The World That Bradbury Predicted Would Burn.

Below are quotes from Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury along with news articles and references showing how these things are coming to pass. This is not, by any means, an in depth study. Only a vehicle to promote thought and dialog.

• • Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that!… Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did.(54)Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. (59)  … It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God.
    • At many colleges and universities, students say they shouldn’t have to put up with views they find offensive, racially insensitive or wrongheaded. The thinking arose over time, and then gained momentum with the Black Lives Matter movement and the stormy politics of the year.
      Do We Still Believe in Free Speech? Only Until We Disagree – Miami Herald
      
    • Books currently on the Banned List
      Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
      His Dark Material’s Series from Philip Pullman
      The Color Purple by Alice Walker
      The Giver by Lois Lowry
      Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
      Fat Kid Rules the World  by K.L. Going
      The Terrorist by Caroline B. Cooney
      The Things they Carried by Tim O’Brien
      The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
      The Joy of Gay Sex by Dr. Charles Silverstein
      Black Boy by Richard Wright
      Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher
      The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
      Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
      Top Ten most Challenged Books every year American Library Association.org   List of most commonly challenged books in the US

• School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. 
  •  “we learn that average American students read at about the grade 7 level.  Some high school students can read high school-level material, of course, while others are still reading at an elementary school level (even though they are in high school)… Although Common Core promised to make all students college-ready, it didn’t tell the state boards of education who bought into this idea (or the public at large) what reading level that meant.  Nor did any state board member (so far as we know) ask.  There is no information available from any source on what college readiness in reading means, from Common Core’s own documents or from the various test developers.  What can a high school student judged to be college-ready actually be able to read? Nor has anyone supporting the Common Core initiative suggested why we should expect the Common Core project to raise the reading level of the average American high school student since Common Core’s reading “standards” are, for the most part, empty skill sets.  Moreover, there is nothing in its English language arts/reading document to indicate that students are to be assigned and taught to read more difficult material than whatever they are already reading—grade after grade—in a coherent reading curriculum.” – Why No Information on what a College-Readiness Reading Level is? – Education News.org 
  • “Only about a third of U.S. high school seniors are prepared for college-level coursework in math and reading. And while the performance of the country’s highest achievers is increasing in reading, the lowest-achieving students are performing worse than ever.” High School Seniors Aren’t College-Ready –  NAEP reported by US News
    
  • “It’s hard not to conclude that too many of our students haven’t had a civics course in junior high school,” said Floyd Abrams, the pre-eminent First Amendment lawyer who handled cases from the Pentagon Papers to Citizen’s United and just published a new book, “The Soul of the First Amendment.”If the high school curriculum is part of the problem, that may be because teachers are hesitant about their roles. David Bobb, head of the Bill of Rights Institute, funded by industrialist Charles Koch to provide training to schools, said he hears regularly from teachers who avoid topics for fear of backlash.

    “They have to wonder, ‘If I get into this controversial topic, am I going to be backed up by my department chair, or the principal?’ ” he said. “ ‘Or are the parents going to come after me and say it’s not your place to talk about this?’ ” Do We Still Believe in Free Speech? Only Until We Disagree – Miami Herald

     

•  the word `intellectual,’ of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. (page 58)
  • Cambridge University examiners told it is “sexist” to use the word “genius” to describe it’s students. –  UK Independent.
    
• ‘You can’t build a house without nails and wood. If you don’t want a house built, hide the nails and wood.’ If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. (61)
  • • “I do think the First Amendment tradition is under siege,” said Jeffrey Rosen, president of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Pamela Geller, a firebrand commentator and founder of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, added, “Freedom of speech has never before been so poorly regarded by such large numbers of Americans.”
      “When people quit listening to each other, there’s that lack of discussion and a lack of understanding,” said Bradley A. Smith, the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission and professor at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio. “That’s when there’s a growing tendency to think the other side shouldn’t be able to say what they think.”“If America becomes torn against itself, I think free speech sort of goes out with it,” said Downs, the Wisconsin professor. “Sometimes I’m genuinely anguished over the kind of society we’re going to have if this keeps going,” said Christina Hoff Sommers, an author and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. “It’s easy to take it for granted and not recognize that we’re jeopardizing these freedoms.” Do We Still Believe in Free Speech? Only Until We Disagree – Miami Herald

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