'To kill a mockingbird,' other books removed from Burbank schools' curriculum
newsweek.com
newsweek.com
> I legitimately never thought “socially progressive” people would advocate banning books.
Are you kidding me? The US Progressive Left is heading down a path that has been obvious for years.
>I guess we have many more lessons to learn regarding censorship and puritanism.
No. This lesson has played out many times. We just ignore it, or somehow think this time we have out-smarted it. Or, we don't care, because this time we really are the good guys, and the other people are just really bad.
The trick is not being part of the mob, as it starts so benignly.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Edit: these are other examples of the same thing, from the current thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25124001
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25123681
Can you please not post like this? We want curious conversation here.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Two quotes I don't see in this thread:
Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people
Art should comfort the disturbed, and disturb the comfortableBy the way the title is melodramatic. The books aren't being banned and this isn't across California.
> "Helligar, who is one of the parents who filed a complaint in the case, claimed the boy's excuse was that he had read it in class and the principal had been dismissive of the incident."
This other quote is interesting, but it is not a reason to ban any books: if anything it means more books that take into account this additional perspective should be on the curriculum.
> Nadra Ostrom, another Black parent who filed a complaint, argued that the portrayal of Black people is mostly from a white perspective.
> "There's no counter-narrative to this Black person dealing with racism and a white person saving them," she said.
> Ostrom added that the current education given to students assumes "that racism is something in the past."
Edit: fixed quote
And also, the "black perspective" is not a monolith - this is another example of white people trying to put it in a box that's easy for them.
How to kill ... is totally absolutely white perspective. It is white antiracist perspective and also kind of propaganda for anti violent racism.
It is not the only white perspective, white are various. But, it lacks any perspective but white. It has no black person with agency or personality. No actual personality. Victim is super clear victim, not even ability to do crime is there. Victim is not threatening or uncomfortable to whites, he could not possibly be less clear model victim.
The book actually made political impact. In historical context, it is and was actual thing. But not necessary same impact for 2020 black student. And even this discussion lacks discussion about actual back then politics. Because that actually feels bad. Because people don't actually want to teach 13 years old about postcards with lynching victims being popular.
Teaching people to read means they can read what they choose to read. That should be the point.
See: strawman. Free-for-all arguing, I see.
You have not established causality between educational success and reading certain required books to make such a claim. Learning to read is the key indicator - the choice of books is simply not relevant for most adolescent education. Only in the last 2 years of high school, maybe. Meanwhile students who can read can pick and choose any book they'd like, not reliant on an educational system that by its very nature needs to make sacrifices.
I must ask - what books would be on your list?
I don't care about the racist "incident" they're flaming up with some dumb kid. If educational leaders think To Kill a Mockingbird is a poor, white dominant perspective that does not realistically portray black perspectives, then by all means, let's stop teaching it, and teach a more relevant book instead.
I liked that book. I read it in school and found it enjoyable and an interesting intro to racial issues beyond "Slavery is bad". But it definitely makes things all about white people. There's likely some much better source material out there for that conversation.
Saying you're banning a book is a lot dumber than changing your required curriculum.
They are banned from using it in the classroom.
I wonder if one of the kids in that school mentioned (for the sake of argument, in an appropriate setting like a discussion group) that they had read this book at home, how well received that would be?
"It's not banned everywhere, just here" is justifying the silencing of free speech in a way that Soviet Russia would be proud of.
There's no doubt, To Kill a Mockingbird is written to antagonize racism. But some are arguing the means by which it accomplishes this are not representative of where we'd want to be; echoing the generally vast liberal/conservative argument whereby most conservatives are not racist, in that they do not believe minorities are intrinsically worse or less deserving than whites, but they support the continuation of power structures that make it systematically difficult for minorities to have equal levels of opportunity. This is a nuance that most people on both sides generally fail to understand.
The harsh gut reaction to someone saying "this is no longer good" will bring out an angry response in many because they don't think it's bad and they know they're not racist AND they are not in fact racist. But there's additional levels of depth here and asking for change is a good thing, though it falls flat to anyone not interested or aware of the depth.
No it doesn't. It portrays a trial from the perspective of a lawyer's daughter. The fact that it's portrayed from a white person's point of view doesn't somehow invalidate the story unless you're just anti-white.
they support the continuation of power structures that make it systematically difficult for minorities to have equal levels of opportunity. This is a nuance that most people on both sides generally fail to understand.
You're projecting an opinion that people with different political opinions are just ignorant of the facts, which is itself ignorant. There are plenty of educated people who disagree with you.
To ban this book is to further narrow the field of political opinions acceptable to the liberal educational elites.
There book might fit in a curriculum where you look at the representation of black people in media over time, say how they go bad or caricature to sort of flat and irrelevant to ultimately complex and human, but that's probably a college level course, if only because it would require devoting 3-4 books to the same subtopic.
It doesn't invalidate the story. But if you're having a conversation about race, you would probably benefit from having black perspectives. Otherwise you convey an undertone that outcomes for blacks are for white people to choose. The message we want to teach kids is deeper than racism is bad.
This is vaguely addressed in the book's pseudo sequel, go set a watchman, in which Atticus reveals a bigoted side opposing integration.
> You're projecting an opinion that people with different political opinions are just ignorant of the facts, which is itself ignorant. There are plenty of educated people who disagree with you.
I'm not saying people ignorant of facts, I'm saying they're ignorant of nuance, and I'm saying this is a large chunk of people on both sides. Hence liberal perception of racism and conservative outrage. It doesn't matter if educated people disagree with me. The fact that "the continuation of power structures that make it systematically difficult for minorities to have equal levels of opportunity" is the fundamental argument behind recent race relations conversations.
you would probably benefit from having black perspectives. Otherwise you convey an undertone that outcomes for blacks are for white people to choose. The message we want to teach kids is deeper than racism is bad.
Counterargument to this: we all have a certain extent of power and influence on those around us. The target demographic for these books is to teach people who aren't discriminated against about racism. Wouldn't it make sense to show a story about a display of personal power and influence to make the world a better place? The outcomes of blacks, whites, and everyone else depends on how we all influence each other, not just how we influence ourselves.
If the problem really was simply that To Kill A Mockingbird isn't a good way to teach racial history, then the obvious thing to do would be to propose a better book for that purpose. No one would complain if a school said they would swap out To Kill A Mockingbird for some other book so long as that other book was better. While I'm not sure exactly what book that would be, I'm sure one has been produced in the past 60 years. However, people aren't complaining about To Kill A Mockingbird being replaced, they are complaining about To Kill A Mockingbird being explicitly barred from even potentially being used in a curriculum with no argument as to the merits of any alternative. There are countless books that could be but aren't in the curriculum because some better option took their spot, and they don't need to be specifically banned. To Kill A Mockingbird is at worst sub-optimal, but it is by no means inappropriate. Only someone completely incapable of critical thinking would lump To Kill A Mockingbird into the same category as Mein Kampf.
> Only someone completely incapable of critical thinking would lump To Kill A Mockingbird into the same category as Mein Kampf.
I don't see anyone doing that.
2. Banning the book forces the teachers to use a different option, but not necessarily a better option. The ones voluntarily using the "better" book(s) aren't in any way aided by the book being banned, the only teachers the ban affects are those who deliberately decided against the better books. Now imagine, if a teacher gets told that a book is problematic and some alternative is less racist, and that teacher says 'nah, I'm going to stick with the more racist one' do you really trust that teacher to move in the correct direction when given the freedom to select any other unbanned book?
3. Mein Kampf and comparable works are books that fall into the "objectively unnacceptable in the classroom" category that logically should be banned outright from the curriculum. These are books that are not only inferior to other options, they should not be taught in schools even if they were the last books on Earth. GP comment was arguing TKAM belongs in this category, which prompted my initial comment.
FWIW, upon re-reading the entire thread above our posts, I don't see the extreme stance you're suggesting. "There are a ton of books that are inappropriate for use in the classroom." is the closest I see, which could be seen as a call for a total and extreme ban, but that's by no means the only way to read that comment.
> You can give teachers the freedom to modify their curricula while still mandating that some books make it into the curriculum.
I don't dispute this, but you can also give teachers the freedom to modify their curricula while mandating that some books don't. In fact, my understanding is that for most curricula there won't be much of a difference between the two. High school literature curricula are wide, not deep. I originally had a few paragraphs here going through all the stuff you have to touch on in a high school curriculum, but suffice to say that you want a decent balance of books across american literary periods, as well as contemporary literary subgenres (southern gothic vs. Western, plays vs. poetry). And you have maybe a year to do it. If you force someone to include a contemporary novel on race, they'll probably have to exclude the other relatively contemporary novel on race.
> do you really trust that teacher to move in the correct direction when given the freedom to select any other unbanned book?
I perceive the major issue as more apathy and effort (some combination of "well I learned it this way and I'm fine" and "I've been teaching the same novel for 10 years, I don't want to change my curriculum") more than like, overt racism on the part of teachers. Like I'm sure there's some of that, but I expect it's not the whole of the problem.
I agree, I wasn't so much stating that GP comment was actually trying to say TKAM is as bad as Mein Kampf, but rather use the absurdity of a curriculum including Mein Kampf to illustrate the wide gulf between "books that aren't as good as others" and "books that don't belong in a classroom at all"
> If you force someone to include a contemporary novel on race, they'll probably have to exclude the other relatively contemporary novel on race.
Precisely. I'm not arguing that TKAM should be in the curriculum come hell or highwater. If the teachers only teach the better book, that's an improvement. If they teach both that's also an improvement. No matter what, so long as teachers comply with the mandate it's a win. As I've stated before, the problem is not switching, it's banning. Simply banning leaves open the possibility for selecting a book which is worse, or not even covering the subject at all.
> I perceive the major issue as more apathy and effort (some combination of "well I learned it this way and I'm fine" and "I've been teaching the same novel for 10 years, I don't want to change my curriculum") more than like, overt racism on the part of teachers.
Again, this was meant to be a tongue in cheek way of saying banning a book can lead to unintended consequences. I highly doubt that a teacher in this day and age will switch to something overtly racist, or at least I doubt they'd get away with it for long. That said, there is a very good possibility that this random teacher who is neither an expert on race nor particularly enthusiastic about finding the ideal book on exposing their students to racism might select something that looks to them like a good book for the task but is in reality more problematic than TKAM ever was. Further, because of its prominence over the past 60 years, there is a lot of readily available material out there to help a teacher properly teach TKAM. A coordinated move to some new standard which likewise has such support material is sensible, but there's no guarantee the apathetic teacher left to their own devices will both pick a book with good supplemental material and access that material, so it's entirely possible you get them to switch to a better book but they teach it worse.
So to reiterate the overarching point: banning books is a good way of preventing books that have no place in a classroom from being accidentally or maliciously added to a curriculum. Banning books is a terrible strategy for promoting the adoption of a specific book. Either we are dealing with the first scenario, in which case I have yet to see a compelling argument as to why TKAM is unacceptable, or as so many are claiming, this is an example of the latter category, in which case the question of why such a terrible strategy was employed has yet to be satisfactorily answered.
Well the good news is, the kids are probably reading another book instead.
Probably received just fine. Nobody is saying kids shouldn't read this book. They're saying its a misleading depiction of racial history, and therefore is a bad teaching tool.
Including, 'To Kill a Mockingbird'-- for that matter.
A number of books listed in the article are in the ALA list, which gives a historical perspective on attacks on these works: http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks...
Books from this list that that aren't on the current ALA classics list (though they're also elsewhere on the ALA site but without context, e.g. http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks...):
https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/789/adventures-...
http://collectingchildrensbooks.blogspot.com/2009/04/this-on...
But some things never change: as the ALA lists show, these books have long histories of getting banned or challenged.
I have 3 teenagers and none of them have smartphones. They have no unfettered access to the internet in my house. I cannot think of a worse idea than a teenager with a camera and a wide-open internet connection. Some day they will have those things. But not today, Satan.
You can have parental control on iPhones and macbooks. I don't see the issue as long as you limit the screen time and whitelist only useful stuff. Use next DNS on your router.
> I cannot think of a worse idea than a teenager with a camera and a wide-open internet connection. Some day they will have those things. But not today, Satan.
What's the worst that will happen?
Porn? Twitter? 4chan?
All you're doing is encouraging them to hide things from you.
A false allegation of rape.
"Nadra Ostrom, another Black parent who filed a complaint, argued that the portrayal of Black people is mostly from a white perspective.
"There's no counter-narrative to this Black person dealing with racism and a white person saving them," she said.
Ostrom added that the current education given to students assumes "that racism is something in the past.""
Sooner or later it backfires.
This is what happens when the society becomes so childish and immature that they would rather ban something than to try and understand what caused the book to be written.
Once you start banning X, you will move on to banning Y sooner or later. Then it will be Z, and sooner or later the things you like and do in your everyday life.
Adult children.
But how many people will die until it does?
People bent on banning, then burning books, then destroying statuses don’t normally stop.
I particularly don't mind Stalin or Lenin status going down. There are videos on YouTube of these.
There is this idea that taking down celebratory monument to something is inherently bad, but I don't really think it is workable general rule.
Politicians moving money so they can profit... Nothing else about this in my opinion...
[1](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/christopher-columbus-statue-rem...)
There is fixing problems, then there is burning society to the ground.
Lincoln being torn down?
https://www.opb.org/article/2020/10/12/portland-protesters-t...
I see no reason to take these down.
But more of the Confederate statues we now have were built long after that, and not as memorials to those who died. Most were erected around 1900-20, when Jim Crow laws were being widely enacted, and in the 1950s and 60s, when the civil rights movement was ramping up. They were built as symbols of white supremacy to send a message.
I see no reason to keep those up.
It wasn't just monuments that got built or change to oppose black civil rights. A similar thing happened with the Georgia state flag. It had long had a blue vertical stripe on the left and red/white/red horizontal stripes on the right. Then the left got what appears to be a Minuteman standing next to some columns that have banners that say "Constitution", "Justice", "Wisdom", and "Moderation". That was in 1902.
In 1906 they added "Georgia" to that and 1799, and made the design of the columns more stylized and uglier. (This also changed the way "Moderation" line wrapped, from "Moder" "ation" to "Mode" "ration", so you might mistake it for two words).
In 1920 that changed to a circular thing with "State of Georgia" and 1776 on the outside, and a simple blue and white set of columns with the Minuteman, and "Moderation" back to sensible line breaking. I think this matched or is similar to the state seal.
And then in 1956, with black people pushing harder for equal rights, Georgia replaced the right side of the flag, the part that had been three red/white/red horizontal stripes, was replaced with the Confederate battle flag. This was adopted amidst a slew of bills adopted at the same time designed to protect segregation and white supremacy. This was all in response to Brown v. Board of Education.
They partly got rid of that in 2001, going to a blue background with the columns/Minuteman seal things, and a banner below that labeled "Georgia's History", which had images of five small flags in it: the original 13 colonies flag, three Georgia flags (ending with the one with the Confederate battle flag), and the current US flag. Finally in 2003 they adopted their current flag: 3 red/white/red stripes with a blue inset in the upper left containing a circle of 13 stars around the Minuteman/Column thing, much more tastefully done than any of its past versions.
https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544266880/confederate-statues...
https://www.history.com/news/how-the-u-s-got-so-many-confede...
Banning books so we can keep the people who can't teach those books competently in place is insane.
But if we do accept that it's just too high of a bar to ask schools to contextualize To Kill A Mockingbird in such a way that the literal lynch mob killing a man are not presented as role models to be emulated, then shut the school down. The kids are better off at home staring at a blank wall 8 hours a day than being exposed to that level of incompetence.
Banning books to deal with teachers who can't teach is like sticking a "0 Trans Fat" sticker on an improperly stored barrel of radioactive waste - it is worse than not even addressing the problem.
Even my now 11yo could comprehend when she was 8 that various literature represented past things which we no longer find acceptable.
I also in no way condone the behavior of this young man and do possess appropriate empathy for the young woman who was verbally assaulted by him.
I always saw it in terms of its broader themes such as integrity, prejudice (in genera), doing the right thing even against unpopular opinions, human nature (both good and bad), injustice, etc.
Then again, I felt similarly about “The Catcher in the Rye” and loved that book as a teenager as well. So perhaps I’m an exception or missing something.
How is this news? (I know, I know, it fits a narrative, gets the clicks, etc. Still kinda disappointing to see stuff like this here.)