The Department of Education is currently looking into ways to bring the book-burnings to inner-city schools.
Following the confirmation of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, the Department of Education announced on Tuesday that the department’s first initiative would be a nationwide book-burning drive, in which students in grades K-12 will be encouraged to destroy volumes, in the hopes that children might discover a life-long passion for destroying literature.
“As a charter school advocate, I’ve always believed that families should have the freedom to educate their children in a way that is consistent with their most deeply held beliefs,” said DeVos in a press conference. “Through this book-burning drive, we’ll be able to promote a love of burning books for children of all backgrounds.”
Emphasizing local control, the program will grant federal funds to schools in both private and public schools in all fifty states. In addition, students and teachers will have access to online materials that provide fire safety guidelines and suggestions for incorporating book-burning into pre-existing curriculums.
“It’s important for this to be an educational experience that teachers can integrate into their lessons plans,” said Steve Johnson, a DOE spokesperson. “So when kids are learning about, say, the Constitution, we want to provide a list of books that criticize the founding fathers, so kids can ceremonially burn them.”
“The goal is to make sure that every American child can burn as many books as they want,” continued Johnson. “Books teach kids about the word they live in, so it’s incredibly important to ensure that they’re incinerating the ones that would give them the wrong ideas.”
At press time, the program had met a potential obstacle when it realized that many inner-city schools simply did not have enough books to burn.
