“Anonymous” Email from the “Ramsey Parents Union” Rattles School District

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ramsey NJ, an “anonymous” message challenging the Ramsey school district’s book choices that was emailed to students’ families set off a contentious school board meeting on Tuesday night. Many residents wanted to know where the sender had acquired their email addresses, calling it a security breach, while others took issue with the book-banning message.

The email was sent on April 21st and signed by “Ramsey Parents Union” and Schools Superintendent Matthew Murphy, in a letter to district parents and guardians , claimed the district did not provide email addresses and information to the sender.

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The email questioned the inclusion of the book “Lawn Boy” in a school library, and expressed opposition to state-mandated sex education. Even went as far as to suggest the library had been pushing it on students . Superintendent Murphy called for calm, advising parents to discuss any objections to a book with the appropriate teacher and to follow the district’s “long standing process and policy” with Curriculum Director Andrew Matteo. “We find this accusation particularly troubling coming during School Library Month when we are celebrating and highlighting their role in providing safe spaces, defending intellectual freedom, and promoting key competencies such as critical thinking and empathy,” Murphy’s letter said.

While we are not fans of “book burning” and feel the world would be a better place if people, particularly young people read more ,we are also very leery of the rather creepy social engineering ambitions of some teachers and administrators .

If in fact the library is actually ,”providing safe spaces, defending intellectual freedom, and promoting key competencies such as critical thinking and empathy”  we are curious if the library has a copy of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged , Adam Smiths ‘s the Weather of Nations any biographies of Calvin Coolidge ,Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury , Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell , The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, or a copy of the Federalist Papers  for starts and if so when is that last time any of them were recommended or promoted?

This comes on the heels of a national movement by parents to get back into control over what is being taught in the public school system . Many parents recognized during the pandemic that for too long schools have moved away from academics and focused on social engineering , leaving children ill prepared for adulthood.