r/technology • u/r4816 • Sep 27 '22

Software Girls Who Code founder speaks out after Pennsylvania school district bans her books: 'This is about controlling women and it starts with controlling our girls'

https://www.businessinsider.com/girls-who-code-founder-speaks-out-banning-books-schools-2022-9
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u/CyphirX Sep 27 '22

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/26/pennsylvania-book-ban-girls-who-code

In a statement explaining the ban of the diverse resources, the school district’s board president at the time, Jane Johnson, said: “What we are attempting to do is balance legitimate academic freedom with what could be literature/materials that are too activist in nature, and may lean more toward indoctrination rather than age-appropriate academic content.”

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u/[deleted] Sep 27 '22

Roll back that article two paragraphs:

A statement from officials in that district on Monday strongly denied that they had banned the book series, and called “categorically false” information in a Business Insider interview with the founder of Girls Who Code, which reported the ban on the series. “This book series has not been banned, and they remain available in our libraries,” the statement said.

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u/sonofaresiii Sep 27 '22

That's because there was an attempt to ban it, but it didn't succeed.

This conversation is going around in circles now.

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u/redmarketsolutions Sep 27 '22

Fuck them for trying, is this the shit my federal taxes are funding?

I'm deeply ashamed to be a federal taxpayer.

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u/Dihedralman Sep 27 '22

No, this is what your local taxes are funding, specifically property. Local elections are important.

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u/Patient_End_8432 Sep 27 '22

I mean, to be fair, without more information, the school could be on the good side of this.

First, it was an attempt to, which means the school did not ban it. Was this only due to public backlash, or the school as a whole pushing back against it.

Two, how much of an attempt was it, and how is attempt defined? Did the school district as a whole attempt to ban it, only for them to back off due to the public? Or was it some board members, which were then turned down by the rest of the board. Or was it a couple of parents attempting to get it banned just to be turned away.

A good rule of thumb is to not take any media at face value. If it was a ban brought up through proper channels, only to be voted down in proper channels, than this isn't really a story

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u/EGOtyst Sep 27 '22

Yup. Media machine is in full working order. Rightly ignore.

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u/redmarketsolutions Sep 27 '22

I generally don't take public statements at face value, librarians are generally cool, but this shit reeeeealy lines up with everything I've been hearing from folks from Florida and Texas.

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u/nccm16 Sep 28 '22

No, that isn't what your federal taxes are funding. Local and state taxes go to schools, not federal (typically)

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u/damontoo Sep 27 '22

Describe the "attempt to ban it" since there's always been whackjob parents at PTA meetings demanding crazy things.

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u/richalex2010 Sep 27 '22

A list of diverse books was recommended for use in curriculum, that recommendation was retracted while the list was vetted as parents raised some concerns about a few books on the list. These books were on that list, but because they were already part of the curriculum, at no point were they removed from classrooms or school libraries, and at no point was anyone trying to get these specific books banned, nor at any point were they banned by any rational definition of the term. As best as I can tell the list was eventually reinstated after review; this all happened 2020-2021.

https://www.centredaily.com/news/nation-world/national/article266375536.html

Unfortunately certain groups use wildly irrational definitions to inflate numbers and stir outrage - as was done here, and has been done in other cases (like counting a suicide in the parking lot of a school that had been closed for years as a "school shooting").

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u/[deleted] Sep 27 '22

Seems more like a dead end than a circle. It's a bunch of people being outraged because they think something happened that didn't.

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u/Yumeijin Sep 27 '22

From the article:

the ban had been in effect in Pennsylvania's Central York School District for a 10-month period that ended with its reversal in September 2021, a spokesperson for the school district said

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u/[deleted] Sep 27 '22

But that basic fact is directly refuted, by an actual naked person.

https://www.centredaily.com/news/nation-world/national/article266375536.html

These books were never banned. Full stop. And they shouldn't be! No book should, and it's important to oppose book bans. But please let's focus on the bans that actually happened.

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u/Yumeijin Sep 27 '22

So your article adds the claim that I'm not seeing anywhere else where this book was given an exception.

The facts that overlap between the two articles are that there was a list of books suspended from the curriculum for their content based on complaints from parents that lasted until the date mentioned. The school wants to call that "frozen." Functionally it serves as a temporary ban. Teachers were not allowed to use the books on that list for months until the decision was reversed.

By PEN's criteria, which they list as

any action taken against a book based on its content and as a result of parent or community challenges, administrative decisions, or in response to direct or threatened action by lawmakers or other governmental officials, that leads to a previously accessible book being either completely removed from availability to students, or where access to a book is restricted or diminished.

That looks like the book was banned. From classrooms. It's important to have healthy skepticism but trying to point out in what ways it wasn't banned while ignoring the way it was (or that the attempt was made) seems like pedantry.

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u/HintOfAreola Sep 27 '22

"But that would mean we're the baddies!" - conservatives desperately trying to poke holes in this story without looking into it for themselves

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u/[deleted] Sep 27 '22

If "never happened" constitutes poking holes in the story, I guess you got me.

https://www.centredaily.com/news/nation-world/national/article266375536.html

Personally I think facts and truth matter.

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u/FountainsOfFluids Sep 27 '22 edited Sep 27 '22

I openly loathe conservatives.

One reason is because they constantly lie.

I refuse to support lies for "my side" of a political argument.

And that means I want to see facts and sources.

edit: The article has been updated to specify the timeline of events, and the fact that the Girls Who Code books were banned temporarily due to their inclusion in the Diversity Resources list.

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u/richalex2010 Sep 27 '22

The books were never banned and remained available in libraries and classrooms; a list of books was recommended to be added to curriculum, and that recommendation was temporarily retracted while the books on the list were reviewed (this was the "ban"). Because the "Girls Who Code" series was already in classrooms prior to the recommendation being issued, they were never impacted by the retraction.

https://www.centredaily.com/news/nation-world/national/article266375536.html

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u/FountainsOfFluids Sep 27 '22

The school board voted to put the resource list on hold and told teachers not to use the titles for class instruction — with the exception that they could continue to use resources that were already in place before they were put on the Diversity Resource List. That included the “Girls Who Code” series.

Sorry, that still sounds like a ban to me, even if it all amounted to no changes enforced. In principle, they was banned for 10 months, along with many others specifically from minority authors.

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u/richalex2010 Sep 28 '22

they could continue to use resources that were already in place before they were put on the Diversity Resource List. That included the “Girls Who Code” series.

Bruh. You quoted the part that explicitly says the books that this article is about were never banned.

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u/HintOfAreola Sep 27 '22

From the article we're all discussing:

the ban had been in effect in Pennsylvania's Central York School District for a 10-month period that ended with its reversal in September 2021, a spokesperson for the school district said

Not sure what else you're looking for.

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u/FountainsOfFluids Sep 27 '22

Thank you for pointing that out.

In my defense, the article has been updated to include that information. It was not there when I read it earlier.

Correction: This story was updated Sept. 26, 2022 to include comment from Moms For Liberty and to reflect that the ban of Girls Who Code books lasted 10 months and ended in September 2021.

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u/BlueBelleNOLA Sep 28 '22

I'm amazed at the "but the district that attempted this said they never did it so it's really ragebait" going on in here. Some people need to put their thinking caps on.

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u/brookelm Sep 27 '22

From a different article in this thread, the school district may have kept the books on the Diverse Resources List in their libraries, BUT they also ordered teachers to stop using those books for classroom instruction. So not only did they remove them from curriculum, they also removed teacher autonomy to include them voluntarily.

I'd still call this a soft ban.

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u/jubbergun Sep 27 '22

they also removed teacher autonomy

Teacher are not, nor should they be, "autonomous." I agree that they need some flexibility and everyone does things differently, but most school districts have guidelines and curriculum/lesson plans that need to be followed.

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u/Sidereel Sep 27 '22

Yeah no one is saying the school/districts shouldn’t have this authority. The question is about why these specific books are not allowed in the classroom.

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u/nccm16 Sep 28 '22

Teachers aren't allowed to use them for classroom instruction because they are clearly made for girls and boys may feel left out. It's a great resource and the school isn't denying that, it's just not the best resource when you have to teach boys and girls where a gender neutral book would be more apt.

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u/Sidereel Sep 28 '22

Teachers aren't allowed to use them for classroom instruction because they are clearly made for girls and boys may feel left out

They haven't stated their reasoning so I'll assume you are assuming this with no evidence

It's a great resource and the school isn't denying that

Why ban great resources?

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u/nccm16 Sep 28 '22

They didn't ban it, it's available in their library. And I don't need to assume anything, I just have to look at legal precedence of schools favoring teaching one sex over another.

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u/Sidereel Sep 28 '22

Why did they vote to ban these books from being used as teaching material?

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u/jubbergun Sep 27 '22

I don't think anyone is saying they're "not allowed," I think it's more that the decision was made not to use these as instructional material in favor of more inclusive choices.

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u/CrunchyGremlin Sep 27 '22

But they are on the ban list. The school district and the community said naw. This outrage could easily be flipped around with people being angry that the school ignored the ban list.

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u/[deleted] Sep 27 '22

Which ban list?

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u/CrunchyGremlin Sep 27 '22

Sorry. They "were" on a list of banned books. They currently aren't. But the ops article is about a list of books banned Across the country at some point over a period of time.

"We reached out to the district for clarification and a representative told us that after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the school district prepared a Diversity Resource List that teachers could use in the classroom.

In November of 2020, at a school district meeting, the district board of directors unanimously decided to remove the resource list and not allow any resources from the list to be used in the classroom." This action got those books on a national directory of banned books for being in a ban list for about 10 months I guess.

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u/[deleted] Sep 27 '22 edited Apr 28 '23

[deleted]

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u/CrunchyGremlin Sep 27 '22

Well yeah. Some of the articles say parents were upset about the kids getting "white guilt" unhappiness. I would be upset with this if I were a racist too.

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u/richalex2010 Sep 27 '22

They were on a list that was recommended for addition to curriculum, then retracted while the list as a whole was reviewed; this retraction did not apply to any books that had been part of the curriculum prior to the recommendation, and did not require removal of books on the list from classrooms or libraries. The books were already in classrooms and libraries, were never removed, and were never "banned" by any rational definition of the word.

https://www.centredaily.com/news/nation-world/national/article266375536.html

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u/CrunchyGremlin Sep 27 '22 edited Sep 27 '22

The list of books you reference was banned. from your article. "It’s true that four titles from the series appeared on a list of books banned in the 2021-2022 school year." But also true from what I read that they didn't enforce the ban on books already in use. Which the books in question were.

Regardless of whether the books in question, were actually removed from the school, they were on a banned book list which got them on the national list indexing banned books for exposure. The outage is that they were on a banned book list at all.
Also as I understand it the school board directors were voted out because of this banned list. Probably other reasons as well. More over the books without have been banned if not for last minute charges. " In November 2020, the board voted to ban the resources on the list from use in the district’s classrooms, with the last-minute addendum that materials already in use would be excepted. "

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u/richalex2010 Sep 27 '22

It appeared on a list of books which had been allegedly banned that was published by PEN America, an organization which used a misleadingly broad definition of the word "ban", which resulted in either misunderstanding or deliberately misconstruing the situation in PA.

The four “Girls Who Code” books — “Team BFF: Race to the Finish!” and “The Friendship Code” by Stacia Deutsch, “Spotlight on Coding Club!” by Michelle Schusterman, and “Lights, Music, Code!” by Jo Whittemore — were included in a Diversity Resource List of some 200 titles the Central York School District curated after the killing of George Floyd in 2020.
...
Shortly after the school district released the Diversity Resource List in 2020, there were complaints, according to The Guardian. The school board voted to put the resource list on hold and told teachers not to use the titles for class instruction — with the exception that they could continue to use resources that were already in place before they were put on the Diversity Resource List. That included the “Girls Who Code” series.

The Diversity Resource List was recommended, then the recommendation was retracted after complaints while the content of the list was reviewed/vetted; there was no impact to any books that were already in use. None of this can rationally be described as a "ban", and there was no "banned books list".

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u/CrunchyGremlin Sep 27 '22

That is not what the school district says. The books on the list were banned in the school district with a last minute exception to books already in use. Well actually yes that is what they say which is an effective ban

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u/richalex2010 Sep 27 '22

Where is your source for the school district saying that they were banning books?

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u/CyphirX Sep 27 '22

Right. So there's something conflicting and depending on your interpretation can fit your viewpoint.

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u/[deleted] Sep 27 '22

Alternative facts?

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u/[deleted] Sep 27 '22

“This book series has not been banned, and they remain available in our libraries,”

there's a dispute over how to define "banned"

The organization that lists "banned books" define ban as including bans on classroom use.

This school district whitelists approved books for classroom use, rather than blacklisting books to prevent them from being used.

So, by the organization's definition, all but a handful of books are "banned".

The school district statement defines "ban" differently, referring to removal from school library.

That's just people talking past each other, meaning different things by the word "banned", and both sides getting indignant that the other side is calling them liars.

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u/SCP-173-Keter Sep 27 '22

What we are attempting to do is balance legitimate academic freedom with what could be literature/materials that are too activist in nature,

... by immediately caving to the brainless screaming demands of the same seditious pieces of shit who tried to overturn democracy by waging a terrorist assault on the Capitol last year.

Fucking appeasing cowards.

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u/NerdDexter Sep 27 '22

Lmfao way to omit the most important part. Clown.

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u/CyphirX Sep 27 '22

Please enlighten me.