▪️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🔹Superseded– book been overtaken by a new edition or a more current resource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▪️With the exception of unpleasant and superseded, this standard is HIGHLY subjective, essentially giving librarians the power to determine what is misleading and relevant!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 funny to see the left use the same conspiratorial rhetoric as the right did a year ago regarding the jobs numbers being downwardly revised. So many on the right, who knew nothing of how the jobs numbers are calculated or why they revise them, were convinced the downward revisions were a conspiracy to help Biden win.
If people want to have a debate about the birth death model or the survey methods, ok, but that’s not what’s happening here. Most people are under the delusion that the BLS report is the govt reporting every job created and lost, and are thus easily swayed it’s rigged when it suits their political ends.
This is almost laughingly misleading, as it leaves out everything before the letter.
▪️After being repeatedly lampooned by the Smothers Brothers over Vietnam, Johnson finally had enough. One night at 3 am he called the head of CBS William Paley, demanding that he “get those bastards off my back.”
▪️Paley then asked the heads of CBS entertainment to get them to back off of LBJ. However, instead of backing off the Smothers Brothers doubled down, booking a folk musician performing “Waist Deep,” an anti-war song about a soldier being stuck in the mud while “the big fool says to push on,” clearly a dig at LBJ.
▪️At the last minute, CBS cut the song from the pre-taped show to the outrage of the Smothers. They continued to push the boundaries off and on for the rest of his presidency, with CBS sometimes cutting segments that they thought went too far. Basically, it was a soft form of censorship.
▪️It wasn’t until Johnson made his surprise announcement not to run in 1968 ...
