Byrd-Bennett's unilateral decision to ban Persepolis from school libraries, morphed into simply pulling the book from the 7th-grade curriculum. But now that the CPS legal department has been called in to cover BBB's rear end, she is now considering an extension of the ban to grades 8-10.
So says CPS chief of teaching and learning Annette Gurley, in response to letter sent late last week by six free speech advocacy organizations, including the National Coalition Against Censorship and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.
Gurley now says that Persepolis will not be taught in 7th through 10th grade classrooms until the CPS curriculum department can put in place guidelines for teachers “who are not familiar with the book [to] better help students navigate through” it.
In the meantime, Persepolis author Marjane Satrapi has called out Becky Carroll's Dept. of Disinformation,for claiming that the book was "never banned."
"It's a lie," said Satrapi. "If you have to take a course to teach a book, you pick another book. It's a big insult to the teachers. It's insulting their intelligence, their integrity."I'm still wondering about two things:
-- If Gurley's in charge of the Dept. of Teaching and Learning, what is the rest of CPS about?
-- Where's Rahm on this? Is he still, "looking into it"?
That was the original clarification after they backtracked on taking the books out of the library. They said that the books would not be taught in 7th through 10th grade, although they were "considering" how the book could be taught in 8th through 10th, but only after teachers had been "trained" in how to teach the book. The book was only to be used at the 11th or 12th grade level and a few select AP classes at lower levels. This is nothing new.
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