The 1619 Project, other history books should not be banned from SC's classrooms

[Nevilledog]

https://www.thestate.com/opinion/article257540948.html

Last April, the South Carolina legislature voted to require all high school and public college students to read America’s founding documents, including the Bill of Rights. Legislation introduced a short time later makes me wonder whether the duty of reading the Bill of Rights, especially the First Amendment, ought to also be imposed on our state’s politicians.

The First Amendment prohibits the government from taking away our “freedom of speech.” Yet H. 4343 would prohibit K-12 teachers from having their students read a book that has been on the bestseller list ever since it was published last November. I am talking about The 1619 Project, which contends that African Americans have played a much larger role in American history than most people realize.

This semester, students in my section of The Historian’s Craft, which is required for history majors at the University of South Carolina, are reading The 1619 Project. I had several motives for assigning it. One is that as a lover of the First Amendment, I feel a duty to expose my students to books that others wish to ban.

Another reason I chose The 1619 Project is that students always grow intellectually when they debate questions that begin with the word “Why.” We are less than a month into the new semester, but my class has already had several lively discussions about why politicians here in South Carolina and in several other states hate The 1619 Project so much that they want to violate students’ and teachers’ free speech rights by censoring it.

*snip*

[Haggard Celine]

1. I hate to hear about a school banning a book.

I've never heard of a school librarian who bought actual pornography to put in their library, and that really should be the only thing that isn't allowed in school libraries. They should be able to carry pretty much any book with text, I think. Teachers should be given a lot of freedom in what they have their students read as well. If we want kids who can think for themselves, we need them to have access to a wide variety of materials to study. Of course, some people don't want kids who can think for themselves and use critical thinking skills. We can't let those people make the decisions about how to educate our children.