Tag: Books

Moms for Liberty Defeats School District That Birthed It, Speaking Rules Deemed Unconstitutional

Just the News
Classroom

The Florida school district that birthed Moms for Liberty as a repudiation of its COVID-19 mandates on their children is parenting the conservative group all wrong, so to speak, according to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Its Tuesday ruling smacked down Brevard Public Schools and four current and former school board members for unconstitutional restrictions on public comments at their meetings in a lawsuit by Moms for Liberty’s founding Brevard County chapter and its members, putting public schools on notice across the court’s jurisdiction of the Sunshine State, Alabama and Georgia.

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Commentary: 25 Traditionalist Books to Read with Your Children

Minnesota Sun Staff

One of the best things parents can do for their children is read with them. Even reading a few minutes a day makes a world of difference.

Literacy is not only the key skill required by almost all education formats but also one of the most influential factors in any learning endeavor. Even children too young to read independently garner an incredible amount from listening to books read aloud. They significantly increase their language skills, attention span, memory, visual awareness, and emotional response and regulation. And, of course, reading together offers children time to cuddle up with parents for quality bonding time.

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Canadian School District Removes All Books from Before 2008

Minnesota Sun Staff

In an effort to promote “inclusivity,” a Canadian school district has removed all books published before the year 2008 from all of its libraries.

According to the Daily Caller, the actions taken by the Peel School District in Mississauga, Ontario were in response to a provincial directive from the minister of education ordering a greater focus on “equity.”

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TikTok’s CCP-Linked Parent Company Is Trying to Break into a Whole New Industry

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ByteDance, the CCP-linked parent company of popular shortform video platform TikTok, is trying to enter the book publishing industry, The New York Times reported Saturday.

The company filed in late April for a U.S. trademark for a publishing firm, 8th Note Press, and has already begun reaching out to some independent authors for the rights to sell their books, the NYT reported. TikTok has helped some books become bestsellers in the past several years, posts using the #Booktok hashtag have been viewed more than 91 billion times and the combined sales of 100 authors with large BookTok followings eclipsed $760 million in 2022, a 60% surge from the year prior.

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School Libraries Across the Country Adding Books on Gender and White Supremacy

The Center Square

The Ann Arbor public school district has a book available in its pre-kindergarten library called “Introducing Teddy: a gentle story about gender and friendship.” The book is about a boy’s best friend and teddy, Thomas, who is sad because “he wishes he were a girl, not a boy teddy, but what only matters to both of them is that they are friends.”

School districts across the country purchased books in 2022 that cover controversial topics such as critical race theory, white supremacy and gender dysphoria.

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Commentary: Everyone Should Read Great Literature

Minnesota Sun Staff

When I first attended a Shakespeare play, I have to admit that for the first few scenes I was pretty lost. Shakespeare’s English is of a much older and more formal style than ours, so sometimes experiencing his work is almost like hearing another language. Confused and concerned that the play wasn’t going to make any sense, I began to fear that most dreaded of sensations in our modern age of instant entertainment: boredom.

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‘Gopher Equity Project’ Targets First-Year Students with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Discussions, Books, Podcasts

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University of Minnesota, Twin Cities has sponsored a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) project tailored to first-year students.

The Gopher Equity Project is a “campus-wide collaboration” that incorporates DEI as an “online module for all undergraduate students” with “follow-up discussions in first-year courses or campus-wide Discussion Groups, and a website with additional resources.” 

All undergraduate students are offered and encouraged to take trainings that teach “concepts about equity, power, privilege, oppression, and identity.” In order to transition to UMN’s campus, “first-year students take the online training” and “will have follow-up conversations in their first-year college courses.”

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Utah House Passes Bill to Ban Critical Race Theory in Public Schools

Minnesota Sun Staff
Students in class, listening to the teacher at the front of the room

Utah is one of many states in America considering banning critical race theory in public schools.

Republican State Representative Steve Christiansen sponsored a bill that takes direct aim at critical race theory concepts being taught in public education. The bill passed the Utah House and is awaiting the signature of the Speaker to move onto the state Senate.

That bill, HR901, calls on the Utah Board of Education for a re-evaluation of guidelines to weed out critical race theory in publicly funded classrooms.

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Ex-Baltimore Mayoral Aide Gets Prison in Book Sales Scam

The Associated Press

A former aide who helped ex-Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh fraudulently sell her self-published children’s books to nonprofits was sentenced Friday to more than two years in federal prison.

Gary Brown Jr. apologized for his actions and expressed regret for bringing shame to his family and friends before U.S. District Judge Deborah Chasanow sentenced him to 27 months.

In February, Chasanow sentenced Pugh, a Democrat, to three years in prison for her role in the scheme to profit from sales of her “Healthy Holly” books.

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Recommended: Great Books to Resist Cultural Indoctrination

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Those classics that are called the Great Books are most closely associated with Mortimer J. Adler and Robert Hutchins.1 When Hutchins became president of the University of Chicago in 1929, he hired Adler to teach philosophy in the law school and the psychology department. Upon arriving, Adler, rather brashly he admits, recommended to Hutchins a program of study for undergraduates using classic texts. Adler had taught in the General Honors program at Columbia University begun in 1921 by professor John Erskine. Hutchins asked him for a list of books to be read in such a program. When Hutchins saw the list, he told Adler that he had not encountered most of them during his student years at Oberlin College and Yale University. Hutchins later wrote that unless Adler “did something drastic he [Hutchins, referring to himself] would close his educational career a wholly uneducated man.”2 Hutchins remained president for 16 years before serving as chancellor until 1951, and the following year, they did something drastic.

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