US poet Amanda Gorman says a Florida school has banned younger readers from accessing the poem she recited at President Joe Biden's inauguration.
May 24, 2023

Interestingly, we would not have learned about this bullshit except after documents were obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project and later published in the Miami Herald.

Book-banning, the most un-American activity one can think of is now commonplace in Ron DeSantis' Florida.

Source: BBC

US poet Amanda Gorman says a Florida school has banned younger readers from accessing the poem she recited at President Joe Biden's inauguration.

A Miami-Dade County school said it moved the poem, The Hill We Climb, from the elementary library section to the middle school section.

The move came after a parent asked the school to remove the poem entirely, according to documents obtained by the Freedom to Read Project.

Gorman was "gutted" by the news.

"I wrote The Hill We Climb so that all young people could see themselves in a historical moment," she said in a post on social media, adding that because of one parent's complaint, younger readers at the school could no longer access it.

And how is this sort of foolishness allowed to occur?

In March, a parent of two students at Bob Graham Education Center in Miami Lakes, complained about Gorman's poem, claiming it had indirect "hate messages", according to records obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project and seen by the Miami Herald.

The parent asked the school to remove several other books as well, including the ABCs of Black History, Cuban Kids and Countries in the News Cuba, alleging the titles referenced critical race theory and indoctrination. The complaint led the school to review the titles, after which it decided to put Gorman's poem on the shelves for older children instead because the vocabulary was "of value for middle school students".

And a copy of the complaint, which in Ron DeSantis' Florida a school has to take seriously - or else. Note that the complainant has Oprah Winfrey as the author of the poem, because all black people look alike, presumably.

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