Legislators try to throw the book at teachers

Arizona has a chronic teacher shortage. Why, just last month we learned that fully a quarter of Arizona’s public school classrooms don’t have a qualified teacher instructing our children.

Naturally, the Republican-run Arizona Legislature is leaping forth to tackle this alarming and vexing issue ...

... With a bill that would transform teachers into felons should they slip up and accidently mention a book like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Great Gatsby” or James Joyce’s “Ulysses.”

Failure to get a parent’s written permission to share what is apparently now considered smut would result in a Class 5 felony, punishable by up to two years in prison.

Senate Bill 1323 was approved by the Arizona Senate on a party line vote last week. It next heads to the House before landing atop Gov. Katie Hobbs’ growing veto pyre.

“This bill is about stopping the sexualization of Arizona’s children. It is happening right now all across the state in government-run schools,” the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jake Hoffman, RQueen Creek, told his fellow senators.

“This should be a felony. If you expose kids to sexually explicit material it should be a felony. There should be jail time. There should be fines. It is reprehensible what’s being taught in our schools.”

Books, for example, like George Orwell’s “1984” and Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” and Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.”

The Legislature, under Hoffman’s direction, has already barred public schools from exposing children to sexually explicit material, which, by the way, already is illegal.

Last year’s law prevents schools from referring students to any material that depicts sexual conduct, which Hoffman defines as “acts of masturbation, homosexuality, sexual intercourse or physical contact with a person’s clothed or unclothed genitals, pubic area, buttocks or, if such person is female, breast.”

Our leaders did, at least, exempt classical literature from the book ban, but only if a teacher first gets a parent’s written permission.

Now Hoffman wants to add a criminal penalty should they accidently run afoul of the law.

“This bill actually protects children and their fundamental Christian values that have been at the forefront of the education system since the founding of this nation,” Sen. Anthony Kern, R-Glendale, proclaimed.

Just don’t mention the Bible, Sen. Kern, or you, too, could wind up in the pokey. (Check out Ezekiel 23: 20

and 21).

Sen. Christine Marsh, D-Phoenix – who unlike Hoffman and Kern actually is a teacher and has spent a fair amount of time in schools – cautioned that worry about what is permitted and what is not – and the criminal penalty for making the wrong call – will make teachers err on the side of shortchanging their students.

“Which means that a whole lot of literature that probably doesn’t fall under that category but teachers are afraid that it will are not going to end up getting taught,” she said.

Not to worry.

Senate Republicans also gave preliminary approval last week to another doomed proposal.

Tucson Sen. Justine Wadsack’s SB 1700 directs the Arizona Department of Education to create a list of books that

Sen. Christine Marsh, D-Phoenix, cautioned that worry about what is permitted and what is not – and the criminal penalty for making the wrong call – will make teachers err on the side of shortchanging their students.

must be banned in schools. Among the targets: books that are “lewd or sexual in nature” and books that “promote gender fluidity or gender pronouns.”

Farewell, “Twelfth Night” and “Romeo and Juliet.” We knew thee well.

Alas, if Republicans prevail, our kids won’t.