MY STAND AGAINST FASCISM IN THE FREE STATE

I’ve written about this on Dangerous-Knowledge and on Mr. Andoscia’s Classroom, but have not really elaborated what happened here at my flagship website, the Mad Sociologist Blog. Those of you who are connected to the other websites already know…it’s been a helluva month!

On January 16th I posted this article on the Mad Sociologist with video of my classroom. During the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend my administration, I believe under order from the school district, removed over six-hundred books from my classroom. There was nothing wrong with these books, mind you. They were not books that had been rejected by the state. They were books that had not yet been vetted by the state. After almost eight months, only forty of my books had been vetted up to that point. The books were removed because I did not have them covered, taped off or locked away to keep my students from accessing them.

I was outraged and ultimately decided to resign my position, ending my thirty-year career as a teacher. It broke my heart to do it, but I feared that my presence in the classroom at that point could be considered tacit approval of the district’s actions. I could not teach my students, through my actions, that the state should have anything to say about what they read. I could not condone by my presence the empty bookshelves around my classroom.

I resigned on Wednesday, January 17th and walked out of my classroom for the last time the very next day. But I didn’t go quietly. Now my story has come to the attention of the media. The first channel to run my story is NBC2 here in Fort Myers. Here’s the story they ran.

Over the years I’ve made a lot of claims about right and wrong on this blog. I’ve taught thousands of kids about the perils of authoritarianism and the importance of resisting anyone, even the state, when they threaten our basic rights. I can’t very well talk big and then fall into compliance when called to action in real life.

In the last month I have been overwhelmed with support from teachers, students, parents, and the media. It is my hope that this support can be translated into action, and we can reverse the authoritarian tide that is washing out every vestige of free expression in Ron DeSantis’s so-called Free State.