Friday, February 05, 2010

more books banned - brown bear, brown bear!

Just a quick link from the Huffington Post. Texas Educators mistakenly banned a children's picture book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? because they confused its author, Bill Martin Jr., with Bill Martin, who wrote Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation.

"Embarrassing gaffs, sure. But what is the real fear here? The spread of Marxism among Texas' early reader population? A threat to capitalism?

Pat Hardy made the motion to ban Brown Bear, Brown Bear, citing that Bill Martin's work for adults contains "very strong critiques of capitalism and the American system."

I can see this being a compelling reason not to include Bill Martin's Ethical Marxism on the curriculum list for elementary school children in Texas -- the more compelling reason being that of reading level -- but Ethical Marxism was not the book under consideration. Brown Bear was."

Take a look at the details here.

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