ORLANDO, Fla. — The classic novels “A Room With a View” and “Madame Bovary” and the epic poem “Paradise Lost” — published in England more than 350 years ago — have been at least temporarily rejected by Orange County Public Schools for sexual content that educators fear runs afoul of a new Florida law.
Novels that in past years were frequently taught in OCPS high school classes, such as “The Color Purple,” “Catch-22,” “Brave New World” and “The Kite Runner,” have been put on the rejected lists, too, as have novels by Toni Morrison and Ayn Rand and popular, turned-into-movies books like “Into the Wild,” and “The Fault in Our Stars.”
The lists of books rejected and approved for OCPS classrooms are not finalized yet as district media specialists continue their summer work of reviewing all books in classroom libraries, said several people familiar with the process.
Some books rejected earlier this summer, among them “The Scarlet Letter” and Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” have since been approved, according to the lists shared with the Orlando Sentinel by a district teacher and by an advocacy group that obtained a rejection list through a public records request. Other books have been approved but only for certain grades.
Four plays by William Shakespeare, including “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” are currently listed as approved for grades 10 through 12 only, as is Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” and Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” the lists show.
For many of the books, the reason for at least a temporary rejection is sex. “Depicts or describes sexual conduct (not allowed per HB 1069-2023),” reads the explanation, referencing a new state law passed by the Republican-dominated Florida Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The new law makes book challenges easier and, if the concern is sexual content, requires the books to be removed from the shelves within five days and remain inaccessible to students while being reviewed. Republican lawmakers said they passed it to make sure pornography and books that depict sexual activity are kept from children.
But critics say the effort has wrongly labeled many books pornographic, when state law says, in part, that books with sexual content or nudity are considered pornography only if they are “without serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”
A law passed last year requires media specialists — teachers with training to be school librarians — to review books. Rules adopted by the state in January told them to “err on the side of caution” when selecting books for school libraries or approving them for classroom collections. Those laws and rules are guiding OCPS’ review.
Still, some OCPS teachers said they were shocked to see what books are being flagged as potentially objectionable.
“The last thing I would have expected to be rejected is Milton,” said one English teacher, noting that John Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” published in 1667, is considered a “cornerstone of Western literature.”
The teacher is compiling and updating a list of rejected OCPS books and starting this past weekend others shared his list on Facebook, Reddit and TikTok. He asked that his name and the name of his high school not be identified for fear of facing discipline.
The list he has pulled together shows more than 150 books labeled as rejected.
The state’s new laws and rules wrongly imply “I have horrible intentions for my students,” the ninth-grade English teacher said, when like others he shares and teaches books he hopes will engage the teenagers in his classes.
“We are in this because we really care about the stuff that we teach and really care about the content we get to introduce our students to,” he said.
If the rejected list doesn’t change, he said, he will have to remove novels like “The Hand Maid’s Tale” and “Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team and a Dream” from his classroom bookshelves as they are rejected for all grades, as well as “Crime and Punishment” and “In Cold Blood,” which are now rejected for ninth grade, which he teaches.
Michael Ollendorff, an OCPS spokesman, said via email Monday that no one was available to comment because of limited staffing ahead of the July Fourth holiday. But he also said the book review process is ongoing. “The books you are inquiring about have not been rejected but are rather still going through reviews.”
OCPS has taken a more conservative approach than many other school systems as it reviews books teachers keep in their classrooms for their lessons or for students to borrow for independent reading, said Stephana Ferrell, an Orange County mother and co-founder of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, which formed to challenge book bans statewide.
The project, through public records requests, obtained an OCPS rejected list dated June 14 and a copy of the guidance given to media specialists as they began reviewing book titles, which teachers had uploaded to an online system.
That guidance told media specialists, “You are tasked with protecting your colleagues, yourself, and OCPS to ensure content being made available to students is in compliance with Florida Statutes.”
“It comes down to fear,” Ferrell said, “and again the erring on the side of caution.”
And the result is that books that have been taught for years are now being questioned.
“It’s not just new books. It’s classics. It’s things that we would have otherwise thought would be perfectly fine. You’ve got Shakespeare being called into question,” she said. “You’ve got the chilling effect in action and there will be hundreds of books lost to this unnecessary, bureaucratic scare tactic.”
Some of the books now on the rejected list are ones that are included in the state-approved language arts textbook OCPS teachers use or in district-provided curriculum plans that have been in place in recent years, said the teacher who is compiling the list of rejected books.
John Green’s novel “Paper Towns,” is excerpted in the textbook, for example, the teacher said, and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Signs” and the epic poem “Metamorphosis” are in the district curriculum plan. All are currently rejected, according to his list.
He said he thinks administrators are being so cautious with books because the district has not been popular with the Florida Department of Education and state leaders since the COVID-19 pandemic when it was one of 12 districts that challenged state rules and imposed a face mask mandate.
Some teachers may try to “weather the storm” and still teach the books they value, he said. But others are scared. “I know a lot of people can’t throw caution to the wind,” he added.
“I don’t fault our county. I think our county is erring on the side of extreme caution in order to protect their employees,” said another OCPS English teacher who asked not to be named for fear her comments could hurt her school’s media specialist, who she said is doing her best to approve books within the confines of the new law.
The teacher said she was “gobsmacked” when she saw “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was rejected initially and angry when novels she’d taught for Advanced Placement literature classes, including “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison and “A Prayer for Owen Meany” by John Irving, were nixed, too.
She selects novels “to engage my students, to offer them literature that makes them think,” and some books meant to describe “the adolescent experience” contain sexual content. But they are not pornographic or inappropriate and it upset her to see them on the rejected list.
“It’s just so frustrating and disheartening,” she said.
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