Cuba and Freedom to Read

I leave for Cuba in two days. It may be interesting to see what differences there are in our perception of "Freedom to Read." I will be in an academic setting, so I will try to ask questions about censorship and let you know what I have observed. From my understanding, there are librarians, then there are librarians in Cuba. Some adhere to the state's restrictions while others keep private libraries from which they lend prohibited books. For more information on Cuba, visit our friends at Freadom. Included on the site is a list of the top ten books burned in Cuba.

Check out our "Banned Book Challenge."

Muzzle Award

The 2007 Jefferson Muzzle Award was presented to a number of people and organizations in the US, including the Miami-Dade School Board for its banning of a children's book entitled "A Visit to Cuba" after a parent complained it showed the communist state in too positive a light.

The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression has awarded over one hundred and sixty Jefferson Muzzles in the past sixteen years. According to their web site:

Announced on or near April 13 — the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson — the Jefferson Muzzles are awarded as a means to draw national attention to abridgments of free speech and press and, at the same time, foster an appreciation for those tenets of the First Amendment.

Here is the full 2007 Muzzle Award List:

1. REP. PETER KING, R-N.Y., for advocating a criminal investigation of The New York Times after it reported on government surveillance of international financial transactions.

2. THE FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION, for broadening the scope of broadcast material that constitutes indecency and targeting profanity.

3. THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, for its surveillance of anti-war organizations.

4. THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION, for changing and censoring reports and studies of government scientists.

5. THE OHIO GENERAL ASSEMBLY, for passing a bill requiring state employees to sign a form declaring one has no ties to terrorist groups and gives no financial or material assistance to groups on the State Department's terrorist list.

6. KENTUCKY REPUBLICAN GOV. ERNIE FLETCHER, for blocking access to liberal-leaning Web sites from state-owned computers, while still permitting access to conservative sites.

7. MAINE'S BUREAU OF LIQUOR ENFORCEMENT, for banning the sale of three beers because of label illustrations.

8. THE EAST ST. LOUIS (ILL.) CITY COUNCIL, for forcing a public access show supportive of an incumbent mayor's political opponent off the air.

9. THE PHILADELPHIA HUMAN RELATIONS COMMISSION, for filing a discrimination complaint against a cheese steak shop owner after he posted a bumper sticker at his business that stated, "This is America: When ordering 'Speak English.' "

10. THE NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION, for its policy on school mascots and team logos.

11. THE CHARLES A. BEARD MEMORIAL SCHOOL BOARD IN KNIGHTSTOWN, IND., for expelling four students who created a video that featured evil stuffed animals' unsuccessful attempt to kill a teacher.

12. WATSON CHAPEL SCHOOL DISTRICT IN ARKANSAS, for suspending about 20 students who protested the district's dress code by wearing black armbands.

13. MIAMI-DADE COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOL BOARD, for banning a children's book titled "A Visit to Cuba" after a parent complained it wasn't critical enough of the communist state.

14. TIE: BEN DAVIS HIGH SCHOOL IN INDIANAPOLIS, PRINCETON HIGH SCHOOL IN CINCINNATI AND WYOMING VALLEY WEST HIGH SCHOOL IN KINGSTON, PA., for censoring the content of high school publications.

Visit the archives for past years' Muzzle Award winners.

Cuban Raid on School Library and Making Books Disappear

Take the "Banned Book Challenge." Freedom to Read Week is next week.

The writers of Stuck on the Palmetto bring attention to a Miami Herald article that tells of how a Miami-Dade mother is refusing to return a school library book. Our web log has been following this story of a group of parents has been trying to remove books from school libraries that paint too rosy a picture of life in Cuba.

Dalila Rodriguez, a member of the Concerned Cuban Parents Committee, who checked out the books Discovering Cultures, Cuba and Vamos a Cuba from her son's school library has no plans to return them. Says Rodriguez, "It's not censoring; it's protecting our children from lies....We're going to take the books and lock them in a box."

I wonder if she got the idea from this parent who decided a Maurice Sendak book was obscene and decided to hang on to it to "make it disappear." Thanks to Bookshelves of Doom for this story as found in The Daily News, Murfreesboro, TN.

Update: Leonard Pitts Jr., winner of a Pulitzer Prize for commentary, and a columnist for the Miami Herald in an article in the Sacramento Bee tells readers he has shipped a copy of Discovering Cultures, Cuba to Bossard Elementary School, as has Friends of Cuban Libraries. Mr. Pitts promises to replace any copy that goes missing because of Dalila Rodriguez and her group.

Zappa, Parents, Terabithia, Burning Books, and Scrotum

Freedom to Read Poster 1991



Take the "Banned Book Challenge."







Thanks to the Tinfoil Racoon who posted about the Frank Zappa Memorial Fund and how the family has designated funds to the American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom and the Freedom to Read Foundation.

Book Moot gives her opinion about the difference between a concerned parent and a book banning know nothing nutter (not my choice of words).

A Salt Lake City Review article about Bridge to Terabithia suggests that the movie might provide a teaching moment to talk to older children about death.

Teachers and child-development experts say while "Bridge to Terabithia" might be too much for young kids to handle, it could bring up a difficult subject families are often relucant to discuss, but should, with older kids

In the wake of the Miami-Dade School Board controversy over a children's book on Cuba, a US organization called FREADOM, is bringing attention to documents and books that have been burned in Cuba that include a biography of Martin Luther King Jr. and George Orwell's Animal Farm. An editorial in the Orlando Sentinel tells how Freadom is encouraging US children to read books that have been burned in Cuba.

As the discussion over the word "scrotum" being used in a Newbery Award winner -- The Higher Power of Lucky, there is the suggestion that if it is an inappropriate word, we had better censor other books. Just to save you doing the research, Gelf Magazine has provided a few other "scrotalicious" books for tweens and below.

10 Most Censored Countries

A recent online edition of World Literature Today has a number of articles pertaining to censorship around the world. Of interest is the list of the 10 Most Censored Countries in the world.
North Korea
Burma
Turkmenistan
Equatorial Guinea
Libya
Eritrea
Cuba
Uzbekistan
Syria
Belarus

Source: Committee to Protect Journalists,
“Special Report 2006,” www.cpj.org

Where Will It Stop?

This blog has been following the process of the banning of Vamos a Cuba (A Visit to Cuba) -- 1,2,3,4 and the challenge to a second book on Cuba in a previous post.

According to an article in the Miami Herald, the second book on Cuba, Cuban Kids, will be removed from a Miami-Dade Elementary School Library because it paints too rosey a picture of life in Cuba.

Dalila Rodriguez filed the complaint despite the fact that her children do not attend that school against the book though her children do not attend the school. She is a member of a group calling itself Concerned Cuban Parents Committee. They decided to put their energies into taking action against Cuban Kids.

One can't help but wonder what could be achieved if such committees focused their energies into really important issues.

A leaf from George Orwell's "1984?"

That is Joe Crankshaw's assessment of the Miami-Dade School Board's decision to remove "Vamos a Cuba" ("A Visit to Cuba") from their school district's libraries (along with 24 other titles depicting life in other countries).

Crankshaw identifies the anti-Castro political agenda that has cause the removal of this book and warns of the long-term consequences of this kind of thinking.

Now the battle against Castro is being waged on the field of ideas, and the methods being used mirror the straitjacket control of thought in Communist countries. In other words, the champions of democracy and free thought don't want it for any view but their own. The risk is they could become dictators just like Castro.

Yesterday, according to a Reuters report, a federal court judge the ban lifted. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit against the Miami-Dade School Board on June 21, 2006. The ACLU says this marks the first major battle over book censorship by a US public school system since 1982.

Lawyers for the ACLU do not dispute critics’ claims that the book, with its pictures of smiling children, fails to depict many aspects of life in Cuba. But they argued at a hearing in Judge Gold’s courtroom last Friday that the book and its content were appropriate for its target audience of children aged 5 to 7.

U.S. District Judge Alan S. Gold ordered the book returned to libraries until a final ruling is made. According to Gold,

The only books in contention in this case are library books, books that are by their nature optional rather than required reading. By totally banning the Cuba books and the rest of the series, the school board is in fact prohibiting even the voluntary consideration of the themes contained in the books by students at their leisure. This goes to the heart of the First Amendment issue.

The ACLU argued that the book ban violated the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech, and defied a US law prohibiting censorship.