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On the Media

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4.6 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2022

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

An old threat has returned to classrooms across the country — and it’s made of pages and ink. On this week’s On the Media, hear what it means to ban a book, and who has the right to choose what kids learn. Plus, meet the student who took his school board all the way to the Supreme Court in the 80s.

1. Kelly Jensen, editor for Book Riot who writes a weekly update on “book censorship news,” on what it means to ban a book. Listen.

2. Jennifer Berkshire [@BisforBerkshire] and Jack Schneider [@Edu_Historian], hosts of the education podcast “Have You Heard,” on the rights—both real and fictional—of parents to shape what their kids learn. Listen .

3. OTM reporter Micah Loewinger [@MicahLoewinger] takes a deep dive into our nations history of taking books off shelves, with the 1982 Supreme Court decision in Island Trees School District v Pico. Featuring: Steven Pico, then student and plaintiff in the case and Arthur Eisenberg, New York Civil Liberties lawyer, who represented him. Listen.

Music:Tymperturbably Blue by Duke EllingtonYork Fusiliers by Douglas Monroe & Yorktown Fife and DrumsEye Surgery by Thomas NewmanViderunt Omnes by The Kronos Quartet

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's not about the kids. It's about creating such havoc in public schools that they're
0:08.3	able to say why are we paying tax money to this institution that isn't doing its job.
0:14.8	The cries to poll books from school libraries and curricula are for who exactly?
0:20.4	From WNYC in New York, this is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. Meet the parents.
0:26.4	The parents have lost their voice to represent themselves and their children. So we're bringing
0:30.2	our own chairs to the table. Right? And we're going to claim those seats.
0:34.3	The pandemic has brunn brutal on disruptions to childcare and so politicians find electoral
0:41.4	gold in the parent's rights cost. Plus the student who took his book banning school board
0:48.2	all the way to the Supreme Court. It's almost meant to be. I was born to be the plaintiff
0:53.7	in this case. It's all coming up after this.
0:58.3	From WNYC in New York, this is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. This summer Utah's largest
1:08.3	school district removed over 50 books from school libraries. Panameraca reports that over
1:13.7	20 of the freshly elicit titles feature LGBT characters or themes. The titles that were
1:21.7	reviewed were found by this committee to contain sensitive material and they do not have
1:27.8	literary merit. The allegedly meritless books include
1:31.5	Jodi Pico's number one New York Times bestseller, 19 minutes about a school shooting, a Judy
1:37.1	Bloom title, and a memoir called Gender Queer. The removal of the books is temporary until
1:43.9	the school board formalizes its policy for book removals. It was made possible by a
1:49.1	bill that passed earlier this year in Utah, part of a new wave of legislation limiting
1:54.8	school curricula. In Virginia schools, they are now required to alert parents if any books
2:00.8	assigned for the curriculum have sexually explicit content that require to have law enforcement
2:05.5	liaisons for those schools. In Florida, the parental rights and education law, the
	...

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