS News report, “during the 2021-2022 school year, more than 1,600 books were banned from school libraries.” According to a related report from PEN, 41% of banned books deal with LGBTQ themes and 40% contain protagonists or secondary characters of color. Books that deal with sexuality come in at 22% while books dealing with activism or religious minorities round out the new exclusions. Of course, this is following on the heels of the manufactured outrage over what is wrongly termed Critical Race Theory being taught in our schools. CRT has never been taught in a public primary or secondary school; it is a concept taught in graduate school courses.
Public schools have been addressing issues of institutional racism and white elitism, but the MAGA re-education committee overreacted—in a big way—by stacking school boards with their representatives and even passing laws making the teaching of any material that might make a student feel uncomfortable about their race illegal. According to NBC News, “The Oklahoma law bans teaching that anyone is “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously,” or that they should feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress” because of their race or sex.”
So, I guess the slavery unit in U.S. History is out, and so are the concepts of Manifest Destiny and The Trail of Tears. We can’t teach literary classics like To Kill a Mockingbird or The Bluest Eye or Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.
And of course, the latest outrage over the rights of transgenders—teens in particular—to be recognized is also causing a huge uproar in the dark and dank hallways in the minds of the far right. According to an article in Vox, a flurry of new state laws are seeking to abridge the rights of transgender citizens. A law in Kansas was passed prohibiting transgender females from participating in sports. Gender-affirming care is now illegal in Idaho and Indiana. Idaho’s law makes it a felony to give gender-affirming care and medication to minors. It seems as if the MAGA Republicans are hell-bent on destroying, or at least denying, the existence and rights of anyone who is not white, Christian, heterosexual, or Republican.
This begs the question of why stop here? Banning books and the teaching of uncomfortable aspects of the American history of oppression and genocide is a good start, but what about the other subjects in the core curriculum? What about math? Perhaps the teaching of percentages, statistics, and probabilities—especially as they pertain to elections—should be banned. Citizens hardly need to know that the white ruling majority is rapidly shrinking, that they are already outnumbered by minority voters. Citizens hardly need to know that their incomes are stagnant and buying power is shrinking because of the tax laws favoring the one percent. Why would they care that—according to CNBC News—the richest 1% of Americans garnered nearly two-thirds of all new wealth. Boy, this math is confusing.
And what’s all this with quoting mainstream media? Why worry about citing sources of news? Why worry about verifying facts? There is only one real news source, right? Why would we need to confirm facts? We believe what we’re told.
And science—that’s one subject that needs a major overhaul. The teaching of human biology, particularly the unit on reproduction, would be a strict no-no under the auspices of the MAGA curriculum. Children do not need about the existence of genitalia until it becomes absolutely necessary for the act of procreation. When the occasion arises, an instruction manual will be provided.
And of course, the teaching of the theory of evolution (why teach it if it’s only a theory?) must be banned. To think that humans, particularly the wonderful men and women of the MAGA Republicans were once knuckle-draggers cannot be tolerated. And carbon-dating, paleontology, and geology are all just plain wrong. We know that according to the Bible, the Earth is only about six thousand years old. So, tell the smarty-pants scientists that man had to exist at the same time as dinosaurs. Jurassic Park was right!!
And why take the trouble of learning Environmental Science? Why worry about what we can’t control? And the whole climate change thing is only a scam sponsored by the tree-huggers to save their precious endangered species like the Spotted Owls or Sumatran Tigers or Snow Leopards or Orangutans or Black Rhinos. What are they worried about, anyway? We can always take the kids to the zoo. That’s what they’re for, right? And, after all, there is no such thing as climate change or global warming—besides, global warming sounds kind of cozy.
If we need to cut down the rain forests, we’ll cut them down. The planet is a grown-up; it can take care of itself. Greenhouse gases have been around for centuries. They’ve never done anybody any harm.
Health classes should be changed immediately. No child needs to be taught about what to eat. That’s the parent’s job. Sex education should be cancelled outright. No sex in biology, no sex in Health class, no sex anywhere—for anyone. And the whole concept of vaccinations needs to be revamped in order to inform our children of the dangers of having a qualified medical professional stick a needle full of life-saving vaccinations into their arms. The same is true with the teachings of that ill-informed and liberal institution, the CDC. Their absurd attempts to stem COVID and to champion the advice of Dr. Fauci were hilarious.
And of course, who needs to learn a foreign language? Everyone here already speaks American. We don’t need French or German or—especially Spanish. Everyone over there speaks English anyway.
Finally, the whole concept of critical thinking needs to be scrapped. It’s an outmoded and ancient concept that needs to go into the circular file along with logic, reason, and empirical evidence. These are the devil’s tools used by the liberal media in their never-ending quest to open the minds of our children. They are not necessary to the brave new world of our MAGA heroes who bravely tried to take back our country on January 6th, 2021. Their reality will become the new reality shared by everyone (who speaks English), defended by AR-15s (thanks to Lauren Boebert for making it the national firearm), and who has only the vaguest memory, or dream, of America the Beautiful.