An Oklahoma Teacher Fought the Book-Banning Right and Lost Her Job
An Oklahoma English teacher helped students apply for library cards so they could read banned books. Now she’s out of a job, receiving a barrage of threats from the Right, and the Republican state secretary of public education wants to take away her license.
Right now in Oklahoma, the state’s secretary of education is publicly advocating that a high school English teacher lose her teaching license because she helped her students apply for library cards so they could read banned books. (Shunya Koide / Unsplash)
A story I’ve heard many times in the last several years goes something like this: “Progressives used to be edgy and countercultural. Conservatives used to be all about conformity and censorship. But now the roles have switched!”
Sometimes this story is told by conservatives themselves. Sometimes it’s told by someone who either denies they have a political ideology or starts their self-description with “I’m a liberal, but . . . ”
The part of the story that’s true is that many progressives have shortsighted views about, for example, censorship on social media platforms. There’s plenty to criticize there. But any suggestion that the Right has seen the light on the importance of free expression is a bad joke.
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