Parent has poem restricted in Florida school

Irrelevant ad hominem. All that matters is what does the poem say and should it be allowed in the school.

 

Let me get this straight. I need to go into massive financial debt to get a degree in English literature? Why? Do those with a degree in English literature hold some esoteric knowledge to which the rest of us are not privileged enough to be so privy? Let me go to the fry cook, working the night shift at my local Burger King, who has a degree in English literature to see if Amanda Gorman is a good poet or not. Wait here. And are you seriously comparing being able to judge the worthiness of a poem or a poet to being a doctor? That's an insult to doctors. You're funny. Probably unintentionally so. But still funny.

 

Yes they do.
That is what ALL degrees do. You think you have the same knowledge about English Literature on English Literature that someone with a degree in English Literature has?
Are you going to lecture Neil DeGrasse Tyson on astrophysics next? Question Dr. Fauci on infectious diseases? Hell, are you going to tell me how to operate the nuclear power plant on a submarine?

 

And what does it say that means access should be restricted?

 

It was banned? Can you be arrested for reading or trading or selling it? Or is it just not included in schools now? Is it a crime to show it to your kids or just not being suggested to them by teachers as part of the curriculum? Big difference that.

 

Poor choice of words on my part.

Even if the poem was two words long, "America Sucks", that's still not a reason to restrict access.

Better?

 

Are you seriously comparing comprehending English literature to comprehending astrophysics and immunology? You're comparing the complexities of STEM to the complexities of the humanities, which is laughable. Are you trolling me right now? Am I being Punk'd? Where's Ashton Kutcher?

 

You assume too much.

 

Not really better, no. I wouldn't use the label "restricting access" for merely not including it in a school library or in a school curriculum. It isn't like they put an R rating on it and stopped kids from reading or buying it at any bookstore that decides to sell it, and it isn't like the author can't post it online for kids to read, etc.

 

You can tell by the reaction to the restricting access to the poem that the poem was there to begin with because of political reasons, not because it would be educationally productive, most likely.

 

Still not the point.... accepting ANY form of censorship (which this is), at ANY level, for NO reason, is a sign of surrender to an authoritarian regime....

 

I would be reacting the same way if the book being restricted was Trump's biography. My issue is not WHAT was being restricted. Hell, it isn't even really the fact that a book WAS restricted. My problem is the REASON it's being restricted. ONE parent complained. A parent that we know has a history of not even reading stuff before passing judgement. No one has been able to tell me what, exactly, is in it that makes restricting it appropriate.

So far all I have is that some people here didn't like the poem. Not really something that needs restricting.

 

I have yet to hear the reasons why this poem should be included or excluded at a school. Should every writer be entitled to have their work included simply because it is writing?

 

The reaction to restricting access to the poem was to the political reason a parent was given the power to restrict access. Namely, the facilitation of miniTrump's presidential campaign.

 

It was there. Once it was there the question then becomes why did it get restricted.

 

I assume it was included because as an inaugural poem it is part of the country's history.

 

IMO, the insipid reason it was restricted is less significant than the reason a parent was empowered to restrict it.

 

Ok, fair enough. Put it in the history section.

 

Included? It was read live during a Presidential Inauguration
Excluded? Clearly no reason exists

Included 1 - Excluded 0

 

Perhaps they were both political reasons. The school had a political reason for the poem being there. The parent had a political reason for the poem not being there. It's a wash. Let's move on.

 

Would you react the same way if the biography was a hagiography of Trump, and the school was trying to restrict its access?

It's somewhat meaningless to debate hypotheticals, but I am quasi-interested in your response here.

 

And what about all the other poems that have ever been written in history? I guess we're including all the poems ever written in history, since, technically, all poems are a part of history, being made in the past. Were the school to attempt to include all poems ever written, the school would simply be a large, ever-growing pile of poems.

We are falling into the trap of calling a school's decision to restrict access to a poem censorship. It's not. If this is censorship, then all schools engage in censorship, because all schools select which literature to include and which not to fill their bookshelves. If they didn't, the situation would be untenable, to put it lightly.

Call it self-opinionated, but I don't believe the people who are arguing for Gorman's poem to take up physical space are doing it from a nonideological, nonpartisan, apolitical standpoint in the spirit, say, of free speech. Gorman is the Stacey Abrams of poets: there is nothing particularly exceptional about her; she's a media-created sacred cow who we are all supposed to pretend belongs in the pantheon of greats like Frost, Dickenson, and Poe. She's not. She's not in the same league, and I am not going along with the charade that she is.

 

Excluded? It was a crap poem and there are far better pieces of literature to be found.

 

Not in a Floriduh library.... at least not for much longer....

 

The Associated Press Is Having a Horrible Holiday Weekend.

'Once again we get an altered headline from the source. Originally, we were told how “A poem by Amanda Gorman that was written for President Joe Biden’s inauguration was banned by a Florida school after one parent’s complaint.” Then, after scorn and mockery, the AP gave the new headline and adjusted text: “Amanda Gorman’s poem for Biden’s inauguration barred for younger children by Florida school.”'

It was neither banned nor barred.

'While notably different, this is still highly inaccurate, and here is why: The school moved the books from an elementary section of the library and shelved them in the middle school section. They are still in the library, and any student can still access the books. No works have been banned.'

And no works have been barred.

'Making this all the worse for the AP is that to make these claims they had to ignore the original article from the Miami Herald that detailed this. Oh — also needing to be ignored was the text in their own article defying its headline.'

'The poem and books are still available in the media center for middle school-aged children, Ana Rhodes, a spokesperson for the Miami-Dade school district, said in a statement.'

'This has been an amazing string of malaprops on the matter in just a few days. To see this all originating from the same source is rather remarkable.'

'Just think of the media as Democrat Party operatives with bylines, and all of AP’s one-sided mistakes make perfect sense.'