Stamping Out Intelligence: Censorship May Work Wonders
April 9, 2025
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I live in a state which has some interesting ideas. One of them is that the students are well educated. At this time, I think the state in which I reside holds position 47 out of 50 in terms of reading skills or academic performance. Are the numbers accurate? Probably not, but they indicate that learning is not priority number one in some quarters.
A young student with a gift for mathematics is the class dunce. He has to write on the chalk board, “I will not do linear algebra in class.” Thanks, OpenAI. Know any budding Einsteins in Mississippi?
However, there is a state which performs less well than mine. That state is Mississippi. Should that state hold the rank of the 50th less academically slick entity in the US. Probably not, but the low ranking does say something to some people.
I thought about this notion of “low academic performance” when I read “Mississippi Libraries Ordered to Delete Academic Research in Response to State Laws.” The write up says:
A state commission scrubbed academic research from a database used by Mississippi libraries and public schools — a move made to comply with recent state laws changing what content can be offered in libraries. The Mississippi Library Commission ordered the deletion of two research collections that might violate state law, a March 31 internal memo obtained by Mississippi Today shows. One of the now deleted research collections focused on “race relations” and the other on “gender studies.”
So what?
I find it interesting that in a state holding down the 50th spot in academic slickness assumes that its students will be reading research on these topics or any topics for that matter.
I did a very brief stint as a teacher. In fact, I invested one year teaching in a quite challenging high school environment about 100 miles south of Chicago. If my students read anything, I was quite happy. I suppose today that I would be terminated because I used the Sunday comics, gas station credit card application forms, job applications for the local Hunt’s Drive In, and a wide range of printed matter. My goal was to provide reading material that was different from the standard text book, a text book I used when I was in high school years before I showed up at my teaching job.
The goal is to get students reading. Today, I assume that removing books and research material is more informed than what I did.
Several observations:
- Taking steps to prevent reading is different from how I would approach the question, “What should be in the school library?”
- The message sent to students who actually learn that books and research materials are being removed from the library seems to me to be, “Hey, don’t read this academic garbage.”
- The anti-intellectualism which this removal seems to underscore means that Mississippi is working hard to nail down its number 50 spot.
I am a dinobaby. I am quite thrilled with this fact. I will probably fall over dead with a book in my hands. Remember: I used outside materials to try to engage my students in reading for that one year of high school teaching. I should have been killed when a library stack fell over when I was in grade school.
These types of decisions are going to get the job done for me I think.
Stephen E Arnold, April 9, 2025
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