The history of educational censorship in the United States is long and convoluted. Dating back to the First Amendment of the US Constitution, Americans are guaranteed, “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” This set a precedent for the value of freedom of thought in various public forums, including education. While education was still mostly privatized, there were few challenges to freedom of speech within schools and efforts to censor curriculum because wealthy parents had ultimate control over what their children were learning in private schools, and lower classes didn’t have the time or means to contest public school content. However, when public education spread across the country in the aftermath of the industrial revolution and child labor laws, issues of censorship and free speech started to emerge (Paterson).

In the South following the American Civil War, there was a mass effort to rewrite and restrict the teaching of history. This was pioneered by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who identified as the descendants of Southern Confederate soldiers. They were extremely successful in banning textbooks that contained accurate portrayals of slavery or that criticized Southern Civil War leaders, and were instrumental in creating a false “lost cause” mythology romanticizing Southern practices of plantation ownership and slavery (Halterman). In effect, accurate accounts of the Civil War were censored to preserve Southern pride. 

Educational censorship has carried bigoted sentiments in other cases as well. The 1925 Supreme Court case Meyer v. Nebraska cemented the right of schools to teach foreign languages as part of their curriculum in response to a Nebraska law that prevented German from being taught in schools in the wake of World War I as a method of reinforcing cultural purity in America. A similar law in Hawaii that prevented Japanese from being taught was overturned in 1927 in Farrington v. Tokushige. Further panic over American students being exposed to foreign ideas took hold in the “Red Scare” 1950s, where there was a concentrated effort to avoid teaching students about alternative forms of government.

In many examples of educational censorship, there is an underlying current of fear. One of the most significant cases regarding censorship of curriculum and school libraries is Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. Pico (1982). In it, members of the school board voted to remove a series of books from the school library for being “un-American”. A group of students sued on the basis of the 1st Amendment, and the Supreme Court ruled that, “…local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to ‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion’” (Justia). This precedent has since been upheld in cases like Counts v. Cedarville School District (2003).

However, the actions of various school districts and counties do not reflect this. There has been a growing movement for Parental Rights in Education, which claims that parents should have greater influence over public school curriculum in order to prevent their children from being exposed to content they do not wish for them to learn. In practice, this movement has been used to censor the perspectives of marginalized groups. This was seen in Anita Bryant’s 1977 campaign, “Save Our Children”, which targeted a nondiscrimination bill in Dade County, Miami, FL. The campaign aimed to prevent LGBTQ+ individuals from becoming teachers in order to “protect children” from their influence. In a similar vein, in 1993, the New York City School Board Chancellor, Joseph Fernandez, was ousted from his office after attempting to implement a “Rainbow Curriculum” in NYC public schools that included material preaching tolerance for LGBTQ+ people (Caruso). These are just a few examples of angry conservatives and parents effectively censoring curriculum and removing diverse perspectives due to “moral objections” that have given way to the onslaught of Parental Rights bills we now face.

We still see all of these things today with attempts to censor educational material surrounding the Holocaust, climate change, Critical Race Theory and systemic racism, and LGBTQ+ literature. Proposed Parental Rights bills in states like TX, MO, VA, FL, MT, IN, IA, GA, and PA aim to do the same things that the board in Island Trees or the United Daughters of the Confederacy did. Throughout history, censorship has reflected a fear of narratives that empower the marginalized, and this is still true. That is why it is so important to combat.

Welcome to my first passion blog post! The theme I chose is reviewing LGBTQ+ movies. Whether you’re a part of the community or not, I hope you’ll still enjoy reading about these films, and if you’re so inclined, go and watch them! I want to show that there is something valuable within all of these films. 

I wanted to start off with one of my personal favorites, But I’m A Cheerleader. The movie, released in 1999 and directed by Jamie Babbit, centers around Megan (Natasha Lyonne), a teenage cheerleader who is sent to a “rehab” camp after her parents begin to suspect that she’s a lesbian. While at the camp, she bonds with sarcastic Graham (Clea DuVall) and begins to realize that what she wants for her life is not what she originally thought. 

The movie has a very campy aesthetic in its script and set design, and fits into a long tradition of campy queer movies. The writing is dramatic, exaggerated, and incredibly funny, and the cast definitely does it justice. The design of the conversion camp, True Directions, is also very tongue-in-cheek, and the writers manage to navigate the delicate balance of satirizing the premise of conversion therapy (“therapy” intended to make someone straight through aversive conditioning) while acknowledging how damaging it is to LGBTQ+ youth’s mental and physical health and that it doesn’t work. The movie centers more on queer joy than suffering, and has a happy ending for the main cast of characters. Plus, happy endgame lesbians!! The couples in this movie, but especially the main girls, are very cute, and have great chemistry. Their love story is really heartwarming.

Overall, the tone of the movie is fairly light. However, the movie is R rated, largely because there is profanity and some slurs against gay people used. There are also some references to sex that put it in the adult category. Please take note of this if you plan on watching this movie and are sensitive to this kind of language.

This movie means a lot to me, since it was the first movie I saw that centered on LGBTQ+ characters. When I first watched it, I had just come out to myself as queer but wasn’t ready to be out to my family. I shared all my streaming services with them and didn’t want them to see that I watched something with queer characters in it (even though they probably wouldn’t have noticed…). Either way, But I’m A Cheerleader was free on YouTube, and so I could watch it as many times as I wanted. It made my gay little heart so happy. 

Anyways, I highly recommend this movie. It’s hilarious, heartfelt, and so amazingly gay. If you’ve seen it before, let me know your thoughts, and if not, I urge you to watch it! It’s available on YouTube (watch it here!) and Amazon Prime, as well as some other platforms. I’ll catch you all next week!

For my Civic Issues blog this semester, I will be discussing censorship in the American K-12 education system. I will be covering the history of censorship in American education, movements associated with it, issues of social justice and omission of diverse perspectives, and what can be done to fight against unjust censorship.

What is Censorship?

According to The American Association of School Administrators (AASA), educational censorship is “[T]he removal, suppression, or restricted circulation of literary, artistic, or educational materials — of images, ideas, and information — on the grounds that these are morally or otherwise objectionable in light of standards applied by the censor.” They specify that, “…censorship rests on an exclusion of materials, while selection involves an inclusion of materials carried out by trained professionals, familiar with the wide variety of available choices and guided by a clear grasp of the educational purposes to be fulfilled” (Miner).

Censorship can be a localized issue, but it can also span to national levels. Challenges to school materials generally occur on three levels: parents who do not want their child exposed to specific materials, school officials who argue that no one in their class, school, or district should be exposed to certain content, and organized campaigns (local or national) who challenge content to make a broader political point. Most recently, there have been censorship attempts by state officials who have passed legislation to prevent the teaching of specific topics state-wide. The most well-known example of this is Florida governor Ron DeSantis’ passage of the Parental Rights in Education Bill (colloquially known as the Don’t Say Gay bill) in March 2022. Bills like this one as well as the failed Stop W.O.K.E bill, censor education surrounding LGBTQ+ topics, racial justice and slavery, and white supremacy (ACLU). 

The Dangers of Educational Censorship

These legislative efforts to censor “controversial” topics pose a significant threat to students’ freedom to learn accurate history and freely access literature. These bills, which PEN America calls Educational Intimidation Bills, “do not constitute direct forms of censorship or curricular prohibitions. But they facilitate the conditions for a chilled climate in public education by radically expanding avenues for parents, government officials, and citizens to intervene in curricular and extracurricular decisions in public K–12 schools.” (PEN America). In other words, these bills allow for legal censorship by allowing a greater number of individuals to decide what gets taught to students. The number of bills attempting to restrict educational liberty in this way has increased dramatically in recent years. PEN America states, “392 of them [were] introduced between January 2021 and June 2023, 39 of which have passed into law.” The below chart indicates what these policies allow for:

What is especially important to note is that these laws specifically target marginalized groups. Many censorship attempts in K-12 education focus specifically on erasing LGBTQ+ identities and issues of race and equity. This often means teaching a “revised” version of history that ignores systemic inequalities and can stigmatize BIPOC and LGBTQ+ students by denying them representation. This also spreads dangerous information to young people, creating an educational bias that allows yet another generation that refuses to acknowledge important issues of justice, as well as issues like climate change. 

Censorship of any kind is reason to be suspect, but educational censorship is an incredibly potent tool for disseminating propaganda and pushing ignorance in service of a sociopolitical agenda. This is a significant threat to the principles of public education; every student receives a standardized, accurate, quality education.

In my next post, I will explore the history of educational censorship and its ties to “parental rights in education” movements.

Where I’m From:

I am from fireflies in the front lawn and dark amber sunsets.

I am from woods that are far too small to be a forest,

Stardust and rotting gardens and offered epithets

Of being an “old, lonely soul” (thank you, Doris).

I am from long, winding walks and short, simple stories,

Well-loved bookshelves and blurred chalkboard memories

Eloquent academics preoccupied with mathematic civics,

I’m from desperate declarations of belonging through lyrics.

I’m from Christmas carols that taste like plastic,

Fake trees, Thanksgiving without turkey, wholehearted mimics

I’m from diyas on the sidewalk, fireworks in November,

Braided hair and sweet coconut as far back as I remember.

I’m the elusive sound of my mother’s singing (just for me)

I’m W’s shaped into V’s, my grandfather’s old CDs.

I’m from hastily scratched pencil-mark hyphens,

Suits and chudidars, difference lost in the moment

I’m from bright colors, powder and silk,

From saris and nutmeg and chai with milk

I’m from sun-kissed bare feet and warm brown skin,

Basil plants thriving in my grandmother’s garden.

I’m from fingernail-sized snails nestled in the dirt,

Wild blackberries in the backyard, thorns unearthed

By scratched, triumphant hands, clutching their prize

Just a handful between my sister and I

Yet somehow neither of us managed to mind.

I’m from the sharing of a peeled orange

Late afternoons spent with friends

Little gifts, paper cranes, colored sand

I’m from the joy in mundanity

The immigrant love for simplicity, the implicit

Permission to stay up turning pages through the night,

Flashlight clutched tight until the dawn’s amber light.

“This I Believe” Ideas:

I believe in sharing tea with people. Whenever I go home, my grandmother offers to make me chai, and it’s a tradition I’ve been trying to take up. Making tea for yourself and others is a way of appreciating the small things, of celebrating culture, and of showing love.

I believe in giving your loved ones handmade gifts. My younger sister used to make everyone handmade gifts for Christmas because she was little and didn’t have money to spend, while everyone else would buy things. Today, the gifts we still have are from her (I have a picture frame she made me up in my dorm). Knowing that something is personally meaningful and was created out of love just for you can be a really powerful reminder that someone cares.

I believe in impulse haircuts. Sometimes it’s a terrible idea, but sometimes your gut reaction that something needs to change should be followed because it allows you to start anew. Before I cut my hair short, I had been feeling like something was off for a long time, and indulging the impulse to cut it helped me get rid of the baggage attached to my old hairstyle. It also encouraged me to take more risks with my expression. Sometimes impulsive change can be exactly what you need.

Passion & Civic Issues Blogs:

In a kind of continuation of last semester’s passion blog, I want to highlight banned/challenged books by diverse authors and discuss why they are valuable. This would be paired with a civic examination of censorship in education. I would look at why it has grown in recent years, what justifications people use to advocate for censorship, and how these practices may align or conflict with the goals and intentions of the public education system.

My second idea would be two separate blogs. The passion blog would be reviewing classic and more modern movies with LGBTQ+ themes for how much I personally enjoyed them, how they handle representation, and the strength of their themes and cinematography. The civic issue blog would focus on affirmative action and look into its precedent, arguments for or against it, and what underlying assumptions it makes about historically marginalized groups.

This became a really long first post! If you managed to read to the end, please let me know what you’d be interested in seeing. Here’s to a great start of the semester!