Hello everyone. This is Diane Rasmussen Makati with UK Column News. I'm really happy today to be joined by Vicki Baggett all the way from Florida. And we're going to be talking today about library books and education and what's going on and what's being placed in front of our children and wherever the conversation ends up going as two people who are very passionate about education.
So, Vicki, welcome to UK column. Would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved in this fight in the first place? Thank you so much, Diane, for having me today. You know, the overseas is definitely on my bucket list, so hopefully we'll get to meet in person one day too. As you said, my name is Dickie Baggett. I am a 34 or 35 year veteran English teacher. I have been teaching middle school, high school and college English for that long.
And about 3 years ago, my school district had sent as an optional classroom novel study a book called Perks of Being a Wildflower, a Wallflower. And I had never heard of this book. And I have my masters and and postgraduate classes in English, which is, you know, this is literature. And so having never even heard of this book, I was a little bit concerned right off the bat, of course, I take the book home and I start reading it and I was
appalled. This book contains situations of, you know, a, a kid watching his sister have sex, references to, oh, OK, a guy and a girl are going to go have sex. They don't have a condom, so they're going to use a Ziploc bag instead. It was just highly inappropriate. And as a seasoned teacher, I'm also head of the English department at my school. One of the things that I can tell you is going on, you probably maybe have seen this over there as well.
In our country, what's happening is fewer and fewer people are actually getting true courses and and licensed in their fields. They might get a degree in, let's say, hotel management and then they decide, I'm tired of this. I think I want to be a teacher. And so all of a sudden they get hired because they have a four year degree. They're put into a classroom, whatever field might match their, you know, their
background. And then they're given anywhere from three to five years to get certified. So that potential teacher has three to five years to do untold damage to children. I've seen it over and over and over again. So this is happening everywhere. And we especially see this at the middle and the high school
levels. When your students, your children are supposed to start having specialized learning when, when they have teachers who, who maybe they're trying to give all they have, but those fields are not their areas, then it's the kids who suffer. So when I took this book home and I, I read it, I was heavily concerned. The first thing that I thought about was, Oh my goodness. Because our school district has put our stamp on this potential
classroom novel. New and inexperienced teachers are going to think this is a green light and they're going to bring this book in and use it as a classroom novel and
discussion. So I immediately went to my principal and my principal said, well, it's optional, you don't have to use it. And I'm like, yeah, but you and I both know younger teachers who have no experience are going to seek see this and say, oh, well, hey, I've got a classroom set, I'm going to use it. And so he suggested that I call downtown or district level media English supervisor, which I did.
She and the director of high school education came up to talk to me about it and they said, well, OK, you I guess you need to fill out a form the. And I did it was like 1 little page, a little form. Hey, this book is inappropriate. I mean, I know as a parent, if a classroom teacher required this novel of my children and, and I teach senior English, I don't care if my kids a senior, this was not there.
There are way too many great books out there that do not have this sort of of sexualized content. So I would have been very upset. So I filled out this form while I was waiting to hear about this. I decided I thought, you know, all these years I've been sending my students to the library. I just want to go down there and see what some of the latest books are. And I just started pulling some books, books that I had not heard of.
I thought I was going to faint. I, I, I kid you not, I felt as if I were in some sort of a porn shop. It was, it was hideous. It was, it was unbelievable. So at that point, I contacted our Superintendent for the entire school district, which is Escambia County, Florida, and I made an appointment with him and I took that little form. I had made a copy of it, and I started filling out one form per book that I felt like he needed or somebody downtown needed to
look at these books. I didn't know what I was doing filling out these forms, and obviously our district didn't either. We'd never had anybody to to challenge any books. I did not know that the whole world was going to see my forms. This was a conversation supposed to be between me and the Superintendent.
The next thing I knew, all these forms were published online on our county website, and they were very simplistic, like some of these where it said, what is it about this book that you find concerning? I had written things like racial commentary or extreme profanity. I did not pull in textual evidence. I did not know to, as I said, I did not know that this was going to be, you know, for the whole
world to see. This was just something I wanted him to get a group together and let's look at these books. Oh, my goodness. That's all it took. The media goes crazy. You know, I'm the, I'm all over the news. Washington Inquirer does a story. I mean, it's everywhere. And of course, you know, English teacher questions, books and libraries and all this stuff. And because I had not pulled in textual evidence, which, hey, I'm a writer, I know how to pull
in textual evidence. But because I had not done that, people were like, she's totally making this stuff up. So I got smart after that, I kept right on going and I kept on. At this point, I've changed up everything. I started, I was like, OK, you want to see the truth? Let me show you some things. And I started pulling in the textual evidence. And then of course, you couldn't question.
Here it is three years later, the the first set of books that we went through, it was like this long drawn out process. Our our district setup review committees that were completely stashed. Committees had people on them, primarily librarians who wanted to keep this stuff. They too were trained in particular about they, they all had the same MO. They all said things like, well, children want to see themselves in these books. So we need to have diversity. We need to have all sorts of
things. In the state of Florida, as in many other states, we have laws you cannot have. You cannot have sexual content that that is prurient in nature. Prurient means anything that gets you hot and heavy, OK. You cannot have anything that is educationally unsuitable or age inappropriate that the MO every single time from these review committees, even if you had one or two people who were saying, hey, this is not appropriate for kids, the majority would say,
well, they see this anyway. They see it on TV, they see it on the computer, they see it on their cell phones. Irrelevant here. We have books in our libraries that we're paying for as taxpayers. Our school district is providing. So we are offering this as if we're saying, hey, we approve it. Here you go. This has been rocking on for three years. I had to appeal 3 years ago when we had the review committees.
I had to appeal the review committee's decisions and our school board agreed with me because our school board's going to be held accountable. OK? We already know in the state of Florida, we have a governor who came in and fired every single board member in a particular county because they were not doing their jobs. So your board is going to be held responsible. But our school board agreed with me and they started taking out some of these books now. It was, it was contentious.
It was really, really heated debates at the board meetings. But ultimately the board has the final say. So our Superintendent ended up being relieved of his duties. So we have a different Superintendent now and here it is three years later. We have now started back with the review committees. We are involved in two lawsuits. 1 is because how dare we remove a book that contained, it's called Antango Makes. 3. You may have heard of it.
This book is about two male Penguins who you know, they, they raise a Penguin. They, they take care of an egg. We know that that happens already in the Penguin culture. The reason this book was challenged and then appealed and then our board voted to remove it is because of that one line where the zookeeper says, oh, they must be in love. It's that indoctrination. And so we wanted parents to have the right to know, hey, this book has this and we did not.
Our county, obviously, and our school board agreed, did not think this was age appropriate. So the authors of that book, they're suing our school district and that lawsuit is still ongoing. I don't know what's going to happen with it. You know, the second lawsuit that we have is from Pin America. They're of course they have come in and they've said, well, the you are deliberately pulling books that target LGBTQ.
They target minority students or minority characters or the authors or minority or L GB TQI can tell you I I don't know about that. The majority of the books and the authors that are coming in, probably most people don't even know somebody's sexual orientation, An author's sexual orientation, who cares? The bottom line is if the content is not educationally suitable, a school district has the right to decide and to govern as it sees fit. But that lawsuit is ongoing as well.
And, and their contention is that you know it, it can't, you can't have viewpoint discrimination. So again, we don't know how either of these will play out. I have a feeling, to be honest with you, Diane, I have a feeling these will probably especially the Pan America case may even go up through into the Supreme Court because if you know about the PICO case, it was never decided. It was kicked back down to the lower courts. And so you've got this First Amendment argument.
You know, kids have the right to have this and be exposed to that. But OK, this is true. But if you if you say that, then are you not saying that they can and have the right to be exposed to any book that's ever written? So I mean, it's a slippery slope. We don't know how either lawsuit will play out. But my county of Escambia County, Florida is, you know, they're, they seem to be trying to do the right thing. As a teacher in the county, you know, I'm, I'm proud that
they're standing strong. Do they do everything perfectly? Of course not, they're just human beings just like I am, but I do believe that their ultimate goal is to do what's right and to do what's honourable for children. Now we are still trying to weed out books and I don't know if you heard what just happened a couple of weeks ago. And I truly believe this was a, A, a nod to my board members.
A couple of weeks ago on May the 20th, we had a board meeting and people got up to speak about some of the books that have now started. They've started the review committees back again and the same thing that happened three years ago is happening yet again. Where this time though, they seem to be straddling the fence. Let's take it this book out of 9th and 10th grade, but leave it in 11th and 12th grade. So what that it has the F word
600 times. So what that it has an actual sexual penetration saying it is it's it's totally ridiculous. Well, on May the 20th, we had this board meeting and people were up there talking about these things. And if you know our new attorney general, his name is James Oothmeyer. He had actually, unbeknownst to us, he had actually written a letter to Hillsborough County that's also in Florida. And in this letter he literally told them they better get their act together as board members.
And the Superintendent, the Superintendent is supposed to appear before this attorney general tomorrow, June the 4th. And he said, you better get your act together. I want this these books with sexual content removed. And he actually gave passages from particular books. Well, I had just seen this letter right before the board meeting. So when I got up to speak, I actually quoted some of the passages. And then I looked up at the board members and I said, guess
what? I submitted these books to our district in 2022 and in 2023, they're still on a waiting list for review committees. Why? Let me read you some of the passages. The first passage was about a woman who who is having a a a situation with a vibrator. It was so embarrassing.
Everybody on the board just literally hung their heads while they were listening to it. When I got finished reading these passages, one of the board members said this is awful and we don't need books like this to go in front of a review committee. And what he said was the board's going to be held responsible. Just like in Hillsborough County, we're going to be on in the hot seat with the attorney general if we don't start removing these books.
And he said, I believe every book that has already been removed in a school district within the state of Florida, I believe we need to go ahead and remove them all. So in other words, if a book has been removed in the neighboring county, he wants it removed in our county. Well, the four other board members 100% agreed with him. It was wonderful. This is going to literally save so much time. We won't have to have these stupid review committee meetings on all these books.
So right now it's my understanding they're going through and they're coming up with a list of all of the books and it's going to, it's going to be hundreds of books, possibly even thousands. So Hillsborough County within 24 hours after receiving that letter from the attorney General, they removed, according to their response to the attorney general, they removed 389,000 of their 2.2 million books. That's a lot of books. Now, I don't know the basis for the removal.
It could have been, you know, it could have been the copies. But if they have that many books that potentially contain inappropriate content, then, you know, they better get their act together. Let me, I'm going to read to you the attorney general's quote that I found so unbelievable. Oh, he showed up two days after that board meeting. He showed up in Pensacola, FL, which is right down here where I am, and he was talking about inappropriate content in library
books. He and he was talking about vaping, just different things. But this is what he said. Listen to this and I truly believe it was a nod to my board members. If you want to subject our kids to dangerous, harmful content and pornography at a young age, we will take action that will not be acceptable here in the state of Florida. That's what he said.
In other words, you know, I mean, he's not putting up with it. And so I hope this summer, I hope while our schools are closed and the libraries are closed, I really, really hope that we see a great change taking place. I wanted to show you, Diane, just what I'm talking about here is a book. It's called Queer, the ultimate LGBTQ guide for teens. OK. This book was found at a local elementary school in Santa Rosa County, Florida, the next county over. I do a lot of work in that
county too. Of course. I'm just going to read 1 section to you. This is on page 161. The name of this chapter is called Starting Solo. Starting Solo. Before you start having sex with someone else, you may want to have some with yourself. Apart from being fun and safe, masturbation is also a fantastic way to learn about your own body in terms of where and how you like to be touched. And because you're the only one involved, you're rarely you'll
rarely be disappointed. The fantasies you have while touching yourself can sometimes teach you a lot about yourself. Skip down to the next paragraph though. People often masturbate before they have sex for the first time. They don't stop masturbating just because they've started having sex with other people.
Masturbation is different from having sex because you have no one else to be concerned with but yourself, and you can do it anytime you like and you don't need anyone else's consent. Now again, this was found in AK through 8 school kindergarteners. Kindergarteners Page 165 Touching and rubbing. Genital stimulation can come from anybody part. You can use your hands or hips or feet. You rub your private parts or someone's thigh, arm, butt, genitals, ankles, wherever.
Oh, there's a whole section here digging it and it talks about anal sex. So our librarians and the people who approve these books have the ability to morally change children with what they put in the library. I just could not believe that this book was found in AK through 8 school. Now of course, you know when you bring this to a district's attention, if they do not agree with you, you're going to have their opinion. Is what they're looking at. They're not looking at the law.
Is this educationally appropriate? No, it's not. Forget your opinion. You may think that discussing this is appropriate. I may think it is too. I don't, and I'm sure you probably don't either. The bottom line is, is this beneficial for children? That's what people are are not looking at. They're not looking at the law. This book called Almost Adulting. This is a book by Arden Rose and I found this book at a local high school and I was flipping through reading it.
Page 147 Listen to this the narrative talking about watching the movie One Night in Paris. The first porn I ever watched was One Night in Paris. Yes, Paris Hilton. The video embarrassingly revolved around blowjobs, but I still gained some valuable carnal wisdom within those 20 minutes of male centric pleasure. I didn't understand why you would willingly let a dude pee in your mouth. By the end of the video I was confused, disgusted, but mostly fascinated.
I went down a sordid rabbit hole. That night I learned what BBW meant. Big beautiful woman. I learned what being uncircumcised actually meant. I still think it looks like the penis is chilly and has to wear a turtleneck. It's kind of cute in a gross penis Y way. I was thoroughly interested in all the unfiltered smut my greedy little pubescent eyes beheld. My masturbation habits got upsetting.
Like I got visibly excited when the 7th period bell rang to indicate school was over so I could run home and rub one out. OK. This, however, is mild. I mean, I could go on and on. It, it goes into your public libraries. My mother and I, every summer we, you know, we hit all the library book sales. I'm a book freak. I'm, I'm like the, the student in the Canterbury Tales. I spend everything I have on books, and this was what I found in the library book sale in the
children's department. So I'm flipping through it because I don't know if you guys have this over there, but it's something called graphic novels. Graphic. Yeah. I didn't even know what this was when I first heard about graphic novels. I'm like, OK, what does that mean? Very detailed. I'm not a reading teacher. I'm. I'm a literature writing teacher. So I'm like, what is that? Well, of course, no, it's like comic strips, that sort of thing. And it's really used for lower
level readers. OK, I buy into that. That's fine. But here's the issue. I see now that a lot of publishers and, and writers and, and all these book companies, they are using that as a tool to certainly come in, to come in after our kids. I will tell you, I was looking through this book and I thought, oh, OK, this is just, this is just a, a comic book.
Now remember, I found this in the children's section and while I was looking at it, all of a sudden I came across this picture, a man and a woman naked, engaged in sex. And I, I go to the librarian and I said, now remember this was a volunteer librarian for the Friends of the Library Book Sale. And I said, Oh my goodness, do you understand? You have this in the children's
library book sale section. This was, this was at a Public Library. I can even show you the stamp Foley Public Library in Baldwin County, Alabama. And that was one picture. There were several others and of course he was visibly very upset. I ended up I decided to again. I had never heard of this book, so I decided we have in my state, it's required.
We have a database. Thank the Lord this all happened because of COVID, but we have a database where parents can log on and see the books that are available to their children. Well, I logged on and I decided to look up this book called Maestro. And so I was blown away because guess what it was in my county that is a picture of I don't have to read this book. There was a picture of a man and woman a a naked picture. They were engaged in sex 100%
illegal. So I immediately while I was on my trip with my mother, I'm taking pictures and I send it to my school district. Well, I have to submit a form. So I go ahead and submit the form and immediately they pulled the book. Guess what? It's still on the list to be reviewed. Why? It violates the law. Get rid of the book. You know what I'm saying? Children cannot have access to it right now, which is good, but why the delay? Get rid of the book.
So these are the things I think the attorney general's talking about. He's not going to put up with it. You, I don't care that this was found in a high school. This is against our law. We have a law. It's number 847 point O 1-2. You can't have pictures, anything like that and give it to children all in the name of education. This is this is not if, if these writers want to be seen and read and so forth in school, then do what's appropriate.
Why did this author feel the need to have that picture? You know, according to the law, he just limited where this book is found. This book, if you want, if you want to show it to your kids, go buy it from Amazon or whatever. Go check it out at the Public Library. But I mean, this is the sort of thing that we're finding a lot of. Now. I will tell you something else that I have found which is very interesting because our attorney general, of course, is being
notified about this. Parents, when they have children in the school, they have their own login for the it's called the Destiny database system. Santa Rosa County is using one called the library system, I think is what is called Library Connect. Something like that. And then students have a different login and the public doesn't have to login at all. You just go to the website and you can see. What we're finding is that illegally librarians are hiding books within certain logins.
In other words, let's just say, and I'm using this as a, for instance, let's just say I had found this book and I submitted it. The law states within five days this book has to be off the shelves while it is going through a reconsideration process. Well, we're finding that the public, when they would log on, of course, the book would not be there. Parents when they log on, the book would not be there.
But when students log on, they would have access to some of these books through an audio or through an e-book. That is felonious intent. And I really, really believe that hopefully things are going to change because people are waking up and they're starting to see, especially when we have leaders now who are realizing the damage that this sort of thing causes when you have librarians who are deliberately hiding things from parents and from the public.
They're making it available to children. And I'm using this book as an example. This this one is not the case that I have found, but I have found several others. So we're just, we're in a situation though, where I truly do believe, I want to believe in, in, in the good that's happening. I do believe we still have a lot of woke librarians, woke principals. We have woke parents and they for some reason, they want children to be sexualized.
I have found books that have comments and situations about trans characters and I have found these available to five year olds. Why? That's a really detailed overview of the the situation in Florida. So I want to thank you for that. That was great. It's like, I guess I have some follow up questions now about, about all this because, you know, we're seeing similar things in the UK. But of course, as I said, our structures are different.
Our schools are governed differently, our libraries are governed differently. But one thing that we do have in common between the UK and the US is that the, we have something similar to the American Library Association, which is what I was trained and qualified under, you know, about. Well, I finished my, my master's in 2001. And to me, it's amazing how different it is now to what it was then because we were not trained to be putting the stuff
in front of children. You know, there was a, a different thing, a different thing about censorship. And, you know, even at that time, this wasn't that long ago really, that in 2001 that we were talking about things that actually didn't work very well. But how do we protect children from using the computers at the libraries, right?
So if there's a, you know, filters that didn't work out, but because if they would, for example, if they would type the words breast cancer, then that would try to, you know, filter that out because that would say, well, they're potentially searching for pornography. We're trying to keep them away from that. But then they didn't work because there are ways around them.
And then legitimate searches for things they might need to write a report about for school would get blocked erroneously, right? But that was just, that was just 25 years ago and it was that way when I was still in library practice. And it just, it's amazing to me how this is all changed in such a short amount of time, like I said. So over here we have an organization called Sillup, which is the reciprocal to the American Library Association.
It's the Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals. And the reason I was able to move over here and I actually trained librarians for 10 years over here was that they have reciprocal accreditation agreements. So if you do an American Library Association accredited master's degree, which is the degree that you have to have to be a librarian, a lot of people don't realize you're supposed to have a master's degree to be a
librarian. Then you can also work in the UK. It's the same in Canada, it's the same in New Zealand, Australia, some European countries, increasingly Asian, some Asian countries are starting to look at this as well. And it's so a lot of times, even if American students came over here and then they could go back home and work because they just wanted the experience of living here for, you know, a year while
they did their master's degree. And so we're seeing the same, I guess, approach to twisting what is the nature of our profession. I'm talking about librarians, and I would imagine education is similar, right? So for librarians, the idea that we're not supposed to censor anything, which I completely
agree with. I'm completely all for free speech, but I actually lost my membership in Scillip because I was speaking out about these kinds of things and putting things in front of children that I didn't think were appropriate because they said that I was being, you know, bigoted, that I was being, you know, not I was censoring and we're not supposed
to do that. Like all of these things that were brought against me and all these disciplinary things that I went through and I lost my career as a librarian because I was trying to speak out against it. So what's really difficult is being, as far as I don't know personally any other librarians and probably I don't even know of any educators that I've heard from in the UK since I've been
reporting on this. Now of anyone saying that they are against it, now it's possible that some of them are against it and they're not speaking up because they're afraid to. The ones that I do hear from are are just concerned parents. I'm not saying just parents, but it's not the people that are in the positions where they can make the decisions and decide what they're going to do in the
schools or in the libraries. It's the parents saying, what are you people putting in front of my children? And then in some cases over here, when the parents complain, they actually get complaints filed against them by the librarians because the librarians are saying that the parents are causing problems, saying the parents have have no right whatsoever to say what goes in front of their children.
And so the reason, you know, the reason I'm, I'm saying this, I guess is because I'm very interested coming from the side of being the qualified librarian. And I was actually a full professor in librarianship when I lost my career. So I was the top of my field. Yeah. I was 20 years of teaching in universities in the US, Canada and the UK. Very long CV obviously to become a full professor, dedicated all of my life to achieving that goal.
And then I achieved it. And then it was taken away from me because I spoke up for what was right or what I believe is right, what is right. That makes me so sad. I don't know what to do. My respect for you is up here. I'm going to tell you I no listen to what I'm telling you. I hear exactly what you're saying. When I first started speaking out about this, the next thing I knew, here I am. Every year as a teacher, we are evaluated. Y'all probably are over there as
well. Yeah, I did evaluation every single year. The next thing I know, I'm under investigation too. Why? Because these journalists had written articles about me and had sent, it's called bot emails. I didn't even know what a bot was, but it's like a prescribed e-mail form e-mail had sent it to my board members. Like OK, obviously this woman hates people of color. Obviously, this woman hates LGBTQ people. Has she ever mistreated any of her students?
I don't know if any of my students are gay. We don't talk about that. That's not my job. My job is to teach English. I mean, this was so silly. And, you know, I'm just a person. I live, I live in the woods. I, I call myself Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, OK. I'm just a person who I try to love everybody. I certainly have an opinion, but I value other people's opinion too. When it comes to kids, though, and it's hard for some people to realize high school kids are still minors.
They may have figures, they may look mature. They may have beards. They're minors. And when it comes to kids, I will go down fighting. And I, too, went through all of this stuff where, you know, accusations were made. It almost killed me because I've never had anything like this said about me. And it was certainly not my local people. It was people from media, people from that's one thing I can say these these people who behave this way, they know how to
organize. That was not something I was used to. And all I knew to do was I just, you know, I kept praying and I kept trying to stand up and do what was right as obviously you have done Diane and the, the sometimes though what I am seeing. We are put in a different situation for the betterment of society. I am a person of faith. I had to lean on God. I leaned on my husband, my family, my church, and I was like, what in the world?
People are people who don't even know me are social media is the worst. I had attacks from people I've never even heard of before. And I'm like, who are you? You know, it was terrible. So I understand now. The difference is I have more years in than you. I'm also a union member. My union does some things I don't agree with, but I'm smart enough to stay in the union.
They come also the union Rep at my school, which is kind of, you know, it's kind of like nobody knew what to do with me because I have not violated any laws. I'm speaking up for something that I agree with and for me right now, we have an attorney general who is also agreeing with me and the now the board is seeing this as well. And they, they want to see things. My advice to you, my advice to
people like you. I can tell you I'm the only teacher that I know of in my county and in the next county over who is publicly standing up and speaking out. That's OK, because I've taken the hits just like you have taken the hits. A lot of people are scared. I have librarians who send me things. They know that this is not right, but they're scared to speak up because they need jobs. I understand it. I get it. I get it.
You know, I, all I can say is if we as adults sit silently by and let this sort of thing keep coming in and, and being in front of our children, we are going to have to give an account of this. We are supposed to be the gatekeepers, especially in education. Now, I'm not a librarian, but I'm an English teacher. And I can tell you when I was growing up, our librarian, everything that came in, she wouldn't even let us check it out until she had checked it out herself, You know?
Well, now we have so many more tools available. You can scan things. You can, you know what I'm saying? You can look for keywords. I just don't understand why we don't have more people being proactive, even silently, even silently. So, Diane, I admire you. I'm, I'm so sorry that this has happened, but here's what I want to say. I, I promise you there's something bigger for you. And this, it may be this, this precipice of what you're doing right now, you're getting it out there.
What you've been through. There is a reason for everything and there is something bigger. Do I think that I have something bigger? I don't know. I don't know. I just know that I can lay my head down at night and I can feel like I'm trying to do what I feel like God has placed in my heart to be the right thing.
Even if somebody's not a believer in a higher moral power, you have to know that putting this stuff in front of children, putting, putting this about masturbation in front of kindergartners, this is not right. This is not right. And so if we don't have more people taking a stand, they, OK, they may have a perfect life here on this earth, but they will be held accountable. They will be held accountable. And so thank you, Diane. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that that's happened.
But you know what? You were too good for that position anyway. You are going to be able to reach a whole lot more people doing what you're doing right now. So you just stand strong. Thank you. No, it is true that I, I have an incredible platform here with UK column and you know, I think we're, we're truly free speech independent media company, which is not true, including the media companies that published whatever horrible things were published about you.
You know, one thing that I want to comment on is the political situation. So having grown up in America, it it's very different than it is over here. And, and I think one thing that happens in America is because essentially we have two parties, right?
You're either one side or the other side, and, and that you have to agree with everything on one side if you're a Democrat or if you're a Republican. And So what happens in America, and I say this after living there for the majority of my life, and I've been over here now for 10 years, is the majority of librarians are, are Democrats in the states.
They're all liberal left wing and they identify as, you know, anyone who hates Trump or who hates Biden or Harris or whoever is in charge is a complete idiot. And and you know, all, all the Trump haters are stupid and all of the smart people love Biden, Harris, Obama, whoever it is. But along with that comes this this same idea of basically being allowing children to read whatever it is that they want to
read. If you look at some of the funding behind the American Library Association and how the money gets to them and who backs them. Amanda Jones, for example, Right.
We all know Amanda Jones. We don't love Amanda Jones, but we know who Amanda Jones is. That book, that librarian, which I have written reviews about and talked about here on this channel, she has, if you look at the back of her book, she has an endorsement from Oprah. The documentary that was made called That Librarian or I think it was about several of them doing something similar to Amanda Jones had a documentary that was executive produced by Sarah Jessica Parker.
There is globalist, a so-called Foot Flamanthropist to fund things in the American Library Association, including things like the Freedom of Freedom to Read project. And I'll be including, you know, really, really rich men that who knows what they do behind closed doors. We don't want to know. We kind of know, but we don't want to know. And, and so they have all the big financial backers behind them.
They have the support of the Democrat Party and whatever donors they have, and it's really the funding of the American Library Association that gets things in and because Philip is smaller than the American Library Association, but they just kind of follow what Ala does. And I know that from being a both of them in the past for for
many years. And and so I think, you know, this is something that that that I believe because the reporting that I do now in UK column, we look at a lot of the larger agenda, like what's actually driving this stuff, right? And one of the things that has been driving, for example, putting sexual content in front of children are the big organizations like the World Economic Forum, United Nations, the World Health Organization that actually has guidance.
That one of the, the writers who's written the material for me recently, because I'm a, I'm the commissioning editor for UK column has found evidence of saying that children are sexual beings from birth. And therefore This is why we need to expose them to sexual content. And they in the UK, there's actual guidance from the government policies saying, and this, this is something that
we're fighting a lot. They call it things like relationships and sexuality education or RSE, different names in different parts of the UK. Let's say this is what they should be, you know, at age 6, they need to learn how to identify a penis at age 7, they need to learn like all of these things that it's, and it's all from these larger organizations in a lot of cases.
And then they, they, you know, basically our, our current Prime Minister, Keir Starmer is a very active, very strong promoter of the World Economic Forum, as is King Charles. And so they're the ones putting these policies forward. And so they're going to actually come back to London to put them in place. And the whole country has to follow them. And So what we're fighting against here are really, really, really big things.
But I think the things that are going to make the difference, if we are have any chance at all of fighting this are people like you and me and our colleagues in the World Library Association. Thank you again for allowing me to be a member.
It's really great. It this is what we have to be doing because I'm, I'm really, really afraid that the majority of the public are not aware of what their children are being exposed to. And I know that in a lot of cases in both of our countries, children are told if you want to become, if you decide that you're gay or you decide that you want to transition, you, you don't have to tell your parents. There's, there's official guidance about that over here.
If you want to change from Joanne to Joseph and you don't have to tell your parents. We'll keep it private. You can tell a teacher. And so parents are not even involved in understanding what their children are being allowed to do in the schools. Yeah. In Florida, our attorney general just I mean, that's in place. You cannot hide that from parents. You cannot like and, and you're not as a teacher, I'm not supposed to talk about that with a kid.
You know, it's, it's not my place to so I'm, I'm thankful that we have those laws, but I, I definitely agree with you. It we've got some, we've got some hard hitters with the world Library Association and, and buddy, they know their stuff. They're coming out strong and that's it's going to take many, many of us like you, for instance, with your show, different people have ways that they're getting things out.
I have a weekly video that I do every Wednesday it's called Watchmen Wednesday. I put it on YouTube. Clean books, Dash VBI have a website I'll send you the link that had it has all my videos. It has all of the forms of books that I've submitted. I work with rated books. You know, I mean, there are so many organizations that are out there who are trying so hard to get the word out that here's what we have found in this content.
Parents, you know, be aware. It's certainly is your right as a parent to expose your child or whatever you want to. But you need to be aware what I have also found and maybe you can answer this in the Destiny program. I don't know what y'all call your databases over there but in the Destiny program for instance I found a lot of books that would say things about the books. For instance, Julie is going to find herself taking a trip to Paris with her her with with some cousins and their best
friend. Never does it mention that Julie is going to fall in love with the same sex best friend and therefore that book is going to be about a same sex relationship. So what I have found in a lot of the content is that the Destiny, the Mark report, it's called a Mark report over here. The Mark report is not current or it's not complete, I guess I should say. And that's not fair. That's not fair to parents. Some parents may not want their child exposed to that,
especially at an early age. And so we need full transparency. No trying to. I don't think that anybody's trying to ban books. I'm so sick of hearing that if you can still purchase a book somewhere, the book is not banned. It's just that the average person who does not want kids exposed to this, they do not want, or he or she does not want that person's tax money spent for this. Speak. Go by the classics for crying out loud. Go by something that's
educationally suitable. Teaching a kid how to masturbate is not going to help the kid graduate high school. No, come on. No, that's one of the things that I hear frequently from librarians is the, the idea of the banned books that if you look at the, there's the freedom to read project, the Ala, there's the every library
project. And, and, and, and they've really got people believing and that and, and librarians obviously seem to believe this themselves, or at least if they don't believe it, they don't say anything that books are bad. There is not a single book that is banned in the United States. I used to, I used to teach library cataloguing. And so basically the, the process of, you know, putting all the information into the system so that you can search for it. I taught that for years.
I did research on it. I used to, I used to do it. And, you know, we used to have these discussions about what do you know, is there anything that we would ever ban? The answer was, was always no. But it used to be that we had age appropriateness, right? Like when social media started becoming popular, we used to say, well, you know, if children are going to be accessing, what was it then?
Myspace, you know, way back in the day when all this first started, kids read Myspace and other earlier sites to make sure that they learn how to use it appropriately. Don't talk to certain people. Ask your parents if something happens. You know, all of the guidance that we used to teach for children to be able to use it
and all of that. But then when it comes to the issue of censorship and banning, you know, I still believe even after all of this going on, that anyone over the age of 18 can read whatever they want, like it. You know, I personally don't spend time reading that kind of stuff. But if you want to, that's your choice. And that's what we were taught to believe as in my training as a librarian, that you shouldn't make assumptions or make decisions for people.
Your job was just to be neutral and provide the information. And for example, you know, one of the things when I was finishing my master's degree, it was, you know, I graduated in December of 2001. So 911 had just happened. And we were having discussions about, say, for example, someone who looks like they're from a certain part of the world walks in the library. And do you provide them with maps of airports? Did you, did you give them books
on how to fly? The answer is yes, you do, because you're not there to pass a judgment. You just give them what they need and whatever they do with it when they leave, you know, if they're over 18 and obviously there's nothing you can do about it. And it was the thing when I worked in university libraries because university students are over 18.
And so, you know, there was, there was no restriction, shouldn't have been any restriction on what they were looking up on the library computers or what they were taught in university classes or anything like that. But something has happened. It's very, very serious and very, very evil in the past few years. And I have to say, I didn't even realize that it had happened because I was actually never a children's librarian.
I did all kinds of training for different kinds of librarians and I had librarians who went on internships in different kinds of libraries. But you know, because it just all happened so quickly and all of a sudden this was out there and I was just as a as a shock where when you found when you found cool. So it we really, we have a lot of questions to ask. And one of the things I will say about librarians in general is that they are very happy to go
on to bandwagons, right? Like if they're told, oh, we have to be inclusive and diverse, then that's what they're going to do. And that's all they're going to talk about, right? You, if you look at the professional library literature nowadays in the journals and so on, American Library Association. Otherwise, every other article, if not every article these days is all about how do we provide better access during Pride
month? What kinds of displays do we want to have for what are we going to do to better support the LGBTQ students that come in? I never heard a word of that 25 years ago in our strength. So it's just something's happened very quickly. And and, you know, when it comes down to it and you know, I want to wrap up here in just a minute. Unfortunately, we're just about
time. Is that our, you know, one of our basically our founder of UK column, Brian Garish, He talks a lot about this being a spiritual battle, like you said. And then there's a battle between good and evil. And what happens to those of us who are trying to fight for the light side or the good side ends up getting really pushed down by it. Because I know I feel that way sometimes. I know Brian feels that way.
Any of us who are fighting these, these evil forces, they will, whatever spiritual thing is going on, you know, if you want to call it Satan as a Christian or whatever it is that you think it is or something happening where they're after us. And that's where our, I think our really, our faith in what we're doing has to stay strong. And that's what they hate. That's what the other side really hates. And then they accuse us of the likes of being hateful. Yes, I agree with you.
And I will, I want to say too, you know, one of my questions was, and I, I'm, I'm a very active member of my church. I love my church. That's my second family. But my question was, OK, where are the churches? Where are the churches in this battle? This is very, very, very serious. But I had a woman who said something to me this week, and it kind of, it kind of has made sense.
She said, Vicki, if I'm standing next to you and I'm not touching you and you're telling me all this stuff, if I'm not touching you or talking to you, is it affecting you? And I said, well, no. She said, but then if I keep poking your shoulder, is it affecting you? And I said, yeah. And she said, OK, What's happening is so many people right now, even people within the church. They're living their lives and they don't think this effects them.
Most of the warriors that I have in my county who are speaking up and stepping out, their grandparents, their grandparents. I have very few parents and I, I get a lot of parents are so busy. Most people are working two and three jobs. I get every bit of that. But I'm sitting here thinking, oh, my goodness, I But then I did have a parent again. I have a lot of parents who will send me books.
Hey, look at this. You know, I had a parent who said to me, I do not want my name used in anything because I feel as if my child will be targeted. And you know what? I sat back and I said, Oh, my word, you're probably right. You're right. We are living in such a vicious, vicious time. You can't do anything. You stand up and you speak out. The next thing you know, people have made-up all kinds of crap
about you on social media. I told a reporter I he was asking me about racial stuff, and I said what I said. My best friend is a black woman and she is it's somebody I love dearly. As a matter of fact, I teach in her former classroom. I think that she's one of my dearest friends. The next thing I know, that's the headline of a news article. My best friend is black and he's playing up on the fact that I even said that. And I'm like, really? It was, it's just ridiculous.
What these so-called journalists, I call them bloggers, it's what they'll do to try to get a good story. They inflate everything. So I, I, I do get that some with parents, but as far as the churches, you know, it is a spiritual battle. And I, I finally had some people within the church, you know, they, they realized what was happening. And a lot of them are elderly. They certainly can't come to board meetings and things like that. But you know, what they can do
is they can pray. And prayer is prayer is probably prayer is, is a Direct Line to God, you know, And so that battle is the bad good is going to win out. It's just making it through the process. But what I have found that helps me is I try to stay in the word because let me tell you something, reading some of the junk that I'm reading, it's porn. It affects your mind. I have to walk away.
I have to try to cleanse myself. When I am at the board meetings and I'm reading some of this stuff, my husband sits out there in the audience like this because it's so bad. And when I get finished, I am so ashamed that I have had to say these words. It affects me so bad. Now there are some words I won't say, but some passages is what I'm talking about. It's it, it's degrading, but people need to understand this is what our children are being
fed now. People say, well library books are self selected, it doesn't matter. A media specialist is paid from an instructional fund, therefore a media specialist. A librarian is considered an instructor. Therefore the books within her possession or his possession, there, they can be used for instruction. I should be able to walk into any school library, check out a book and go to my classroom and
read passages from that book. Or if a student were to check out a book and do a book report and that student wanted to read some passages, the student should be able to. Well, let me tell you that's not the case. That's not the case. No, no, and you know, it's, it's interesting to, it's interesting what you're saying about churches because one of the things that, and I, I hope this is not the case with your, your church. I, I really hope this isn't true.
But in the over here in the Church of England, the, the protect and teach group that I work with, and I've interviewed Kathy Mudge and I've worked with her. She's her, her group is all about, you know, being against indoctrination. Schools has found evidence from the Church of England providing guidance for transgender children and how to be inclusive to trans LGB. In the church, my church is a little Southern Baptist church and Oh my goodness, no, we are conservative and we, we love
everybody. We love everybody. We love the Sinner and hate the sin, you know what I'm saying? But yeah, we're, we believe that a lot of people are confused and we ourselves included, we sin every single day. I mean, you know, we all are, are, are imperfect creatures. That's why we're here on this earth. This is a test, you know, but I just want to keep working in this area as I'm sure you do, Diane, because this is a test.
I don't want to fail, you know, And when, when things are put in front of me, I don't know, these books, sometimes I think they fall off the shelves and land in my lap. And it's like, I've had students who have left books in my classroom before and I've, I, I will pick the book up. I'll read them. And I'm like, Oh my word. I found one the other day with a six page sex scene, you know, I, I, I don't know. Is this necessary? No, it's not. We were. We were just talking about Othello.
I just finished teaching Othello in my dual enrollment class. Hello, Shakespeare, the greatest of all times. Othello is loaded. You've got your interracial marriage, you've got murder. You've got sexual content. It's not graphic. He alludes to so much happiness to their sheets. You know, everybody knew what what it was being talked about. I mean, come on, We can read between the lines. That's what makes it so great.
The I really feel like these new writers that are writing this graphic stuff is because they can't write. So that's the way they have to write to try to get attention. I mean, I'm just blown away. I have a, a friend who is a professor in English who has said that that the publishers for current, at least here in the UK for, for current children and young adults literature, that they won't take anything the at the publication level as well.
If it's not, doesn't have some kind of content like this in it. Like basically that's what the publishers are looking for because that's what they think is selling. And so those are the authors who are getting the contracts. Yeah, that does not surprise me. But you know what I think should happen? These authors should band together and completely self publish or come up with their own group. They've got to find a way around it because that don't sell yourself in order to be out
there. Don't sell yourself like you know, or sell your soul or sell your morals. In other words, compromise your morals. I just wouldn't do that. No, unfortunately we're, we're, we're just out of time here. Is there anything else that you would like to say to our audience that we haven't talked about already? I just want to say thank you for this opportunity, Diane. I appreciate you.
I appreciate your platform. I feel like, you know, I really feel like this is something, like you said, it's happening everywhere and the more people talk about it, the more others are going to know. That's very important. But I just want to warn parents, it's as dangerous with the online platform as it is with the printed platform.
You know, you've got Sora, you have Libby, all of these or those those online platforms I have found where kids can log on and they have access to Pornhub from school, you know, so I mean, parents really, really, really need to be on top of their game. I would not do not trust things do not trust just because something's something has a green light from the school system. Don't think that it's it's all that because it's not in the
adjacent county. They were using a tutoring company that came from China and had access to things that really the state of Florida said no. And when the state of Florida found out they they had them remove that. So I mean, but kids had access to tutors from there. And there's, in other words, that's some that's a type of influence that may not be applicable to young kids. So parents just really, really need to be vigilant. And you use everybody used to assume that people wanted what
was best for their kids. It is not that way anymore. It is not that way as you said. There's something definitely evil and wicked happening right here in front of our noses. And if we as adults and parents close our eyes and pretend that it's not happening, we are complicit in the whole thing. Thank you for having me on here today. I absolutely agree. Thank you again Vicki.
This was a really wonderful conversation and I hope it inspires more people to get out there and see what's in your libraries. Whether you're a parent or a grandparent or not, we all have duties to protect the children in our society. So thank you again for your passion and your time and your dedication to what you do. It's absolutely wonderful to hear. Again, this is Diane Rathus Mcaddy with UK Column News Been talking to Vicki Begat today and please watch us.
And we have plenty of other coverage on this topic as well. If you look at the UK column website where I'm interviewing lots of people who are doing similar work and it's very, very difficult and exhausting work, but it's to me one of the most important things that we can be doing is trying to protect and safeguard the future of our children. Thanks again and thank you again. Thank you, Diane.