▪️This is an incredible story. In the past year there have been countless memes shrieking about “book bans” in red states, which are typically a single school board deciding a few books are not age appropriate, often moving them from the elementary to middle school section or similar action. Now, Ontario schools are removing giant swaths of books, as much as 50%, for equity initiatives!
▪️The school board describes this as simply a “weeding process” (book bans only apply to conservatives). The board said, "Books published prior to 2008 that are damaged, inaccurate, or do not have strong circulation data (are not being checked out by students) are removed”
▪️This follows Directive 18 from Ontario’s Ministry of Education, which tells school boards “to complete a diversity audit of schools, which includes libraries.” This instructs librarians to “review” books published before 2008 based on the MUSTIE acronym:
🔹Misleading- information may be factually inaccurate or obsolete
🔹Unpleasant– refers to the physical condition, not content, of the book
🔹Superseded– book been overtaken by a new edition or a more current resource
🔹Trivial– no discernible literary or scientific merit
🔹 Irrelevant– doesn't meet the needs and interests of the library's community
🔹Elsewhere– the material in it may be better obtained from other sources
▪️With the exception of unpleasant and superseded, this standard is HIGHLY subjective, essentially giving librarians the power to determine what is misleading and relevant!
▪️It gets worse, of course. Step 2 of curation is “an anti-racist and inclusive audit, where quality is defined by "resources that promote anti-racism, cultural responsiveness and inclusivity."”
▪️And step 3 is “a representation audit of how books and other resources reflect student diversity.” What could possibly go wrong with that?
▪️The absolute kicker is this quote:
🔹 “When it comes to disposing of the books that are weeded, the board documents say the resources are "causing harm," either as a health hazard because of the condition of the book or because "they are not inclusive, culturally responsive, relevant or accurate." For those reasons, the documents say the books cannot be donated, as "they are not suitable for any learners."”
▪️So while not literally burning books, they are destroying them. This includes such dissident works as the Hungry Caterpillar and Anne Frank’s diary. Imagine, for a moment, the reaction if this was happening in a conservative school district.
▪️There is thankfully some pushback on this from, presumably, left wing people in Canada. But it’s based on worries that older books about Japanese internment camps or the Holocaust might be removed. Not revulsion over the equity “weeding process” itself.
▪️While this is in Canada, there is no real ideological difference between Ontario’s equity initiative for books and progressive areas in the US. This would be championed by the left in the US if they could get away with it, which tells you everything you need to know about the “book ban” hysteria.
Full story here:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/peel-school-board-library-book-weeding-1.6964332
It’s bizarre to see them seesaw back and forth that Trump is totally clueless and aloof, just golfing all day, then all of a sudden he’s a dangerous king/dictator who’s diligently plotting to seize absolute power.
▪️This one is frustrating because, while it’s nice to see the vigor and speed that DOGE is acting with, they’re also sloppy with some of their findings. This is not some bombshell, millions of dead people’s SS numbers aren’t being paid out to fraudsters.
▪️This problem has been known for some time, you can read an inspector general’s report from 2015 about millions of names on the SS “numident” not being correctly annotated for deaths, even though they were older than 112 (the oldest known American at the time).
https://oig-files.ssa.gov/audits/full/A-06-14-34030_0.pdf
▪️There are innocent explanations for some of these. Expatriates that died outside the country, for example. Or immigrants given temporary work permit who returned to their country, people issued new numbers for various reasons, etc. However, most are simply due to the govt not diligently keeping track of deaths.
▪️It’s embarrassing that the govt has millions of numbers on the numident that are ...
