Amanda Gorman’s poem “The Hill We Climb,” which was written for President Joe Biden’s inauguration, was taken out of an elementary school in Miami-Dade County on Tuesday, the district said. Kids who are grown can still use it.
Documents from the Florida Freedom to Read Project show that a parent of a student at Bob Graham Education Center, a kindergarten through eighth-grade school in Miami Lakes, objected to the poem. The school had mistakenly named Oprah Winfrey as the author and publisher of the poem.
The tweet below confirms the news:
A certain Presidential candidate from Florida just announced he’s banning Amanda Gorman’s poem.
Gen-Z does not f*ck with leaders who ban poems and books. It’s an attack on academic freedom. pic.twitter.com/kCf94oSUEQ
— Gen Z for Biden (@genz_4biden) May 23, 2023
In the complaint, it was said that the poem “is not educational and indirectly sends hate messages.” It was also said that the poem would “cause confusion and indoctrinate students.”
The same parent made similar complaints about “Love to Langston,” a poetry-based biography of the black poet Langston Hughes, “The ABCs of Black History,” and two books about Cuba, according to the complaints that the charity group got.
The school’s materials review committee didn’t decide to take the books out of the school completely, but they did decide to move the Gorman poem and two other disputed items to the middle school section of the library, which is for grades 6 through 8. The nonprofit also got the minutes from the committee’s April meeting.
Gorman, the country’s first youth poet laureate, didn’t like the choice. He wrote on Instagram, “Depriving children of the chance to find their voices in literature is a violation of their right to free thought and free speech.”
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Wednesday, the mayor of Miami-Dade County asked Gorman to come to the county for a reading.
“Your poem inspired our youth to become active participants in their government and to help shape the future. We want you to come to Miami-Dade to do a reading of your poem. If you’re in, we will coordinate,” Daniella Levine Cava wrote on Twitter.
.@TheAmandaGorman, your poem inspired our youth to become active participants in their government and to help shape the future. We want you to come to Miami-Dade to do a reading of your poem. If you’re in, we will coordinate. https://t.co/9cpX2Zvkrk
— Daniella Levine Cava (@LevineCava) May 24, 2023
Elmo Lugo, a spokesman for Miami-Dade County Public Schools, told that no books or poems have been taken away or banned.
“The school decided that ‘The Hill We Climb’ is better for middle school kids, so it was put in the middle school section of the library. “You can still get the book from the media center,” he said.
Lugo didn’t answer when CNN asked him to confirm that the complaint papers released by the Florida Freedom to Read Project were real. Instead, he told CNN that the district would treat CNN’s question as a formal request for public records.
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