Bee Opinionated: Banned books + Election endorsements + Elk Grove in trouble with state
We send Bee Opinionated to newsletter subscribers first. Get it in your inbox before it publishes online: Sign up here.
Hi again, it’s Robin Epley with The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board.
Last year, the Roseville Joint Union High School District implemented a new process for approving parts of the curriculum at the district level, clearing 900 different materials for its English classes, Hannah Holzer wrote in a column last week. This year, English teachers were asked to submit any additional materials needing approval and it turns out there’s about 70 proposed supplemental materials.
Now, “a small but vocal group of Granite Bay parents” are protesting the majority of them.
Those parents have created a publicly accessible Google document citing concerns ranging from the alleged promotion of “critical race theory” to “education as activism” to simply unpleasant subjects.
Holzer writes:
“I was required to study most of these texts in high school and college. Whether or not today’s students do so, they will certainly deal with challenging issues like suicide, race and sin — either on the page or in real life. Isn’t it better that they be prepared to think critically about these problems rather than pretend they don’t exist?”
Opposed books include Flannery O’Connor’s renowned short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (1953), for the treatment of topics such as murder, sin, selfishness and guilt; Joyce Carol Oates’ 1991 short story “Life After High School” because it discusses homosexuality and suicide; Jamaica Kincaid’s 1978 story “Girl” for depicting a mother-daughter relationship that lacks “warmth;” and Gabriel García Márquez’s short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” (1968) because it “is a bash on (Catholicism) and how empty religion is.”
‘Tis The Season (For Voting)
Election Day is less than a month away, and we’ve compiled all of The Bee’s endorsements here in one easy place for you to read — and, if we’ve done our jobs right, help you understand your ballot a little bit better.
You can also see all of The Bee’s election coverage, and election night results, on a special page of our website. It currently includes all of our endorsements, video interviews with candidates, transcripts and news articles about the election.
Opinion of the Week
“Elk Grove was not going to let the law get in the way of the suburb’s continuing efforts to discriminate against its homeless residents.” — The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board on the state’s decision to find the city of Elk Grove in violation of Senate Bill 35, the Housing Accountability Act, the Discrimination in Land Use Law and the Housing Element Law in denying the Oak Rose Apartments’ application for 67 units of permanent supportive housing at 9252 Elk Grove Blvd.
Got thoughts? What would you like to see in this newsletter every week? Got a story tip or an opinion to tell the world? Let us know what you think about this email and our work in general by emailing us at any time via opinion@sacbee.com.
Happy almost-but-not-quite-yet Halloween!
Robin Epley
