Here we see the traditional dance of the Missouri riot police, performed for three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly and her friends as they gathered at the Whiteman Air Force Base to protest the escalation of drone warfare. The rhythmic shuffle and banging makes for an impressive display, especially when accompanied by the dancers' ancestral garb and clubs.

Trifecta Resista at Whiteman AFB.m4v (Thanks, kcmiccheck!) ]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/04/17/missouri-police-greet-nobel-pe.html/feed 133 http://boingboing.net/2011/09/23/book-shaped-travelling-libraries.html http://boingboing.net/2011/09/23/book-shaped-travelling-libraries.html#comments Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:08:45 +0000 Cory Doctorow http://boingboing.net/?p=119241
Joplin, MO librarian April Roy, bookseller Pete Cowdin and members of the Kansas City Woodworkers’ Guild are building 22 mobile libraries -- book-shaped travelling bookcases that can be brought to poor, tornado-struck schools in the area. They're working with donated labor and cash donations for materials.

Roy and book store owner Pete Cowdin hit upon a “modest” proposal to bring new books to young readers in Joplin — individual 50-book “libraries” for a number of needy classrooms.

No question about the need. A tornado in May wiped out 54 percent of the school district’s square footage. Irving Elementary, home to 280 students, was destroyed. Emerson Elementary, an older building with 230 students, wasn’t demolished but also wasn’t practical to repair.

(Image: JILL TOYOSHIBA/Kansas City Star) ]]> http://boingboing.net/2011/09/23/book-shaped-travelling-libraries.html/feed 6 http://boingboing.net/2011/08/02/missouri-state-business-school-professor-leads-successful-campaign-to-ban-slaughterhouse-five-from-local-schools.html http://boingboing.net/2011/08/02/missouri-state-business-school-professor-leads-successful-campaign-to-ban-slaughterhouse-five-from-local-schools.html#comments Tue, 02 Aug 2011 16:06:35 +0000 Cory Doctorow http://boingboing.net/?p=111775 business school professor at Missouri State University, wrote an editorial for Gannett's News-Leader condemning the teaching of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five in Republic, MO curriculum. He said that the Vonnegut novel (considered one of the best novels of the twentieth century and widely taught in schools across the English-speaking world) contained too much cussing for children. He also condemned Sarah Ockler's Twenty Boy Summer, a book about a girl who experiments with sex during summer holidays because it contained sex.

In response, the Republic school board has banned Slaughterhouse-Five and Twenty Boy Summer, removing them from both its classrooms and school libraries. Scroggins is disappointed that they didn't ban another book, Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak.

Scroggins's research specializes in international business and entrepreneurship (he teaches dull intro to management classes, apparently without much flair), and given those specialties, you'd think that he'd realize that, in most of the world, the material in all three of the books he's picked on wouldn't raise an eyebrow. It's also bizarre to see someone who worships entrepreneurship simultaneously embrace a color-inside-the-lines, nothing-objectionable-allowed approach to education: Scroggins apparently wants to raise a generation of local children who never meet a challenging idea or experience an uncomfortable discussion. As an actual entrepreneur (and not just someone who researches entrepreneurship), I'm here to tell you that this is not how you teach people the imagination and creativity necessary to the process.

As for the Republic school board, there is no sufficient shaming for education administrators who lack the courage to stand up for children's intellectual freedom. My only consolation is to remember that school boards that ban books are always and forever remembered as thugs and fools.

Writing on her blog, Ockler was adamant that "not every teen who has sex or experiments with drinking feels remorseful about it. Not every teen who has sex gets pregnant, gets someone pregnant, or contracts an STD. Not every teen who has sex does so while in a serious relationship. Not every teen who has sex outside of a relationship feels guilty, shameful, or regretful later on."

The "crazy train", she added, "has finally derailed" following the Missouri ban. "Look, I've said it before and I'll say it a million times more. I get that my book isn't appropriate for all teens, and that some parents are opposed to the content. That's fine. Read it and decide for your own family. I wish more parents would do that — get involved in their kids' reading and discuss the issues the books portray. But don't make that decision for everyone else's family by limiting a book's availability and burying the issue under guise of a 'curriculum discussion'."

Scroggins, meanwhile, told the News Leader that while it was "unfortunate [the board] chose to keep the other book [Speak] ... I congratulate them for doing what's right and removing the two books".