‘Reading is resistance’: students and parents take on DeSantis’s book bans

‘Reading is resistance’: students and parents take on DeSantis’s book bans

Sep 24 2023

This summer, Iris Mogul – a junior at a Miami high school – found out that she wouldn’t be able to take an AP African American history course that she had planned for the coming semester because it had been blocked by the state’s department of education. “As presented, the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value,” the department said in a statement.

“It felt so far away when I first heard about all of this,” says Mogul, who only had a passing knowledge of book challenges and changes to school curriculum previously. “But that is really when it hit me – when it started to affect me directly.”

Now, Mogul is prominent among the growing number of students and parents in Miami-Dade county and across Florida who are speaking out in opposition to book challenges, the capture of Florida school boards by conservative activists and this summer’s latest policy changes, which includes the expansion of DeSantis’s Parental Rights in Education Act...

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