Gifford Middle School in eastern Florida removed the manga Assassination Classroom from its library last month after receiving complaints from groups.
Assassination Classroom - Manga removed from bookstore in Florida
The Elmbrook School District in southeastern Wisconsin also removed the manga from its electronic library last month after a complaint from a parent.
The project also faces challenges in other states.
In the manga Assassination Classroom and its adaptations, a class of high school students is tasked with assassinating their teacher (who is actually an alien with superpowers) before he destroys Earth at the end of the school year.
Therefore, Gifford Middle School removed three books from the franchise, which features illustrations of students with guns in a classroom, from its library. According to Jennifer Pippin, president of the Indian River County chapter of Moms for Liberty, the books were inappropriate considering the recent school shootings in the United States.
Jennifer Pippin added:
We don't want students to think that it's okay to kill their teachers.
Another Florida group, the organization Citizens Defending Freedom, announced that it will deal severely with the manga, which is present in Florida high schools despite its violent content.
The organization's national communications director, Kristen Huber, stated:
We should all be able to agree that violence against teachers and explicit sexual content is not something that schools should glorify or promote, especially with taxpayers' money.
Florida bill HB 1467, which went into effect last July, requires school libraries to include only books that have been pre-approved or reviewed by a holder of “a valid educational media specialist certificate” from the Florida Department of Education.
It's worth remembering that the Elmbrook School District, in southeastern Wisconsin, added five books from the franchise to its electronic library starting in the 2021-2022 school year, but removed them last month after a parent raised concerns that the district might be promoting gun violence against teachers. Elmbrook's director of library services, Kay Koepsel-Benning, said the claim is "inaccurate." Additionally, another parent raised concerns about the depiction of violence and the sexualization of minors in the series.
The series is also contested in Pender County, North Carolina, where it was described as a work that educates students on how to kill their teachers.
In Richmond, Virginia, House Bill 1379, which requires school principals to maintain a catalog of all audiovisual content and track which books contain sexually explicit content in the school library and make that information available to parents, passed the House of Delegates in February and is now under discussion in Senate subcommittees. Delegate Tim Anderson, who sponsored the bill, cited the manga Assassination Classroom and said he questioned the fact that the work is available in some school libraries.
Finally, it's worth remembering that the Death Note manga faced similar complaints in the 2000s and 2010s.
Source: Siliconera
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