Book Bans and Educator Censorship in Florida

Florida is arguably the epicenter of the current extreme right movement in the US and its attempts at ideological hegemony. Nowhere have these efforts been more concentrated than in the realm of public education, places that Governor Ron DeSantis and his supporters have decried as places for “woke indoctrination” (Allen, 2022). Via recent legislation—specifically the “Stop Wrong to our Kids and Employees Act” (Stop WOKE) and the “Transparency in Curriculum Act” (HB 1467)—Florida has largely succeeded in censoring from its schools any ideas that might call into question or challenge right wing ideologies. So Machiavellian are Florida’s efforts to ban books and censor teachers that Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued an injunction against Stop WOKE by describing Florida’s contexts as “positively dystopian” and began his ruling by paraphrasing Fahrenheit 451 using Florida’s contexts (Parnell v. Florida Board of Governors, 2022, p. 1). In the information presented on this page, I trace the origins of the book banning law, the rationale behind it, the means by which it is supposed to be implemented, the nature of the books to be banned from schools, and the law’s chilling effects on already disenfranchised voices. Using the lenses of hegemonic theory (Gramsci, 1970) and neo-Marxism (Apple, Freire, Giroux, etc.), I highlight in the slides below how the ambiguity of the law is itself both intentional and nefarious; not knowing what is and is not allowed in their classrooms, Florida’s educators remain under threat and are being forced to “err on the side of caution” despite a federal injunction (Library Media and Instructional Materials Training Transcript, n.d.). In short--and despite hollow claims from Florida's Governor that book bans are a left-wing hoax--Florida's public school teachers and librarians are being forced to remove books from their shelves and severely limit classroom discussions on issues that the far right finds problematic.  HB 1467 has been very successful in removing books from school libraries, teachers’ libraries. It has also further fueled the Stop Woke Act and the "Don't Say Gay" law in silencing classroom discussions.