I came across an article in my Facebook feed today and had to write about it.
Banning books is something that has always been associated with Nazis and Communists. The picture of armed soldiers and brain-washed citizens standing round a pyre of burning books is something straight from a dystopian novel. Or is it?
In Portland, OR the Public Schools board voted to eliminate the use of any textbooks or other materials that are “found to express doubt about the severity of the climate crisis or its root in human activities.”
Whether you believe in man-made global warming or not, this is incredibly wrong. To keep information out of the hands of children (or anyone for that matter) simply because it does not fit one’s world view is pure Nazism.
A school should be a place where children are taught to think critically for themselves. Not a place where they are force-fed the ideology of a school board or teacher. Where are we headed or to where have we already come if the opportunity to think and argue and discover truth is taken from us?
A dystopian society is not just some fantasy world in the YA section at Barnes and Noble. It is a reality waiting to happen and all it needs is for people to stop thinking.
“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”
― George Orwell, 1984
M.A.Foxworthy 