UPDATE: Byrd-Bennett says yes to book banning Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: How many more reasons do you need?

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: How many more reasons do you need?:

Byrd-Bennett says yes to book banning

by Mike Klonsky

Today at Lane Tech

In this morning's post, I greatly underestimated the arrogance and stupidity of the CPS autocrats. That's a sin that someone with my experience should never commit.

I assumed that the outrageous banning of the graphic novel Persepolis was the move of some misguided middle-level bureaucrat. But by this afternoon, CEOByrd-Bennett had not only taken credit for the banning, she had doubled-down by declaring the book to be inappropriate for seventh-graders "because it contains "graphic language and images."

And here I always thought that graphic language and images were the mark of great literature -- especially of a graphic novel. I also thought that it was the job of teachers to guide their students towards developmentally-appropriate reading. Do we really need the schools CEO to decide for teachers which books to ban?
An award-winning work, Persepolis has been translated into more than 40 languages. It was published in the United States as two volumes in 2003 and 2004 and later as a single volume. It was chosen by the Young Adult 

How many more reasons do you need?

by Mike Klonsky

“Listen. I don't like to preach, but here's some advice. You'll meet a lot of jerks in life. If they hurt you, remember it's because they're stupid. Don't react to their cruelty. There's nothing worse than bitterness and revenge. Keep your dignity and be true to yourself.” ― Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood 

I've kept a running list of reasons to get rid of mayoral control of the schools. I'm already up in the high 600s.   When the public schools are run autocratically as a wing of City Hall, you wind up with an education system run strictly in the political interests of the mayor and his corporate backers.

More reasons were added just yesterday:

#667 -- The Big Lie Syndrome
Schools CEO Byrd-Bennett came up with a whopper, obviously cooked up with the aid of CPS Liar-In-Chief,  Becky Carroll. BBB claims that the 20,000 people who attended her Walton-funded school-closing hearings, all agreed on the need to close schools.

If she had attended any of them it would have made it 20,001. BBB now claims she is "pouring over the transcripts" from those meetings before she makes her final recommendations to the school board March 31. If