School library pulls book about Cuba after parent’s complaint
It appears that a parent didn’t like the positive portrayal of communism in a book about Cuba and complained about it. The end result: As is all too usual, the library pulled it.
School library pulls book about Cuba after parent’s complaint:
A children’s book about traveling to Cuba has been pulled from a Miami-Dade County school library’s shelf for review after a parent complained about the book’s depiction of life under a communist government, officials said Wednesday.
The Spanish-language book, “Vamos a Cuba” or “A Visit to Cuba” in English by Alta Schreier, contains images of smiling children wearing uniforms of Cuba’s communist youth group and a carnival celebrating the Cuban revolution of 1959, said Joseph Garcia, a spokesman for the school district.
“This parent is himself an immigrant from Cuba and seeing it firsthand doesn’t feel the book is a fair and accurate representation of life in Cuba under the current regime,” Garcia said. No other complaints about the book have been reported, he said.
Ok librarians. Here’s a note to you: If someone asks you to pull something from the shelves? Don’t.
Seriously though, why does it seem like every day there’s a new news story about a librarian pulling a book from a shelf after parents complain? Do librarians universally have no spines?
Oooh Ooh, did you see the very clever pun that I had in that last sentence? Man, I’m so witty.
If you look at the article, you’ll see that the book has been pulled for review, not banned for life; also, the decision was in compliance with school board policy, which is not in the librarian’s control. Sadly, the decision on whether or not it will return is, most likely, largely out of the librarian’s hands; he or she will no doubt be outnumbered at the review meeting by administrators and possibly parents. Hopefully there is time to build a strong case.
Librarians are not spineless. But challenges have to be treated seriously, even when they are ridiculous, and especially in school libraries. Review procedures go into effect for any sort of book challenge, no matter how frivolous the librarian may feel it is. That’s just the way it is. If a librarian simply dug in his or her heels and said “Screw you,” there’d be a lot more stink from the parents.
I have n ot been able to find info re Alta Schreier. No bio, nothing,..
THE MIAMI HERALD
July 8, 2006
TAXES FOR VAMOS A CUBA: “SINFUL AND TYRANNICAL”
By Frank Bolanos
Mr. Frank Bolanos is a member of the Miami-Dade School Board
If the Newark, New Jersey school board decided to issue “Little Black Sambo” as a third grade reader, how would that largely African-American community react?
Famed progressive educator Carl L. Marburger posed this question in 1974, when he said controversial schoolbooks in rural West Virginia showed the public school system’s “astonishing insensitivity to local cultural values.”
Those aggrieved local folks endured the insults, catcalls and jeers of the liberal elite until Marburger, a self-described liberal’s liberal, spoke up and gave them pause. Today, the Miami-Dade school board and I are being accused of censorship for our efforts to remove from school libraries “Vamos a Cuba,” a children’s book that paints a false and distorted portrait of life in communist Cuba.
If the teachers’ unions, Herald columnists, the ACLU and Fidel Castro himself are to be believed, the Miami-Dade school board is pillaging school libraries, burning books, oppressing the intellectual freedom of helpless children, and stomping on the First Amendment.
None of this is true; this is not a First Amendment issue. Censorship occurs when government refuses to allow people to purchase material, not when it refuses to provide that material at no charge.
Just as the First Amendment grants basic freedoms to those espousing even the most repugnant of views, I support Alta Schreier’s right to author and publish “Vamos a Cuba.” I defend the right of any Miami bookstore to sell it and I defend the right of any American to read it. Indeed, let the author promote and sell her book and compete in the marketplace of ideas.
But taxpayers must not be forced to subsidize falsehoods, propaganda or insulting imagery. As Thomas Jefferson, wrote, “to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
Simply put, Jefferson, a framer of the Constitution our critics cite, would see no reason for our schools to spend sparse taxpayer money to promote the circulation of misinformation and lies many in our community equate to oppression and the loss of liberty and life.
If our public schools provided “Little Black Sambo” to African-America children, I would stand with their parents as this would be offensive, racist and an inappropriate use of tax dollars. If our public schools put the grotesquely anti-Semitic children’s book “The Poisonous Mushroom” into libraries, I would stand with Jewish parents to oppose this abhorrent act and misappropriation of public funds. The struggle against Cuban communism is no less important.
In 1995, the Miami Herald was forced to trash an entire section after an offensive cartoon of Martin Luther King, Jr. was mistakenly printed inside. Over the nationally syndicated cartoonist’s objections, editors made the bold decision to pull a half million copies of the magazine.
They did it by hand; it took two full days. It was hard and expensive work to correct a mistake that took only moments to make. Similarly, a foolish decision by an entrenched bureaucracy had to be corrected and has cost our school district valuable time, money and focus.
After the mess, the Herald’s executive editor at the time wrote that the newspaper’s First Amendment obligation is “to present the broadest range of perspectives and opinions in its news and opinion pages. But a newspaper also has an obligation to protect its readers from the outrageously offensive or the egregiously insensitive.”
If such an obligation exists at a privately funded newspaper, certainly Miami’s public officials have a responsibility to assure taxpayers aren’t forced to subsidize racism, anti-Semitism or communism with public dollars.
Likewise, taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill for entrenched and misguided bureaucrats who want to whitewash the horrors of life under Fidel Castro and his brutal regime.
END