The Great Textbook War

Throughline

NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.6 • 16.4K Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2024

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What is school for? Over a hundred years ago, a man named Harold Rugg published a series of textbooks that encouraged students to confront the thorniest parts of U.S. history: to identify problems, and try and solve them. And it was just as controversial as the fights we're seeing today. In this episode: a media mogul, a textbook author, and a battle over what students should – or shouldn't – learn in school.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	We know you care about what you watch, what you read, and what you listen to.
0:04.3	NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour Podcast is with you four days a week to make sure that time is well spent.
0:10.5	The latest, greatest shows, books, music, and movies.
0:14.0	It's all on the Pop Culture Happy Hour Podcast from NPR.
0:18.0	Listen tonight.
0:20.0	There were more than 3,000 book bands in public schools last year, 1,000 more than the year before.
0:30.0	To parents, don't give an inch on this.
0:33.0	Speak up.
0:34.2	Violence is never the answer, but show up, speak up.
0:37.4	A judge has ruled in favor of to meekula parents, students, and teachers suing their school
0:41.6	district over two controversial policies.
0:44.0	My very association announced today it has seen a 92% increase in books targeted for censorship.
0:50.0	Supporters of book bans often say the books are inappropriate for the age group dealing with racial or gender identity, sexuality, and other difficult topics.
0:58.7	A lot of times the books that are being complained about by parents, you can't even read in the public hearing.
1:06.6	This is about the children and their academic success and it should be about nothing else.
1:11.6	It's up to us to bring those children back to where they belong.
1:14.8	What do you think is the purpose of school for like your eight-year-old child?
1:24.3	This is Lawrence Woop.
1:25.6	He's a producer on this show.
1:27.8	We've both been hearing a lot about what you just heard, headlines, debates, unbelievably 10 school board meetings, seemingly everywhere, over what's taught in school.
1:38.0	So we got to talking about it.
1:40.0	Oof.
	...

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