Diary of an Irish Teacher: We need book rental to save our children's backs

About a third of parents with children in primary school have no access to a book-rental scheme and two-thirds of parents with kids in secondary school can’t access one

'Last year, Ann-Marie Ennis, a chartered physiotherapist in Dublin, said that back problems in young people were worse now than at any time throughout her 25-year career.'

At a Kanawha County Board of Education meeting on June 27, 1974, board member Alice Moore presented a petition with 12,000 signatures, calling for schools to ban any textbooks that undermined God or capitalist America.

The petition led to protests. The protests led to violence. School buses were shot at. School buildings were bombed. English-language arts textbooks were seen as such a potent threat to US decency and social order they needed to be destroyed.