Amanda Gorman called upon the country of the United States of America to “ leave behind a country better than the one we were left” when she read her poem “The Hill We Climb,” at Joe Biden’s inauguration ceremony in 2021. On Tuesday, May 23, 2023, Miami-Dade County public school confirmed that the poem itself was moved from the elementary section of the school due to a parent’s complaint. A parent of a student at Bob Graham Education Center – a kindergarten through eighth-grade school in Miami Lakes –objected to Gorman’s poem. The specific complaint included the words It “is not educational and have (sic) indirectly hate messages,” the complaint said, adding that the poem would “cause confusion and indoctrinate students.”
This removal of the poem is due to a Florida law that requires the approval of works:in classrooms and grants and gives any parent the power to complain about specific works. The present Governor, Ron DeSantis has used this law along with other parental rights laws to ban materials on LGBTQ issues and areas of social justice as well. DeSantis is looking to be the Republican nominee to President of the United States in 2024 also used these tactics to reject math textbooks as well.
Amanda Gorman, the nation’s first-ever Youth Poet Laureate at age 22 called upon the nation to move forward with her 700-word poem. The poem was inspired by the Capitol insurrection two weeks earlier. It criticized the “force that would shatter our nation rather than share it”. Its primary message is the need for justice and social change in our current times. “The new dawn blooms as we free it,” she concluded the poem. “For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it if only we’re brave enough to be it.”
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