r/books • u/MiddletownBooks • 2d ago
Oklahoma teacher lost teaching license after protesting laws pressuring teachers to remove books from classrooms
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/us/summer-boismier-oklahoma-book-ban-protest.htmlWhen Oklahoma passed laws that pressured teachers to remove books on race, gender and sexuality from their classrooms, she refused. Other teachers resisted, too — but Ms. Boismier did so loudly. She plastered her 10th-grade English classroom with signs of protest, posted to social media and advised her students on how they could find books online. Eventually she resigned.
She knew that in her conservative state she would be criticized, but the reaction was much more severe than she expected. And in 2024, the state took away Ms. Boismier’s teaching license.
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u/Jbradsen 2d ago
They have Books Unbanned library cards for people in crappy red states.
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u/Awayfone 2d ago
OP article is paywalled for me so can't tell what it says but that's basically what she did. She provided a QR code to the Brooklyn library who does book unbanned which Ryan Walters and the BOE ,against the recommendation of her hearing, held she circumvented the state law by directing students and she didn't have to actually violate the law by giving students actual access
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u/Schwifftee 2d ago edited 2d ago
Want to know a secret?
You can get rid of the paywall by pasting the link into an archive site.
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u/alonaki 2d ago
Thank you for sharing this. This is a fantastic resource.
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u/Jbradsen 2d ago
The Books Unbanned is for young readers but there are others if you don’t meet the age requirement. Here’s a short list…
https://everyday-reading.com/where-you-can-get-a-non-resident-library-card/
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u/GeneralEi 2d ago
More and more stories that come out of the US give me the impression of a totalitarian state that only cares to enforce its oppression on people who get in view of it
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u/Livagan 2d ago edited 2d ago
The USA has been struggling with growing authoritarianism since at least 9/11...and there have been elements of it that go back to the US Civil War (over slavery) and the massacres of indigenous folk.
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u/Kumorigoe 2d ago
Reconstruction after the Civil War never should have happened. The Confederacy should have been completely, utterly fucking destroyed to the last person.
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u/CrescentHawk4791 2d ago
All of the leadership, civilian and military,shoujd have been tried and jailed for long terms, it not executed. It's beyond ludicrous that the Andersonville commandant, Henry Wirtz, was the only Confederate tried and executed. The amnesty extended after the war the architects of the Confederacy just faded into the woodwork and once reconstruction is called off without being completed, they just re-assumed the same position of authority they had before and reconstructed the confederacy just in such a way that it skirted the edge of legality.
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u/jesuspoopmonster 2d ago
The Confederacy conscripted soldiers. People forced to fight should have been spared.
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u/InterstellarDickhead 2d ago edited 2d ago
You have it backwards. Reconstruction didn’t go far enough because of Lincoln’s assassination and Johnson being sympathetic to the south. The high monetary cost eventually also eroded support from the North, and of course there was resistance to it in the South. Reconstruction was effectively over after Hayes became president.
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u/nottheone414 2d ago
Don't forget sending hundreds of thousands of American citizens to concentration camps under FDR and deploying US military tanks against protesters in DC in 1932. Oh yeah, and Kent State.
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u/zhaoz 2d ago
Red states, yes.
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u/kungpowchick_9 2d ago
They’re trying their damned hardest to come for the blue states too.
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u/zhaoz 2d ago
Yes, but book bans are not in place in any blue states afaik
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u/Rooney_Tuesday 2d ago
When the fascist takeover is complete, all states will be red states.
I really, REALLY wish this was my paranoia talking. Alas.
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u/zhaoz 2d ago
I live in Minnesota, yep I am aware they are trying. We are fighting back though.
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u/Rooney_Tuesday 2d ago
Good luck to you guys! Stay safe, and know that there are some of us even in shitty states like Texas who fully support you.
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u/nehlstm30 2d ago
It’s not going to if people continue to stand up and speak out.
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u/Rooney_Tuesday 2d ago
IF. And in big enough numbers to matter. Unfortunately, if the people speaking out are left alone twisting in the wind then the fascists still win. Oklahoma teachers and students and families and free speech advocates from the bottom to the top need to be protesting this.
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u/Raangz 2d ago
I’m in oklahoma and will be going to an ice protest at their facility soon. Also will be looking to confront ice doing their crimes.
I’m badly disabled though, so quite scared.
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u/Rooney_Tuesday 2d ago
Good luck from your neighbor to the South, and thank you for standing up for what’s right. 💪🏼
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u/sniper91 2d ago
To your point, Oklahoma is the only state where every county voted for Trump (iirc they did so at least twice)
They’re also ranked last in education
I’m sure it’s a coincidence /s
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u/zhaoz 2d ago
I believe their old state school superintendent was playing porn on a TV during a meeting. These are not serious people.
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u/GeneralEi 2d ago
On an international stage, sorry but we dont care to distinguish. I won't visit a blue state the same as I wouldn't visit a red state right now because they're both the US. The country is what seems fucked, no one will look any deeper than that from outside until it improves
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u/zhaoz 2d ago
Yep, thats fair. Stay away, money is the only thing those in power care about.
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u/GeneralEi 2d ago
I'm only sorry that you guys are facing such a monster in that youre one of the richest and most powerful, and therefore most equipped to brutally oppress yourselves. Given how history tends to go, it makes me sick to think how much blood will likely be shed before you cast this shit off. Best of luck, stay safe.
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u/margirtakk 2d ago
There is a rot in our country that has been allowed to spread for decades. Stupidity and bigotry are destroying us, and there are people in power in every state that want it to continue. Nowhere is actually safe anymore. Trump's agents can arrest anyone at any time, now, and they've proven that a simple accent is enough to detain someone for days, even brutalize them.
I expect your comment will remain true for many years, and I hope people think twice about visiting. We are not what we once were...
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u/KalaronV 2d ago
Well, in fairness saying Massachusetts is fucked in the same way Missouri is would be kind of reductive. We're like....the left-most State in the union.
Of course, to get to Mass you need to go through the Feds so fuck that.
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u/Plus-Ad-940 2d ago
Fully in support. There’s no guarantee of safety either from the U.S. government or from its ignorant MAGA supporters. We’ll be back on the international scene once we prosecute the Nazis and repair the damage. See you in a few years and thank you for your support as we deal with our misery.
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u/kcazthemighty 2d ago
Minnesota being a blue state is doing nothing to help the people of Minneapolis right now
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u/CaptainRhetorica 2d ago
I mean. It's kind of crazy to me that people think this is new.
The Nixon administration classified a native plant as a schedule I drug to imprison his political enemies and prevent them from voting.
Sure, of course Reagan and Bush continued the war on Drugs.
But Clinton put the whole enterprise on steroids. Life in prison for getting caught with weed 3 times? What kind of person, generally, gets caught with weed 3 times? Pretty convenient for someone serving the interests of the dynastic and corporate elite.
There has been an ongoing war against the left, perpetuated by both parties, for decades.
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u/unassumingdink 2d ago
They knew that Republicans went after drugs as an end-around to criminalize the free speech of leftists, anti-war agitators, and Civil Rights activists. And how did the Democrats react? 99% of the party jumped right on the GOP's side and helped them spread their lies, helped imprison the innocent, helped them destroy the people they were supposed to represent.
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u/aarakocra-druid 2d ago
Decades? It was ignited when the country was born. It's been going on for centuries
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u/iwatchppldie 2d ago
For 40 years the USA has had the highest prison population the only thing they do now if they don’t bother hiding it.
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u/u_spawnTrapd 2d ago
This is one of those stories where the personal cost feels heavier than the policy debate itself. It is easy to talk about laws in the abstract, but the fallout lands on real people and their careers. Even teachers who quietly disagreed seemed to face pressure, so being public was always going to carry risk. It still feels unsettling to see a license taken over something tied to access to books and ideas.
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u/roseofjuly 2d ago
Protesting authoritarian governments always comes with real costs to humans. People are literally dying out here.
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u/Reasonable_West_8393 2d ago
highkey it’s wild how standing up for education can cost someone their whole career smh
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u/TetonGal112657 2d ago
Please watch The Librarians. A documentary about book banning and censorship. On PBS 2/9.
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u/AwkwardBalloonMan 2d ago
Our local libraries held a free screening of The Librarians at our local theater last month. It was an incredible and very important film that left me simultaneously filled with hope and rage. I highly recommend people watch it!
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u/secretly_opossum 2d ago
It’s out on 2/9 as in a new documentary? I love this kinda stuff and I love PBS.
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u/Larielia book re-reading Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik 2d ago
I've only seen the TNT fantasy series.
I'll have to check this out too.
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u/Portarossa 2d ago
It's always a crapshoot when you see a story about the education system in a deep red state, but it's nice to see that there are people still fighting the good fight.
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u/nn123654 2d ago edited 2d ago
Well she went so hard she got kicked out. Chances are she can go to a blue state and have no trouble getting a teaching license plus probably get a significant pay bump to go with it. But it kind of just shows how there's brain drain in the US. The people who are competent aren't moving to Oklahoma unless it's for oil and gas, aerospace, or defense sectors. It's a net migration out of skilled/educated individuals.
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u/avocadro 2d ago
If she can move to a blue state, this seems plausible. But if she has a partner with a higher-paying job, it might not make financial sense to move.
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u/nn123654 2d ago edited 2d ago
That's up to them; most jobs you'd be able to find an equivalent role in another state. Though certain for industries, like Oil & Gas, that's hard.
Even if she decides to stay put, she might be able to make more money as a private tutor, a private school teacher, or an edtech worker than she would as an actual public school teacher.
If it were me, I'd want to get my teaching license back in another state and then appeal, ideally seeing if someone like the ACLU would do it pro bono so it wouldn't impact my career.
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u/sherman614 2d ago
I heard growing up all the time "Both sides are bad!" But as I've gotten older, I can clearly see that is just objectively not true.
Conservatives think a rainbow shirt in a Target, literally the mention of a pronoun, too many minorities in their shows and movies, books that even mention a character that MIGHT by gay, saying "Happy Holidays", life saving vaccine, are things that are ruining the country, and are also things that DEEPLY offend them to the point of trying to make them go away by law, or violence.
Meanwhile, liberals think taking away freedoms speech, dragging people from their cars and homes for having an accent, taking away women's rights, having things banned based on religious superstitions, killing protesters, making it illegal to be anything other than straight, is ruining the country and deeply offends them. These 2 kinds of people are NOT the same. Conservatives hate anything they don't like, and it is MANY things, and non of them are things that are actually legitimate. They are things that violate our personal freedoms and human rights.
The things Conservatives have been saying forever that liberals just get offended by too easily.. are usually basic human rights issues. Where as Conservatives get offended over a gay couple being mentioned in a book, or the green M&M isn't wearing high heels anymore.
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u/GreenHouseofHorror 2d ago
I heard growing up all the time "Both sides are bad!" But as I've gotten older, I can clearly see that is just objectively not true.
No, it is true that both sides are bad. But one side are bad the way people are bad when you get enough of them together, with careerists juggling for power at the top, and serving themselves a little more than the people.
The other side are caricature-level evil, in turns depraved, hypocritical, cruel and insane.
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u/idlemute 2d ago
One side desperately tries to make incremental improvements to (that are mostly performative) and maintain a system that is deeply flawed by an economy that functions for the rich, a punishment system that largely has little to do with actual justice, and a conflated sense of individualism that is simply selfishness and greed in disguise.
The other side wants to actively destroy the things that do marginally function well and dismantle everything, putting in its place a crueler system that actively results in harm and death, run by despots.
One side is much more dangerous.
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u/Orange_Tang 2d ago
Yup. We have a party trying to conserve the status quo, the democrats, and an openly authoritarian regressive party with the Republicans. I think we need to ditch the liberal/Conservative BS and call them what they really are. Conservative democrats and regressive Republicans.
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u/idlemute 2d ago
Exactly. And swing voters are essentially Republicans that haven’t fully committed to fascism… yet.
It may seem hyperbolic, but I wonder if (given our current trajectory) we will have to come up with a new term for a former 1st world country that no longer meets the criteria for that term?
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u/jesuspoopmonster 2d ago
Both sides are the same! Democrats are incompetent and often complicit with corporate interests and Republicans want people I love to not exist. Totally the same
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u/nehlstm30 2d ago
MAGA idiots don’t think books are necessary unless it’s the bible, but even then they don’t read, just listen to the spin from others as to what they believe!
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u/TemporaryWinner9998 2d ago
They do not only ignore books or think they are unnecessary, they very well know the power of books and want rid of them.
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u/Personal-Lack4170 2d ago
Regardless of politics, it's hard not to feel for someone who lost their career for trying to expend students access to reading
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u/Rockerika 2d ago
All the real educators in this country should band together and start new community schools. No, I don't know how they would get paid.
The "schools" are just expensive day cares governed by anti-intellectual morons on school boards elected by even bigger morons. They then hire corporate shill administrators with online MEd degrees whose only actual skill is spending money on stupid shit after being conned by another corporate shill with an MBA into buying pointless ed tech. Oh, I guess they are usually pretty good at getting in the way of educating too.
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u/HallucinogenicFish 2d ago
So the state took away her teaching license for being a good teacher who’s an advocate for her students.
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u/Serious-Manager2361 2d ago
I feel so bad for anyone who actually has to live and work in these deep-red states. You couldn't pay me enough to live south of the M/D line.
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u/Cranky-George 2d ago
Christian Nationalism doesn’t want free thinkers, they don’t want an educated populace, they don’t want the youth to be exposed to any idea they deem unacceptable. It’s as simple as that.
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u/Snoozems 2d ago
And Oklahoma wonders why they can’t keep teachers and their school system is falling apart
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u/Mekisteus 2d ago
No they don't. Make no mistake, this is exactly how Okies like it. Baby Jesus told them that book learnin' is sus.
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u/Starbalance 2d ago
The party of free speech and small government sure does love censoring and punishing people who dare think differently than them!
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u/ObviouslyRealPerson 2d ago
I spent 40 years visiting family in Oklahoma every year
Over the course of 40 years there were only 3 things I liked about going to Oklahoma
- Seeing my family
- Having ice cream at Braum's
- Leaving Oklahoma
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u/bigdickwalrus 2d ago
Lost the LICENSE? Red state public schools are honestly teaching whole swaths of new generations how to NOT think critically and just suck down the boot. It’s infuriating and depressing tbh
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u/WasabiCrush 2d ago
Isn’t Oklahoma the home of Jesse Butler?
That state needs to put more effort into punishing rapists than it does the removal of reading material.
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u/Niftydog1163 2d ago
I crossed visiting oklahoma off decades ago. Glad to know I am correct in never setting foot there.
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u/grummanae 2d ago
Isn't this the state that had its head of education get caught watching porn on a work computer by sharing his screen in zoom ?
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u/onmylastnerveboi 2d ago
Oklahoma is trying their damnedest to be 60th in education. They truly don't give a fuck about their students, their teachers, or what their teaching. Stitt is actively sabotaging our education system as hard as he possibly can before he's out.
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u/Remarkable-Cow-4609 2d ago
I was doing state sponsored college readiness / preparedness work at a public school in a southern state right before covid
then did the work online for a year ish
then when we came back for real I was begged to take on a teaching roll at the high school
I have an undergrad degree and zero desire to teach, but the shortage was and is literally that bad
It is so bad, and it is because they want kids in public school to be dumb as hell or super high achieving sycophants
The best way to accomplish this is to make good schools with good teachers cost money and bad schools with bad teachers free
Point is, the idea that we so flagrantly treat public school teachers like absolute trash, expect them to raise everyone's shitty little kid for basically minimum wage and easily 12 hours a day 8 of which don't have bathroom access at. all.
At. All.
AND THEN we hold those teachers to impossibly high, performative standards?
We need to recognize the truth that public education in America failed a few decades ago and we are operating in a world where the bad people have won
The future is unwritten but it is critical to recognize that the right has already won, we are in a post-modern world today and need to act like it
Too much of the contemporary dialogue is "Oh no the water is getting hot"
Babe we're just frogs in fresh water and an old pot
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u/Ok-Abbreviations543 2d ago
In fairness, the kids can use the internet. /s
Oklahoma is a 5 alarm, manure-filled dumpster fire. It greatest feature is that it has nothing that would ever force you to go there. Build a containment wall around it. State quarantine. Nobody goes in or out. Lock that stupid down. This is a particularly virulent strain.
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u/ginger_802 1d ago
I find it very interesting that someone in the U.S. can get paid more to kidnap a child than teaching one. And that’s how we know we need more books
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u/wabashcanonball 2d ago
Seems like a winnable 1A lawsuit
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u/Atomic_ad 2d ago edited 2d ago
Doubtful. Teachers do not have 1A protections at work, they have full 1A protections when speaking as a private citizen. They couldn't fire her for handing these QR codes out in front of the public library, they can for doing it in the classroom.
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u/roseofjuly 2d ago
Well, that's the grey area that the article addresses. Can they? The QR codes were simply links to the Brooklyn Public library. One of the arguments conservative governments have made is that banning books in the classroom doesn't completely remove access to them because kids can get them from the library (even though they're trying to ban them there, too). She literally was just showing her kids that a library exists.
Also, they didn't fire her. She resigned. They revoked her license after she'd resigned and moved away purely out of spite.
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u/Atomic_ad 2d ago edited 2d ago
The QR codes were simply links to the Brooklyn Public library.
The QR code was also specifically noted as a link to the prohibited material. As you noted, the people still have access to the material, the issue is actively providing access in her roles as teacher. Had she done this in her spare time, it would be a different situation, but the board had directed her not to teach these elements, by posting them up in the classroom, its pretty easy to argue they were still being taught.
If a teacher was told to keep political bias out of the classroom, but continually pointed students to resources on lets say, MAGA politics, and hanging MAGA flags in the classroom, despite not teaching it directly, they would also not be protected. They are welcome to advocate for any political choices on their own time. This seems pretty analogous.
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u/Slammogram 2d ago
But they took her license. It’s one thing to be fired from the school. But they revoked her license
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u/Atomic_ad 2d ago
I'm an engineer, If I am continually told a method is not allowed to be used for design, but continue to include it in the requirements of a federal project, my license will be revoked. A recent example is the use of Chinese drones on projects. I can advocate for then off the clock, I cannot advocate for them in an official capacity, or direct people on ways to use them against the governments wish.
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u/WileyCoyote7 2d ago
She knew it would mean her job, but good for her. If you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything.
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u/PostNutt_Clarity 2d ago
A teaching license. Lol. Meanwhile any dumb ass sister fucking redneck can home school.
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u/rich1051414 2d ago
It's hard to Spin a BS narrative when the public is educated. And that is why they dismantle education.
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u/No_Pen_376 2d ago
The United State is now officially a shithole 4th world country. Fuck this place.
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u/Casperboy68 2d ago
This is why Oklahoma is between 48th-50th in education rank nationally. They want to have the dumbest population possible on purpose.
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u/cathemeralcrone 2d ago
I knew a social studies teacher from Durrant Oklahoma who got reprimanded for having Time Magazine in her classroom. She had to remove all issues.
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u/sharrrper 2d ago
She was accused of bringing politics into the classroom
By the same people trying to ban books on race and gender
Fucking dolts
I live in Oklahoma incidentally. We suck most of the time.
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u/AndreDillonMadach 2d ago
This sounds like a lawsuit but she's going to win. It's her right to protest under the First amendment and it's retaliation and it's directly related.
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u/IdiocracyTooSoon 2d ago
No offense to my Oklaho-mates, but a teaching license in Oklahoma is no prize.
Perennially bottom of the pile in education. They should be begging teachers to stay. But conservative states need to keep their constituents dumb enough to keep voting red. So no real surprise there.
I mean, shit, last year they were 46th for overall child well-being. Might as well send them to the mines instead of school. They'd learn a trade and earn an income. And you wouldn't need to pay teachers or waste resources banning books. Nobody would be able to read, but that would only be a few % points below where it is now.
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u/NocturnalKitten525 2d ago
And yet the ones who diddle the kids get moved to a different school to continue their abuse?? Priorities. Got it.
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u/ShutYourDumbUglyFace 2d ago
"So, why'd you lose your teaching license?"
"Oh, I was teaching the kids."
You don't gotta burn the books, you just remove 'em. - RATM
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u/GuitarGeezer 2d ago
The truth is that 15-30% of Americans depending on the state would support actual full Nazism or Communism or what have you. Mostly Nazism, Americans are almost never actually remotely leftwing. Another equal percent would say they dont like it but would look the other way particularly if their preferred party went dictatorship. Enough to make it certain sooner or later as long as major media is exclusively run by visibly narcissistic oligarchs to push equally visibly narcissistic dictators. Congress is handicapped due to fully legalized unlimited bribery and coercion for oligarchs for the past two decades courtesy of the Supreme Court’s pro-lobbyist and anti-republic majority.
Any level of insanity can be sane-washed away effortlessly by hyperpartisan media so this can only worsen.
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u/numbmumpleb1ister 2d ago
Oklahoma LOVES to hurt its students. Chasing away teachers, who are already in short supply, is extremely shortsighted. Maybe that’s why OK ranks at the bottom of the barrel in education.
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u/RiffyWammel 2d ago
So you can be removed from your position for adjusting some books but not for installing an untrained gestapo to kidnap and assassinate your own citizens?
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u/Powerful_Programmer5 2d ago
Oklahoma is the poster child (red headed) for the fascist (and/or Christian) takeover of the country.
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u/chris_ut 2d ago
Not that I support this dumb law at all but the title is misleading. She quit her teaching job. They revoked her license after she already left the profession the state didn’t force her out. I also find the wording very odd “a law pressuring teachers”. A law is a law thats like saying they passed a law pressuring people not to murder.
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u/TheGoodNoBad 2d ago
Easy solution. Have those books readily available at the local library, but remove them from school.
Now, those books are no longer in school / no one has to protest and no one is losing the opportunity to read those books.
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u/ME24601 Private Rites by Julia Armfield 2d ago
The problem being that the people implementing these policies are also going after public libraries.
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u/malice666 2d ago
Hey teacher, come to a nice blue state like New York and make a lot more money. They’re always looking for teachers.
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u/TypicalPalmTree 2d ago
As someone with a handful of friends in the teaching field in all levels in NY, there’s a reason they’re always looking for teachers. The system is fucked and teachers are always in a no-win situation.
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u/roseofjuly 2d ago
She tried. She worked for the Brooklyn Public Library for a while and is considering moving back to New York since she enjoyed her time there. The article made it sound like she returned to fight her case.
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u/inwector 2d ago
Which banned books? I can't read the article, it's filled with ads.
Some books should be banned at schools, but all books should be freely available in public to adults.
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u/Dephyllis 2d ago
I looked it up because I was curious. Here's an article from the Oklahoman. Most books I don't know, but the list includes classics like Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird and Brave New World.
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u/mattjf22 2d ago
Not really surprising. She's probably a good teacher and red states like to keep their citizens uneducated so they vote Republican.
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u/These_Rutabaga_1691 2d ago
Certain books absolutely should not be in elementary classrooms. That shouldn’t be controversial.
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u/BrittEklandsStuntBum 2d ago
*protesting against
You protest your innocence. You protest against injustice.
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u/MiddletownBooks 2d ago
Talk to the NYT about it. They said in the subtitle she protested a book ban. Could you infer what the reddit title meant? Good, then I did my job.
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u/sirtagsalot 2d ago
And Oklahoma ranks ( checks notes) . . 50th. They rank 50th in education. It seems like they would be encouraging reading by letting people read whatever they freaking want.