# Miami-Dade school board bans children's book on Cuba **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 15, 2006, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/miami-dade-school-board-bans-childrens-book-on-cuba/360866 "2006-06-15T21:48:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2006, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/miami-dade-school-board-bans-childrens-book-on-cuba/360866/1 "2006-06-15T21:48:04Z")
The Miami-Dade School Board, overruling two review committees and the superintendent, has just voted to remove a book titled _Vamos a Cuba_ or _A Visit to Cuba_ from elementary school libraries. (They’re also going to ban every book in that particular series – descriptions of various countries, aimed at kindergarteners to second-graders). Critics argued the book (1) contained some factual inaccuracies and (2) presented too rosy a picture of Cuba. [http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/14820707.htm](http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/14820707.htm) Good decision? Bad? ---
**Author:** ![Antinor01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2006, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/miami-dade-school-board-bans-childrens-book-on-cuba/360866/2 "2006-06-15T23:20:16Z")
If it does contain factual errors I see the point in removing it. Not really knowing the situation it’s hard to say if that is the real reason or not. Though, this line made me laugh… > [@linked article](#): > > Courts typically give school boards more discretion in choosing instructional materials – and Simon, the ACLU director, said he could envision ‘‘a perfectly reasonable judgment being made’’ to remove a book that was not considered age-appropriate. > > However, he said, ``the court was adamant that books couldn’t be removed because of content.‘’ You can’t remove books because of content? So…they can only remove books because they don’t the typeface used? The color of the cover being wrong? Perhaps only books in their 4th printing. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2006, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/miami-dade-school-board-bans-childrens-book-on-cuba/360866/3 "2006-06-18T18:33:03Z")
What bothered me most is that they banned the whole series – as if to try to make it look like the decision is based only on the very few inaccuracies in the one book they looked at, and they aren’t bowing to Cuban-American political pressure.