Oklahoma’s education board has revoked the license of a former teacher who drew national attention during surging book-ban efforts across the U.S. in 2022 when she covered part of her classroom bookshelf in red tape with the words “Books the state didn’t want you to read.”
The decision Thursday went against a judge who had advised the Oklahoma Board of Education not to revoke the license of Summer Boismier, who had also put in her high school classroom a QR code of the Brooklyn Public Library’s catalogue of banned books.
An attorney for Boismier, who now works at the Brooklyn Public Library in New York City, told reporters after the board meeting that they would seek to overturn the decision.
It’s so dystopian that teachers lose their jobs for encouraging children to read and that “free speech” advocates in state government are literally censoring books, the very thing that the first amendment is designed to stop governments doing.
More nazi shit. . .
I fuckin hate Oklahoma Nazis.
I don’t discriminate, I hate all Nazis equally
Yes, but I hate some nazis more equally. Especially the once who effectively push their political agenda.
Animal Farm Vibes
That book is banned, you can’t read it
i hate Nazis based off their proximity and power. a nazi may perhaps be allowed to live if they were stranded in the kuiper belt (maybe)
Hmmm, no. There are too many resources there.
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its very telling that they want children to not only not have access to these materials, but not know they they are be prevented from seeing those materials.
kind of horrifying… very weird ,cult-like behavior from conservatives.
Right? This is some legitimate dystopian shit.
It is called the bible belt and as a gay man that grew up there, let me tell you, it is some scary shit. Thanks to the people there still fighting the good fight.
Also its highly likely that all these children have access to the internet anyways and can access all of it and much more.
How do they know it exists from their advertised and curated algorithm bubbles of proprietary app social media?
Brainwashing
Walters said at Thursday’s meeting that Boismier violated rules that prohibit instruction on topics related to race and gender. He told reporters that she “broke the law.”
Oh? I didn’t realize providing a link to an online resource was considered teaching or had anything to do with race or gender. 🤔
they should revoke the license of the board and ban them from getting anywhere within 500m of an educational institution
Within 500m of children.
Teacher will eventually get a fat, taxpayer-funded lawsuit award. The republicans are such backwards, self-hating, broken people.
How hard would it be for another state, that isn’t so dedicated to shooting its own foot, reinstate/award them a teaching license as a gesture?
For teachers in that state it would be pretty easy since it’s a compact state. I would recommend Oregon or Washington.
For 3 seconds or so I was confused, wondering why Oregon or Washington would be considered particularly small or dense
Generally? Well within the executive power / administrative law of any given state as noted by BlueFalcon below.
Practically? I’d expect it to be quite a struggle. For licensed professions in general (doctors, real estate, insurance, hairdressers, etc.) most or all states ask a question to the effect of “Has your license for profession ever been suspended or revoked in any other state?”. It may or may not be an automatic disqualifier, but even if not it’s an uphill battle.
It prevents the real estate agent who stole someone’s earnest money from upping stakes to the next state and getting licensed, but since the standards for suspending/revoking licenses vary widely by state I lean towards believing that perhaps it should be a factor, and perhaps the state board of profession should meet to review the application, but previous disciplinary action in some other state is in no way an absolute statement about someone’s fitness to practice in their chosen field.
Chasing away your teachers is a great way to make sure your state stays at the bottom of every US state comparison table, so great job.
… is a great way make an uneducated population for the benefit of the next authoritarian ruler
Yes. Failing the populace is not a side-effect, it’s the point.
What fun is it being the king of an unhappy, sickly, unemployable mob of peasants? Your dictatorship will not last a month.
Quite the contrary. An uneducated population is easier to fool and to control. And uneducated != unemployable.
The ditches don’t dig themselves! The hogs don’t clean their own mess. The stamping machine only severs an arm at a time, so get up there and run the stamper with your good arm, Billy!
Hatred and entitlement aren’t logical.
Their education system doesn’t care. They want 1 of 2 things. Easy to control and submissive teachers, or they want to completely tear down the system and build a private one.
… With authoritarian hierarchy and submissive teachers.
With
authoritarian hierarchy and submissive teachers..state funded religious indoctrination aka “private school vouchers.”
Chasing away public school teachers on our way to privatizing schools is a goal of theirs so yeah mission accomplished
Oklahoma imports it’s high education labor from neighboring Nebraska and Texas, then keeps the locals ignorant and pliable for the cheap local labor
neighboring Nebraska
Kansas: “Am I a joke to you?”
Yes. Kansas is a joke
Hey, at least they were able to protect abortion access via direct ballot voting.
I’m wondering what percentage of high education labor is military veterans who utilized their GI bill to get a better education, Tinker AFB ain’t small. Huge military populations for Texas too, and there’s a history of dumping retirees out the gate and saying “good luck!”.
Oklahoma University and OSU both have big out of state populations, too.
Shout out to the Austin Public Library (and Austin as a whole) for continuously telling the Texas legislature to go fuck itself.
They realize with house prices there’s no magical white collar job Howard Cunningham can get that will provide enough
Does capitan underpants got banned?
Badlahoma things. What to expect from a state that extolled the virtues of oil industry for primary school children but forbids teaching about climate change?
I’m not a lawyer so could someone explain to me how laws like this don’t immediately fail a prior restraint test?
Probably because they are an employee of the government, not a private publisher. (They’re also not a publisher at all.)
Does posting to a blog count as publishing? I don’t feel like old definitions of “private publisher” are as useful as they used to be. Public schools are such a quagmire of conflicting ideals on the best of days. Don’t put up a flier for an unapproved study club, but CocaCola logos everywhere…
I think it does, but that’s not what’s at issue here. She put it up as a poster in her classroom.
I wonder if she coulda kept her job if (instead of a poster in the classroom) she waited just outside the school grounds to hand fliers out to kids like the evangelicals do. Or would they have said something about her “representing the school” outside of work? I guess I wouldn’t be surprised either way.
Thank you, Summer Boismier, for standing up for what is right and being a true patriot.
I’ve given up on anything truly positive happening in this timeline. We live in a world where “evil” has long ago won, we’re just continually acting surprised at finding out what we already know.
No hope. No future. Unless you’re wealthy/powerful, welcome to the new gilded age where a human life is at its absolute lowest value in all of history.
We can fight as much as we want but we can never win.
Its not over yet. I was raised in one of these places. My schooling was a joke. Then I discovered the internet, and all that brainwashing they tried to do in primary school faded pretty quickly.
These kids aren’t going to be that easy to lie to with the way the internet is. Some will fall for the propaganda but many will not.
Get back up.
Streisand effect go!
An attorney for Boismier, who now works at the Brooklyn Public Library in New York City
I am assuming and hoping they are talking about the teacher getting a job there. That’s fucking awesome if so
Yeah, she got the fuck out of dodge like two years ago. This case has been dragging on for a long time - OSDE has done shady shit like change the meeting time when they saw KFOR reporters there.
Well, it sounds like the attorney has a job still, and it probably pays a little better too, so I assume so.
I’m hoping the same, that’s quite the story in and of itself.
I thought they meant the attorney.
The first line of the article calls her “a former teacher” so I took it to mean she was the one working at the NY library.
Edit to add …
Boismier lost her job after she gave students a QR code to the Brooklyn Public Library’s Books Unbanned project. Now she’s in charge of teen initiatives at the library, and will be part of its Freedom to Read Advocacy Institute with PEN America. The free, online four-week training program will teach high school students to combat book banning in their schools and libraries. Source
PraegerU content? Totally fine.
Books kids actually want to read? Verboten.
I dunno, this penis Prager guy seems pretty cool
