This is a must-read for anyone concerned about schooling:

[...] Of course, publishers prefer to face no objections at all. That’s why going through a major adoption, especially a Texas adoption, is like earning a professional certificate in textbook editing. Survivors just know things.

What do they know?

Mainly, they know how to censor themselves. Once, I remember, an editorial group was discussing literary selections to include in a reading anthology. We were about to agree on one selection when someone mentioned that the author of this piece had drawn a protest at a Texas adoption because he had allegedly belonged to an organization called the One World Council, rumored to be a “Communist front.”

At that moment, someone pointed out another story that fit our criteria. Without further conversation, we chose that one and moved on. Only in retrospect did I realize we had censored the first story based on rumors of allegations. Our unspoken thinking seemed to be, If even the most unlikely taint existed, the Gablers would find it, so why take a chance?

Self-censorship like this goes unreported because we the censors hardly notice ourselves doing it. In that room, none of us said no to any story. We just converged around a different story. The dangerous author, incidentally, was celebrated best-selling science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. [... KEEP READING]

(via Susan Wise Bauer)