A controversial children's book about Cuba -- and similar books from the same series about other countries -- will be removed from all Miami-Dade school libraries after a School Board vote Wednesday that split Hispanic and non-Hispanic members in an incendiary political atmosphere.Apparently one of the things the opponents of the book failed to take into account was a sense of irony.
Only the Cuba book, Vamos a Cuba, and its English-language counterpart, A Visit to Cuba, were reviewed through the district's lengthy appeals process. Some board members who voted for the ban admitted they had never seen other books in the series, which features 24 nations including Greece, Mexico and Vietnam -- none of which had been formally objected to by anyone.
"Basically it paints life in those 24 countries with the same brush, with the same words," said board chairman AgustÃn Barrera, who said he read most of the books.
As part of the 6-3 vote, the board overruled two review committees and Superintendent Rudy Crew, all of whom had decided to keep the book. The decision directed Crew to replace the series with more detailed books.
Even longtime district officials could not remember any previous banning of a book by the School Board. And the American Civil Liberties Union said it was prepared to file a lawsuit challenging the decision, which the School Board's own attorney said would be "costly."
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[The book] became the target of controversy earlier this year when the father of a Marjory Stoneman Douglas Elementary student complained about the book's rosy portrayal of life in Fidel Castro's Cuba.
"The Cuban people have been paying a dear price for 47 years for the reality to be known," said Juan Amador Rodriguez, a former political prisoner in Cuba who filed the original complaint, which was denied, and subsequent appeals. "A 32-page book cannot silence that."
But in his final appeal to the School Board, the majority of members decided its inaccuracies and omissions made it inappropriate for its intended kindergarten-to-second-grade audience.
"A book that misleads, confounds or confuses has no part in the education of our students, most especially elementary students who are most impressionable and vulnerable," said board member Perla Tabares Hantman.
Opponents of the ban said it was tantamount to censorship of politically unsavory speech -- something specifically barred by the U.S. Supreme Court.
"Next week we will have another complaint about another book from another group," said board member Evelyn Greer. "If this standard is applied, we will go through every book in the system."
Legal experts said the board's action appeared to be unconstitutional. A 1982 Supreme Court case ruled that school boards have wide discretion to determine which books go on shelves, but "that discretion may not be exercised in a narrowly partisan or political manner."
One of the inconvenient realities of living in a nominally free country is that censorship is not acceptable. You may not like what someone says, you may disagree with what they publish, and you may not want to hear ideas that you don't like, but you don't get to tell other people what they can or cannot say, write, or think. Within obvious limits for pornography or incitement (i.e. the old adage of shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre), the freedom of the press and expression is sacrosanct in this country, and there's a good reason it's in the First Amendment: it's the most important and cherished right that we have. Without it, the rest of the rights we have are meaningless. The Cuban exile community that came here to escape the Castro regime seems to have brought with them the doctrine that freedom of expression is fine as long as you agree with what they have to say.
The exile community says, "You don't know what we went through. You have no idea what it's like to be oppressed." That's an emotional plea, but it's also irrelevant. The Cubans aren't unique in being the only political refugees in this country; they just happen to be the loudest and most politically connected. And even if life is hell in Cuba under Castro, that is no excuse for imposing censorship on others; it doesn't exactly engender sympathy for their cause when they are resorting to dictatorial methods to get their point across.
It should also be noted that life in pre-Castro Cuba wasn't exactly an exercise in Jeffersonian democracy. President Fulgencio Bautista was as intolerant of dissent as his successor, and the people who fled Cuba at the beginning of the Castro regime were the upper-crustacean supporters of Bautista's corrupt and mob-riddled government. They are the ones who established the anti-Castro movement here in Miami and bludgeoned the American administration into the embargo in the first place. Their goal isn't necessarily a free and democratic Cuba; they just want it back the way they left it. To this day there are aging warriors who believe with all their heart that the minute Castro keels over, they will be able to sail into Havana harbor, move back into their old homes, and pick up right where they left off in 1958.
As for the books themselves, the opponents claim they are either inaccurate or gloss over the flaws of the countries they write about, including Greece, Mexico, and Vietnam as well as Cuba. In the first place, it's not exactly the place for a book geared toward six-year-olds to explain the intricacies of geopolitical history. It's hard to do it in one-syllable words that heretofore explored the sibling rivalries between Dick and Jane. (By the way, how come the "Fun with Dick and Jane" books didn't explain exactly where Dick and Jane and Baby Sally came from? Should they be banned for leaving children to think the stork brought them?) Does the book about Germany explore the first half of the last century, or does it just have nice pictures of people dancing in lederhosen at the hofbrau? Does the book about France have a chapter on the Vichy government during World War II, and does the book on Greece explain that the first Olympics were held in the nude and that it was perfectly acceptable in classical Greece for boys to date each other? I don't think so.
Second, if the books are lacking in content or are incorrect, that provides what we in the education business call a "teachable" moment; a chance for a teacher -- or better yet, a parent -- to explain what life really is like in Cuba. Certainly if Ms. Tabares Hantman believes children are "most vulnerable and impressionable" at that age, the impression we should give them is that there is more than just one way to look at a subject and that the key to learning is exploring different points of view. It should also be noted that children at that age have a highly developed sense of skepticism and they also have a pretty sophisticated bullshit detector. They know when something is left out, and they have a way of finding out the truth.
Ironically, these books teach a lesson that is a lot more than about what life is or isn't like in Cuba. It is precisely because there is no political content whatsoever in these books that they have become a political football. We've all seen the footage of what elementary school kids learn in school in Castro's Cuba. We've seen them in their uniforms and their red kerchiefs, all reciting allegiance to the revolution and to Castro, and we've all heard the complaints from the exile community how these kids are being brainwashed. They say that children shouldn't be indoctrinated in politics at the age of six. Exactly. So why are they doing that here in Miami?
