063 The Erickson Report for October 6 to 19, Page 1: Correction regarding school book bans

We start with a correction: Last time in discussing the increasing banning of books in schools, I twice said that PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans listed 650 unique titles that had been banned from schools over the past school year.

What I meant to say in each occasion was sixteen hundred fifty unique titles - not 650, one thousand 650.

It is worth adding here that according to a recent CBS News poll, over 80% of Americans hold that books should not be banned from schools for discussing race, criticizing US history, including the history of slavery, or  holding political ideas they disagree with.

The poll found wide agreement across party lines, between white and blacks, and between parents and the wider public.

So remember two things: One, this is all, yet again, the work of a small, fractious, but loud minority using hyperbolic lies and manufactured outrage in defense of white supremicist refusal to admit the reality of racism and to protect bigotry against the rights, even the existence, of LGBTQ+ youth.

And two, underlying it all is the intent to undermine and delegitimize public schools as an institution, part of the long-standing drive by the reactionary right to strip away a right to, eliminate the very concept of, a public education and return education to a prerogative of the powerful with the rest of us knowing only enough to serve our place in the social hierarchy.