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Comment by skissane | Hacker News Reader

They don’t agree with the law, so they are deliberately interpreting it in the most extreme and nonsensical way possible, in order to make a political statement against it.

The fact is all laws are up to interpretation, and discretion is an essential part of their enforcement. I really doubt anybody would prosecute a teacher for an obviously non-controversial text which hadn’t technically been approved yet. I think the teachers have a pretty good idea of what texts are completely safe, and which texts are potentially problematic-but they are feigning ignorance to make a political statement.

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I don't see that expressed in the article.

From the article:

> If you have a lot of books like I do, probably several hundred, it is not practical to run all of them through (the vetting process) so we have to cover them up

I imagine teachers in Florida are expected to uphold their normal duties while complying with this new law, and teachers are famously overworked.

Manually checking hundreds of book against an allow-list seems rather time intensive. Since failure to comply with the law could result in a felony charge this course of action from the teachers seems perfectly rational to me.

ETA: Even if a court would throw out the charge (remains to be seen), would you really want to go though all the legal trouble?

Florida made it a felony to share books that weren’t approved. As a teacher, it makes sense to remove books instead of risk prosecution. This isn’t the school libraries, this is books individual teachers keep in the classroom.

How many teachers have been prosecuted for said felony?

How many unrelated felonies have they committed, which they don’t care about? If everything which is technically a felony were (successfully) prosecuted, probably every adult American would be a convicted felon - http://alex.kozinski.com/articles/Youre_Probably_a_Federal_C... - but I doubt they’d apply the same attitude to all those other laws

Consider the context in Florida. Are you aware of the political situation there? I think if you had the perspective of a Florida teacher, you would rightfully be cautious if not afraid.

You really think Governor DeSantis going to start throwing random teachers in prison, because they had non-controversial but not technically approved books in their classrooms? Like him or loathe him, he’s a pretty smart politician, why would he engage in such an act of political self-sabotage?

From what I understand, this is a state law, and there are 67 counties in Florida, and this is a report from a single county - is every teacher in the state doing this? Or is it just a thing in certain school districts? I suspect the later. I wonder what kind of characteristics would predict which school districts will have large large numbers of teachers reacting to the law in this way and which won’t?

The fact is that teachers have become a target from the right wing and DeSantis has been leading the charge with his words and actions. After the elaborate migrant flight fiasco, I don't think anyone wants to make big assumptions about what DeSantis won't do to satisfy his increasing bloodthirty base.

> The fact is that teachers have become a target from the right wing and DeSantis has been leading the charge with his words and actions.

I wonder how many teachers in Florida vote for DeSantis, and still plan to vote for him even after all of this? While no doubt it is true that school teachers in the US (and public school teachers especially) tend to skew Democratic, I’m sure the number of DeSantis-voting public school teachers in Florida would be significantly greater than zero. I wonder if those teachers would agree that “teachers have become a target from the right wing”?

Any person who can't agree with the phrase “teachers have become a target from the right wing” despite the overwhelming evidence, including countless direct quotes and video clips from elected conservative politicians, should not be allowed anywhere near a classroom because they are not operating in reality.

The phrase is wrong because the target is a certain kind of left-leaning teacher. Not teachers qua teachers. Right-leaning teachers are not being targeted. Teachers who aren’t explicitly “right-leaning”, but who think socially controversial topics are best avoided in the classroom, are not being targeted either. Nor do I think the target includes “contrarian leftist” teachers (the kind of teacher who might admire the African-American Marxist Adolph Reed, who basically says that all these race/sexuality/gender debates have turned into a distraction from the real work of class struggle, and thus serve the interests of the capitalist ruling class)

Teachers brought this upon themselves with the absolute degenerate crap they are indoctrinating kids with.

If your referring to CRT or some sort of homosexual brainwashing, I’ve yet to see any evidence either is an actual problem.

> You really think Governor DeSantis going to start throwing random teachers in prison

Democracies don't function on the basis of a single person saying "trust me, I won't actually use this law that I enacted." And he didn't even give us that claim, you did.

> Governor DeSantis going to start throwing random teachers in prison

Governors don't throw people in prison. Prosecutors do. And there are a lot of them. Even if not prosecuted, committing a crime is grounds for termination for cause.

Why would they make it a felony if they aren't going to enforce the law. Laws that are arbitrarily enforced is authoritarianism.

Everyone in Russia is guilty of a crime under the Putin regime, just don't piss off the dictator. In America, the country as a whole is just now realizing how gross and arbitrarily enforced the war on drugs has been. Especially now that large swathes of the addicted are suburban and rural whites instead of black and brown people.

> Why would they make it a felony if they aren't going to enforce the law. Laws that are arbitrarily enforced is authoritarianism.

No need to exercise the law if its mere existence is enough to alter people's behavior. ;)

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/897/chilling-ef...

> You really think Governor DeSantis going to start throwing random teachers in prison, because they had non-controversial but not technically approved books in their classrooms?

Yes.

> Like him or loathe him, he’s a pretty smart politician, why would he engage in such an act of political self-sabotage?

If you can construct a plausible enough lie, the truth doesn't matter to his supporters anyways. See for example the anti-CRT rhetoric--where something as basic as "our founding fathers were individuals with complex, self-contradictory beliefs" is considered racial indoctrination because it doesn't say that the US is the bestest country to have ever existed. Or of course school board hearings involving people screaming over litter boxes.

All it takes is for one parent to get angry--and if you're involved with school politics, you'll know that parents getting angry is basically guaranteed--about one book, and that'll be enough for a politician to do something performative. And DeSantis is good at being performative.

I think those teachers are smart: is it worth the hassle to go through each book? It's not. Better to have nothing the administration can find 'just cause' for termination or whatever. Don't take any risks for people that won't take any for you.

More time for them, no 'mum for liberty' asking for a random comic to get banned because they did not hide it fast enough for the child the read the title and complain.

I might be too cynical and spent too much time avoiding management, but isn't this the sensible, non confrontational way of adapting to a law you don't care that much about?

Teachers don't want to get burned by a new law, choose to avoid exposing themselves to it, nice for them, predictable but nice.

The counterpart to that is how many teachers are giving their students inappropriate books, or refusing to discuss with their administrators/school boards/parents what is appropriate?

There's no reason for this to be a felony.

Just like there's no reason for a lot of other things to be felonies.

How many teachers have been prosecuted for said felony

It’s a new law, and AFAIK no teachers have been charged yet. Not sure why that should ease teachers’ fears.

You are talking about a state run by a man who has on multiple occasions shipped around human beings as a political stunt. Do you expect reasonableness and restraint from his administration? Or do you expect headline-grabbing stunts every few weeks?

Let's not just say he shipped them, he literally human trafficked asylum seekers to an island, by luring them under false pretenses of jobs and assistance, in a place that wasn't even in his state, using taxpayer dollars.

Astounding levels of performative cruelty.

You know HN is turning into a shithole when a factual post is downvoted.

You know it is, when Alex Jones-tier posts saying that a political opponent is "literally" a human trafficker are upvoted. But I suppose that's just a reflection of how pathological American discourse as a whole has gotten.

   Human trafficking is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of people through force, fraud, coercion or deception, with the aim of exploiting them for profit.

It checks out factually.

I'm a non USAian with no particular interest in either of the two US parties (other than a historic awareness that the original founders had a disdain for Political Parties and would have hated the current disfunctional bicameral mess).

However both the US Gov. of Texas and the US Gov. of Florida delibrately deceived humans (fraud) and transported them for political profit.

That makes them both literal textbook human trafficers.

Don't like it? Take it up with the OED.

This is Dunning-Kruger. I'm glad judges don't declare someone guilty of a crime based on reading a (layman) dictionary definition.

And American pathology has a tendency to spread to other counrties thanks to their overwhelming cultural influence via the internet.

> This is Dunning-Kruger.

No. It isn't. Be smarter.

> I'm glad judges don't declare someone guilty of a crime based on reading a (layman) dictionary definition.

First the DOJ brings charges, as is currently being considered:

    Authorities in Massachusetts said Sunday that they have requested a federal human trafficking probe after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis boasted of sending about 50 Venezuelan migrants to Martha's Vineyard to shine a national spotlight on immigration issues.

and

    A criminal investigation is being launched into how a group of migrants was sent from Texas to Massachusetts with Florida taxpayer money on orders from Governor Ron DeSantis.

    The Bexar County Sheriff's office confirmed that to CBS4 News.

    Sheriff Javier Salazar says these migrants were "Lured, hoodwinked and exploited" for political purposes and that's why he's opening an investigation.

etc.

It’s apparently a felony if you don’t comply. How many jobs carry a risk of committing a felony for faithfully trying to perform your job? Will you trust a judge or jury to acquit you if an inappropriate book found its way onto the shelves outside your control?

Per the article, the directive came from the school district rather than being an individual initiative.

A pure political stunt by the school district.

One might make the same observation about a law that makes sharing the wrong books a felony.

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