Indoctrination and Common Sense Interpretation of Texts: The Tucson Unified School District Book Banning

Abstract

Throughout January of 2012, national news reports described the ongoing saga of “banning” books used in the Tucson Unified school District’s (TUSD) Mexican American Studies (MAS) Program. According to MAS students and teachers, on Friday, January 13, school officials attended class sessions and told teachers to box and remove books that were out of compliance with a recently passed Arizona law banning ethnic studies in public education institutions. TUSD administrators had decided that, in order to comply with the law, not only would the MAS program have to end but any books used in the curriculum would need to be removed from classrooms. Books on the removal list included Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire, Critical Race Theory by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, and, famously, Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The TUSD maintained that it has not banned the books since they are still available in the libraries throughout the school system. This article, which focuses on the reasons for removing the books from the MAS program classrooms, is grounded in a social constructionist metatheoretical framework as well as the study of reading practices and previous research on book challengers. It is intended to demonstrate that those who argued for the dismantling of the program and the removal of the books employed what might be called a common sense or monosemic interpretive strategy with regard to texts and were particularly focused on the idea of indoctrination in public schools.

Reacciones de los docentes mexicanos ante las prohibiciones y biblioclastia de los nuevos Libros de Texto Gratuitos de México en 2023: Un estudio cualitativo descriptivo

“…Más recientemente, en 2009, estallaron protestas nacionales y quemas de libros en respuesta a contenidos sobre género y diversidad sexual (Grecko, 2023;Torres, 2018). Knox (2017) examina las motivaciones detrás de los grupos de padres que persiguen la prohibición de libros en las escuelas, un tipo de biblioclastia fundamentalista. Ella caracteriza sus esfuerzos como el resultado de una "interpretación monosémica" de los textos, que es la creencia de que un texto tiene un significado singular y explícito para todos los lectores.…”

An interdisciplinary study of racial violence through place in grades 3–12

“…Interestingly, following the events of January 6, 2021, the event has gained national and even international attention as the attempted insurrection at the US Capitol building has been compared to the coup and massacre in Wilmington (Butler-Arnold, 2021;Cornish, 2021;Hayes, 2021;Ingram, 2021;Meyers, 2021). This article is particularly relevant today as increasing challenges to teaching the history of race and racism have emerged from critics A study of racial violence who argue that teaching such history is indoctrination (Knox, 2017). As current events mirror what happened in Wilmington in 1898, the urgency to teach it in a thorough and accurate manner is growing.…”

Books, censorship, and anti-intellectualism in schools

“…Educational theorists (see Snook, 1970) have argued that indoctrination has four main components: intent, content, method, and outcome. In a book banning case in Tucson, Arizona, I found that people who argued for the removal of certain ethnic studies books, including Occupied American: A History of Chicanos by Rodolfo Acuna and Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years by Bill Bigelow, felt that teachers have a distinct intent to teach particular content, to use only certain methods, and to expect a particular outcome (Knox, 2017).…”