Oh ho ho, what have we in Arizona?

Ah, yes. Arizona. Home of Sheriff Arpaio. A quarter of Arizonans are of Mexican ancestry. A third of the population identifies as Hispanic. The state of Arizona has the highest concentration of speakers of Native American languages*. A state which has not just cut but banned the teaching ethnic studies. And in order to comply with this, the largest school district in the state is now is banning books from the schools in order to avoid potentially teaching about ethnic studies.

Outraged yet? You should be, because telling teachers they can't teach something is a despicable act meant only to perpetuate the willful ignorance (which ultimately hurts the democratic process and, in turn, America). Banning books is absolutely nothing more than a harmful act of absolute cowardice; to ban books is to attempt to ban free communication of ideas. The

Oh, and one of the texts being thrown out of schools includes Shakespeare's The Tempest, so I'm going to go ahead and throw away civilized discourse and say this: fuck you, Tucson Unified School District.

I'm not hugely worried about this. It's deeply, deeply upsetting - oh, hell, yes, I'm going to play this card: I am an American soldier. I swore an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution (which, since most people seem to need a refresher, boldly includes amongst its purposes "...form a more perfect union," and "...promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves..."). Things like this - banning books, banning the teaching of certain ideas - is in every way contrary to the American Constitution. We want to talk about keeping our nation safe? It's things like this that we need to be vigilant against; seemingly little things like banning certain classes in our public schools, things that slip under the radar at Board of Education meetings the way termites slip into a building's walls.

But it's not going to work. Whatever their goal is (and I honestly couldn't possibly guess as to what, exactly, they want to accomplish by this) they won't reach it this way. You know why? Because for every kid that shrugs and says, "Eh, whatever," there's going to be another who says, "Wait, what books aren't we allowed to read? Why not?" And then that kid is going to go to the library, or Amazon, or their parents, or a friend, or someone. They're going to find a copy of that book, and they're going to read it. Why? Because A) teenagers are teenagers and a great way to get them interested in something is to tell them no, it's too mature/dangerous/whatever, you can't see this, and B) teenagers are not half as dumb as we'd like to think they are. Those books will still be read. (Hell, if there's a student from the Tucson Unified School District who sees this - let me know if you want and I will order you any of those banned books on Amazon.)

Here is the contact information for the board of the Tuscon school district. More importantly, here is the contact information for the state Superintendent of Schools, who was the one to ultimately decide that Tucson had to cut their ethnic studies classes or lose funding. Arizona, like all states, gets a fair bit of federal funding for their public education system. As a taxpayer, even if you're not an Arizona resident, I'd say you still have a vested interest in the situation.

*I'm not entirely sure what the most accepted terminology is - indigenous languages seems like it may be better here?