As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective
blog.archive.org
blog.archive.org
All of the stories I have seen [1][2] say that the books are banned from the school library system. As far as I am aware, school libraries usually contain a wide range of books, not just whatever is required for the curriculum.
So banning a book from a school library does seem to be a fairly strong suppression of ideas. Libraries have usually been the place where you go to find ideas outside the safe circle of whatever is permitted by your (usually insipid) curriculum.
For example, I am not a fan of Ayn Rand's philosophy, but I am still glad I got to read her books from my school library, so I could make that decision for myself. School libraries curated by legislators with an agenda seem like a Really Bad Idea.
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[1] This would be within limits, I guess, but still weird. Wouldn't you just use a different curriculum?
[2] https://www.npr.org/2021/10/28/1050013664/texas-lawmaker-mat...
[3] https://www.kmuw.org/education/2021-11-09/goddard-school-dis...
What kinds of ideas cross this line of appropriateness you or I may disagree on, but the point is that it exists in a school setting, which the article seems to pretty much miss altogether.
Says who? The cultures who focus on “freedom” for kids are literally being replaced by the ones that socialize their kids to do what they’re supposed to do.
But regardless, the kids should grow into free adults. It's self-evident, as Jefferson said and as much of the world has held to be true for centuries now (again to great success). Are you volunteering to give up your freedom? Then I'll take you up on that and say you may not post such comments (in case anyone is confused, I'm not actually telling the parent what to do).
Not for kids, which is what we’re talking about here. Read Roald Dahl’s books about British education. That’s the culture that built the greatest empire in history.
“Freedom” for kids, as opposed to rigid socialization, is a mid-20th century detour. And the cultures that practice it, mainly north Americans and Europeans, are either in decline or are being replaced from the inside by immigrants from cultures that don’t.
Could you please recommend a specific book for those of us who are interested?
Which created the 3rd world via colonialism. For reference the Mughal empire that generated 25% of the worlds GDP, or any of the great Chinese empires definitely didn't involve colonialism, famines and death and the creation of the poorest colonial economies in the world to demonstrate their greatness.
C’mon, you know why people formulate this point like that, and not like, “Mughal empire GDP decreased 50% after colonialism.”
Between 1000 AD and 1600 AD, British GDP per capita doubled. During that time, Indian GDP per capita increased only 20%. Before European contact, India, China, etc., were stuck at pre-industrial revolution levels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(P...
By the time the Brits got there, Indian GDP per capita was only half as much as Britain’s. The odds that India would have entered an industrial revolution around that same time after centuries of being stuck in the same place is low.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(P...
Britain started dominating India in the 1700s and got almost complete domination by 1819 by finishing off the last Indian hold out - the maratha kingdom.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Anglo-Maratha_War
India's economic decline coincides with colonialism and does not precede it, the opposite of what you suggest.
If you are going to disagree with virtually every economist that colonialism destroyed the economies of virtually every colony while siphoning off a lot of wealth to Europe, you will have to do better than post links that contradict your own statements.
By any dimension of comparison the Mughal and contemporaneous Chinese empires were superior to any colonial empires that followed - be it economic output, lack of hunger and famine, or colonial deindustrialization. The British empire was one of the largest setbacks to World GDP ever, as demonstrated by the information you yourself posted.
Which one are you looking at? I’m looking at the 1–2008 AD chart, which shows Britain at 975 in 1600 and India and China at 550 and 600.
India and China were clearly stalled at a pre-industrial level of development before the British came, while the British were on a sharp upward trajectory.
You’re also overlooking the counterfactual. What would’ve been India’s level of development if the British had never went there? It might still be pre-industrial.
No, history has shown that thinking is dangerous. We shall avoid that. Thanks to Netflix and Spotify the mind of the child can be occupied 24h a day. The last thing a child shall do is to challenge the establishment.
> It's an essential skill to a democracy (and a free market), and to teach them freedom for all by giving them freedom, instead of teaching them that people should be sheparded.
And who will collect our data then ? Who will fight the wars to give to reach people more ?
> There are limits to what we want middle schoolers exposed to, but I think my approach is different than what you describe.
There are no limits. Every limit can be achieved and left behind. The purpose of educational system is to destroy the mind of the child so he accepts what is given to him and never asks questions. And, when he asks questions only stupid questions are allowed. No "why"s and no critique.
It's hard to argue there's anything but racism (or xenophobia) going on when they ban a book such as A Big Mooncake for Little Star.[0]
https://ncac.org/resource/lgbtq-book-bans-and-challenges
https://wgntv.com/news/downers-grove-parents-students-clash-...
As an aside, I find it amusing that Shakespeare is never banned on the grounds of sexual content. Perhaps people don't pay attention in English class?
Funny enough, I always assumed this same thing of the people who were trying to get Mark Twain books banned for the misuse of language =)
People who don't read books are always the ones who are the most afraid of the ideas contained within them, I suppose.
We were reading out loud in class the prologue for Romeo and Juliet... and the teacher would occasionally pause the reading to explain the text.
A more full account of the events is in https://everything2.com/user/m_turner/writeups/Shakespearean... which I wrote when it was closer to the present and more fresh in my mind.
So yes, at least one class of Generation X high school students got every joke in Romeo and Juliet.
> ... wrote when it was closer to the present and more fresh in my mind.
The thought came to me -- being now at an age a few years greater than yours -- that my own collection of memories on similar events has been fading, and those from youth of course being irreplaceable.
Solution: Write them down, only those I'd want to savor again in years ahead. In the form of notes, at least. The act of writing slowly -- over the course of nearly a year now -- puts a light on others in the dusty attic.
Next step is to work up the more amusing and less private of them into anecdotes, for sharing with trusted friends.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything2
> According to E2's "Site Trajectory", traffic has dropped from 9976 new write-ups created in the month of August 2000, down to 93 new write-ups in February 2017.
https://everything2.com/node/superdoc/Site+Trajectory and https://everything2.com/node/superdoc/Site+Trajectory+2
(It looks like its down to a small core of people)
The key is to record it somewhere. Be it Storycorps ( https://www.npr.org/series/4516989/storycorps ) or a second brain ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29188418 ). Spin up a Wordpress blog and write there (aside, one of my projects is digging through the files from a hard drive of a laptop a bit ago where I wrote using Apple's blogging / web hosting software.
Writing without care of who (if anyone) reads it - for the sheer sake of writing - feels like a dying art form at times.
That said, I've been trying to find an example of a book in the "book ban" discussion that contains problematic graphic sex content. I've tried looking and so far everything has turned up pretty empty.
Nobody thinks the book causes that sexualization. The point is that it’s an implicit sanction from parental and teacher authority.
Not long ago, I was 13. At that age, I read books like Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle, and A Clockwork Orange. The very fact I now have to type that I knew that sex was a natural part of life perhaps speaks to the deterioration of our educational standards. Regardless, even I understood then that the sexual perversion of those works weren't their raison d'étre. I'm grateful I had an English teacher who guided me in that respect. Likewise, I earnestly hope others have similar instructors, who don't define a work by its depictions of acts of reality, however sordid they may be.
Oh, wait.
Frankly, we have little real idea what's psychologically appropriate for kids. Consider that over 65% of papers in psychology fail replication. I would be very skeptical of anyone claiming they know what's psychologically good for anyone.
Meaning: schools have the right (and responsibility) to take steps necessary for the safety of children, but those rights are rather limited compared to those of parents, because they must also satisfy the limits set by constitution for all acts of the state and its representative. Banning books is an excellent example since it is almost the textbook definition of a restriction of free speech at the same time as having exceptionally weak arguments for its necessity, ostensibly to prevent psychological harms, which is a dubious concept to begin with.
It really doesn't. School is one of the best places we can have people encounter challenging idea and works for the first time. If we coddle people on school and then they are exposed to those ideas on their own (which they will be) then they have fewer resources to aid in processing those ideas and are more likely to end up confused and misinformed.
I owe my entire current mentality to the books and literature I found on my own beyond the parent's wishes. They're good people in many ways, but having that sanctum to explore other experiences was critical.
Does it? Is there actual evidence of harm from having these materials available, or is this really just pearl clutching?
[1]It's easier to pick a good teacher than to train one: Familiar and new results on the correlates of teacher effectiveness
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02727...
Research highlights ▶ Majoring in education is not associated with teacher effectiveness. ▶ University attended for college is not associated with teacher effectiveness. ▶ Acquiring a master's degree is not associated with teacher effectiveness. ▶ Teachers become more effective with a few years of teaching experience. ▶ Teachers may become less effective later in their careers.
You must be joking. Look at parental guidance for movies and games for example. Violence is good and appropriate. Just show no blood. ( Harry Potter). Sex is not good except when in Disney movies and preferably between a prince and a princess. Scenes of normal life are borring just like story costruction. Children must learn that they have to reach the goals as fast as possible, no matter what means are employed. And did i mention violence ? Maybe they don't have it at home but it must be introduced somehow in their lifes. They also need to speak more hysterical. TV and politics have shown that if you speak in normal tone noone will listen to you.
Then, it does the same with regards to the "harmfulness" of these books. Or, more specifically, it names some books (Beloved etc) as well as concepts (health education) in a way that assumes its audience will tend to agree that these aren't harmful to children.
That it doesn't necessarily extend that belief to all books is clear from the distinction it makes when it separates some books from others that have been "caught up in this net [such as] books about health education, teen pregnancy, civics, philosophy, religion,..."
I doubt it. If you consider censorship bad then different justifications for it all add up to [justifications for banning books which can be repurposed as needed].
Reading Clive Barker, Stephen King and history books did me no harm as a pre-teen and I see no reason to believe reading more graphic things would do harm either. Plenty of people reject your argument as nonsense.
It sucks for the kids, but it is a good signal for you when you’re looking for a place to live, as the school board is controlled by provincial idiots.
I've been thinking about this lately, and I'm not sure where I stand. I'm against book burning, but I feel like there are also problems with unchecked dissemination of ideas.
I think this is flawed logic in a few ways, but I'll put it down anyway:
1. Is there a difference between an undiscerning student (i.e. young, impressionable, hasn't been taught critical thinking, doesn't have sufficient experience to evaluate the validity of what they're learning) reading Ayn Rand on their own and being taught Ayn Rand by a teacher?
2. Would you consider it acceptable to teach Rand's novels non-critically as part of the curriculum (heck, why not, there are more than a few Senators that cite her books as inspiration).
The problem I run up against is how do you "objectively" decide which books to restrict. As you said, "school libraries curated by legislators with an agenda seem like a Really Bad Idea," but everyone has some sort of agenda. Everyone thinks it's obvious what should and shouldn't be taught in school, but of course it's not the same "obvious" for everyone.
1. Undiscerning student (i.e. young, impressionable, hasn't been taught critical thinking, doesn't have sufficient experience to evaluate the validity of what they're learning).
2. Things taught non-critically. I think this even applies to the "obvious" stuff like algebra and heliocentrism. My experience with public schooling was that there was too much rote memorization and appeal to authority and not enough "learning."
If either of those are fixed (and I think they go hand-in-hand) I don't care if the curriculum/school library has Rand, an unannotated Mein Kampf, or $insert_book_promoting_an_agenda.
Ideally there would be an adult figure in all children's lives to fill this role. If nobody else, their parents or other adult figures (and yes, there are cases where there are no adults, but we can't make societal decisions on the norm based on the the edge cases).
I can't help that most the adults that complain about their children getting access to ideas they don't like are those adults that don't bother to talk to their children about their views and ideas and know to challenge them on ideas that are poorly thought out.
If you ignore your child's interests for years and then are surprised to find out they have completely opposite views from you that you disagree with, the problem is not the literature they read, it's your lack of involvement in the formation of their ideas.
If you (the general you) are involved and your child has views you disagree with but you can't provide compelling arguments to make them change their mind, at a minimum you should also be looking at your own views to see how well they stand up and not assume your own infallibility. Doesn't mean you're wrong, but don't expect that you're always right when you might be espousing the equivalent of 1+1=3 and rightly getting told to shove it.
We aren't factories pumping out clones, we're creating people, and people have their own views. The best you can do is try to help them avoid the pitfalls.
To me if there are "dangerous ideas" that need contextualization, those are the very books that need to be in the school curriculum.
The narrative in Anthem, for example, is so hilariously over the top I’m not sure what the argument would be. It’s a Pol Pot “Year Zero” style civilization, and the randian superman subverts the established collectivist order by single handedly reinventing the lightbulb in a sewer.
Frankly anyone would be giving it more credibility than it deserves by saying it contains dangerous ideas.
> hilariously over the top
These days I'm not sure anything can be so over-the-top that no-one will take it seriously.
And she doesn't magically crash there, the actual process of her getting there is narrated in what is probably a good 30 pages.
Using an analogy from a false representation of the plot to imply that the author intentionally recognizes flaws with her philosophy is definitely not the most objective review of this book, to put it nicely.
Have you even read the book?
Did I imagine the plane crash, or mix it up with some other book?
I think my problem, if anything, isn't that there's an excess of freedom of thought and expression so much as there's not enough counter-thought and counter-expression.
So my shaky position is stuck somewhere between what I've identified as the two evils: Book burning, and the uncritical dissemination and condoning of problematic ideas. (I'm aware there's a further problem here because I'm the one deeming things "problematic").
I also think I picked the wrong place to have this conversation. After all, TFA isn't talking about Ayn Rand, it's talking about "opposition to LGBTQIA material, the history of racism, and material that may cause discomfort to readers." These aren't things I would typically label as "problematic."
I have frequently seen problems caused by people who didn't read enough.
One of the effective solutions is to construct a risk table, in which you list out:
- each option - the costs to perform the option - the likelihood of success of the option - the value of success via the option - the penalty of failure via the option - the cost to ameliorate failure of the option
And you never assign a 0 or infinite value to any of those factors; a range of .05 to .99 is usually appropriate.
For binary choices, this can sometimes be short-circuited by flipping a coin and asking yourself if this feels worse than the alternative.
You wave away my association of "reading _too_ widely" and "analysis paralysis" by sharing your preferred definition of the latter ... but that isn't really an argument against the association of the two.
I didn't say that analysis paralysis causes reading too widely. I said that they are the same, so if you want to take your definition of analysis paralysis as a given then you could say analysis paralysis can cause reading too widely.
Anyway, all I wanted to communicate with my comment is that when you say that you can do "too little of X" but not "too much of X" then you are biased on X, there is always someone who takes X too far and you may not see it because you've associated those people with something totally different.
Personally I don't believe in "wasted time" or other subjective notions (in the abstract) so for me this whole discussion is lacking context (you can waste time if you have a context; some loss function, otherwise no).
I believe it's appropriate to err on the side of openness, and keep context in mind. That hasn't always been popular.
The closest I could find about coverage on this was an article saying that some libraries reclassified the Seuss books as "reference" to prohibit checkouts because they were being stolen (e.g. https://oxfordobserver.org/5172/community/dr-seuss-enterpris...).
https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/childrens-internet-prot...
Is this censorship? And if so, what is the difference between internet censorship and library censorship, other than that someone printed their work instead of typing it? And why is outrage permitted for this and blocking printed books, but not for digital work?
When I was in school, the only things online that I wanted to access that were blocked were flash games.
Contrary to what you might imagine, checking out and shelving books is not the only things librarians do – they also curate and trim material, a bit like cultivating a garden. Libraries are a fine-tuned system that maximizes freedom of expression and ideas in a reasonably curated manner. It existed long before the Internet, and legislators tampering with that is always alarming.
An example of this is the right's claim that many of these banned books are almost pornographic in nature and inappropriate for almost any age. From the right's perspective, the legislators are intervening because the librarians are failing at their curation and safety job.
Currently, some of the 850 "suspicious titles" they are "looking into" include books like We Are All Born Free: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Pictures [1]. This does not lead me to conclude that their chief concern is safety and curation.
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[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/10/28/1050013664/texas-lawmaker-mat...
I'm pretty sure illustrations of people having sex and an illustration of a younger child giving an older child oral sex falls into that category:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FBdP1kYXoAA_c0T?format=jpg&name=...
People lost their minds when a woman read several pages from the book "Gender Queer" by Maia Kobabe.
But how about this one? What if you're one of the many kids who want to but can't get laid in high school? Seeing teenage sex normalized by the school itself could lead to all kinds of additional insecurities.
Is there a difference between the freedom of expression of children and of adults? If so, wouldn't parents have a right to limit the freedoms of their own children according to their families moral and religious beliefs?
I wonder if maybe the issue is that in a school setting, the librarians are operating as if the children are their only charges?
I'm entirely ignorant on these points and don't have children, so this is just a question from that perspective: Are librarians doing enough to announce their editorial decisions and to explain them to parents? Should they be required to?
Should libraries share with parents the list of books their children have checked out? Should libraries allow parents to curate a list of books they do not want their children to checkout? Is there a better middle ground here?
Real life is not about logical extremes. Nothing in the US Bill of Rights is unlimited, for example. You have freedom of speech, to bear arms, and of religion, but you can't slander someone, own an anti-aircraft weapon, or sacrifice humans to the gods.
At the school library, we may not want people watching pornography. That's different than political censorship.
Also, do you have anything to back up yet another ugly stereotype about groups of people who are 'other'?
Is that happening?
The world is going to discomfort them more often than not so they better train also by reading all kind of books or competitors (in the broadest possible meaning) will eat them alive while they rest inside a comfortable bubble.
eg: jazz hands instead of clapping
Did they actually adopt the rule nationwide or was it discarded?
I mean, really there's a lot in there that the people banning these books would probably find offensive. Questioning the MIC, questioning God, questioning capitalism...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Aardvark
I read Catch-22 in high school, and that bit felt plenty disturbing at the time.
I'm not saying we shouldn't care about these efforts. But arguing over which books should be ignored in the library reference section is probably less important than figuring out how to get the kids to actually enjoy reading despite being raised in an environment with tiktok etc. And when you get it figured out for kids, tell me, b/c these days I mostly only get through a novel while traveling.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/feb/29/children-r...
If you meant to use those as examples, please tell me who are these LGBT and feminist authors who cannot freely give talks at American campuses these days?
Other than, you know, team TERF.
I could only find these two things:
https://www.ala.org/advocacy/sites/ala.org.advocacy/files/co...
https://bookriot.com/statistics-of-censorship/
I have a feeling something more comprehensive and precise is out there but I don't know where to look. The ALA has a "field report" but they charge for it and I'm not even sure if it would have the content I'm looking for.
Most of the data I can find is on the most frequently challenged books, and the reasons for doing so.
If they did have movies, it's likely that anything "R" rated would be "banned" by educators—and I doubt anyone here would care.
The graphic novels being "banned" can't be posted to Instagram or Facebook or network TV because: pornographic…but we're supposed to pretend it's a "book" that's being banned?
Seems disingenuous to call this "banning books."
In any case, claiming comic books should be treated like movies, but not like books is an odd take. Comic books are like movies in the sense that they are sequential works of art, but at that level, so are books. Many illustrated children's books are, in fact, comic books.
> The graphic novels being "banned" can't be posted to Instagram or Facebook or network TV because: pornographic
This is wrong on two counts. First, many of these comic books are banned for issues unrelated to sex. Second, even explicit sexual content isn't ipso facto pornography.
Get involved if you disagree, but don’t be surprised people disagree in such a diverse country.
Before that, in elementary school, some of our books had sections blacked out for being too racy. First thing I did was head straight to the local library and read those passages specifically.
censorship made me an avid reader.
Hmmm… those evil censors must have been working overtime to stop you.
I don't think young kids should have unfettered access to this stuff. They're not able to process it correctly.
If communities are saying they do not want this is classrooms then I think that's the way it should be. Schools don't get to be an authoritarian decision maker on how everyone's kids should be raised.
Aside from the censorship issue I'd rather my tax dollars go to more useful stuff than smut books.
> When do they learn this correct way? The kids' parents.
> How do they learn? From their parents.
After all the child belongs to the parents so they get to make these decisions.
Can you list some examples?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-worst-examples-of-crit...
There's the first lovely one that literally has a picture of devil equating it to being white. Yes it's a conservative source, feel free to disprove it.
Ibram X. Kendhi race grifting CRT stance has been implemented into curriculum in several school districts as well.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/06/24/north-carolina...
The 1619 project has been accepted in many school districts
https://www.newsweek.com/u-s-schools-have-openly-taught-1619...
Oh and you have this lovely teacher that accepted these racist ideas and decided to segregate her classroom based on race
https://news.yahoo.com/atlanta-elementary-school-segregated-...
And don't bother with the CRT is a legal theory only taught in colleges. Yes that's the original source but all of this stuff present in k-12 is a downstream effect of that same thinking. Label it whatever you want, it's racist and needs to stop.
You mean to tell me that high-level academic critical theory is being taught to children? Please, name the books.
Let me know when the ACLU takes the same stance on LGBTQ books because right now I'd put them squarely in the same category as religion. People have a cult like adherence to LGBTQ ideology.
https://www.aclu.org/other/statement-bible-public-schools-fi...
Of course, you’re free to belief that the founding fathers weren’t racist, but I don’t think that there is much writing by them to that effect.
They’re going to hit college, or the Internet, or cable news, and find all kinds of totally bonkers ideas. Wouldn’t it make sense to prepare them to deal with dubious information?
Baloney. Yes, I'm sure we can find some 1 in a 1,000,000 exceptional case of some bright student from a marginalized community who just couldn't obtain some obscure reference book in their high school library because conservatives had "banned it" (i.e. chosen not to include it in their limited selection due to content concerns). However, I find it hard to believe that 99.9999% of students, who probably haven't even used their public school's library more than a few times in their whole life, would be absolutely unable to obtain anything they could possibly want, for the price they already spend in a week on video games or music.
Reminds me of that straw man example used to demand ID-less voting for EVERYONE - cherry picking that obscure case of the 87 year old guy who was born in a rural bayou of some southern swamp state, and who had no birth certificate and had never registered to vote or learned to drive or paid any utilities or taxes in the last 8 decades, and who now had trouble getting an official ID at the local DMV in another state he'd moved to recently.
Come on, man. Examples like this apply to like 0.001% of the population, and instead of spending tens of millions of dollars and years fighting for insanely insecure voting rules, the left could, you know, just spend that time and money helping the tiny minority of folks who might have this actual problem.
Likewise, I have never ever heard of any adult using a public school library (e.g. high school or elementary school) to obtain books or other media for themselves. To be honest, in the US in 2021, as a "child free" middle aged male, I'd be hesitant to even go into a public high school as it seems my demographic is not exactly welcome around children, even those whose education, meals, etc. I'm forced to increasingly subsidize each year. But God forbid I have any say in what materials these children are forced to be indoctrinated with in public schools, which they are forced to attend, by the state.
OTOH, I've seen 0 instances of conservatives demanding that books be censored from EVERYONE at the source (i.e. publishers, sellers, retail outlets, etc.) whereas there are dozens of instances of the left mob going after these entities in an attempt to keep the books out of the market itself.
That is not the point. The point is that you don't want legislators, left or right-wing, picking the books that students can access in the library system of their school. School librarians are the ones who do that. It's a decentralized system that works extraordinarily well without political interference, and has done so for hundreds of years.
> Examples like this apply to like 0.001% of the population, and instead of spending tens of millions of dollars and years fighting for insanely insecure voting rules...
This is wholly irrelevant to the topic being discussed, which is legislatively banning books from public library systems.
> Likewise, I have never ever heard of any adult using a public school library (e.g. high school or elementary school) to obtain books or other media for themselves.
No, students use those libraries. Students that go to public schools. Adults usually go to their area's library systems. I suggest you check out your local library. You might find it stocked full of books that are interesting. And you can check them out, for free!
The only takeaway for me from a lot of this discussion has been that a lot of people don't seem to have much of an idea about libraries in general, school or public; or the role they play in society.
Edit: we've also had to ask you about this multiple times in the past. If you'd please review the site guidelines and fix this going forward, we'd appreciate it.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29330726.
EDIT: Some are saying that this would also apply to the school library. This, in my view, doesn’t negate the schools need to discriminate between content in the least. I would not want a flat earther science book in the curriculum or in the library.
Aren't school boards usually elected by the community?
Also, generally, a lot of public school teaching is about encouraging a newer generation to think for themselves, and potentially be exposed to ideas that are not constrained by the parents and the community.
Parents who want to micromanage what ideas their kid is exposed to should consider homeschooling.
Political activist teachers are pushing their agendas onto students. This has been quietly happening for some time, but has become harder for the teachers to hide as children started completing more instruction and schoolwork in the home.
These are not isolated incidents and the examples of this happening are everywhere in the US. In fact, many teachers have been caught openly bragging about trying to create "radicalized" students. This is precisely why we've seen a grassroots push by parents against teachers and admin.
I'd trust the community in that case. And if it backfires, they get to live with the consequences. Not everything needs to be idiot-proof. Our country might do much better if we just let bad ideas fail hard.
https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/henry-mcmaster/
They are also literally calling for burning books:
> Two board members, Courtland representative Rabih Abuismail and Livingston representative Kirk Twigg, said they would like to see the removed books burned.
> “I think we should throw those books in a fire,” Abuismail said, and Twigg said he wants to “see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.”
https://fredericksburg.com/news/local/education/spotsylvania...
Yikes.
From the other day on NPR: https://www.npr.org/2021/11/11/1054798508/when-schools-ban-b...
> Texas Gov. Greg Abbott joined Krause's efforts this week, sending his own letter to the Texas Education Agency asking it and other agencies "to immediately develop statewide standards to prevent the presence of pornography and other obscene content in Texas public schools, including in school libraries."
> While the censorship of some books in schools is nothing new, a growing number of challenges are against books about race. In her reporting on the topic, KERA reporter Miranda Suarez spoke to Deborah Caldwell-Stone who leads the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom. Caldwell-Stones said, "We went from a situation where the majority of books being challenged and removed in schools and libraries dealt with LGBTQ themes, to a situation where there's a real mix."
The referenced letter is https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-directs-tea-...
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So yes, this is a book ban and its not just material in the curriculum but also content in the libraries.
Schools exercising discretion is not 1940s Germany book bans and the two are not comparable.
But if it was already in the library, I would not want to ban it from the library as a remedy. That's insanity.
So, no, I don't want the book in the school library, but I sure as shit don't want to ban it from the school library either.
I'd be fine with that so long as it's in the fiction section.
The problem is not reading enough books. Kids who only read a few take them too seriously. After you've read everything from Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book to Johnathan Edward's "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", you get some perspective.
But with so much online content available, it's hard to get anyone to read in bulk today.
[1] https://theflatearthsociety.org/home/index.php/flat-earth-li...
Classified correctly and with sufficient material so that this doesn't look like a gift shop at Arc Encounter, yes.
Under the DDS, that would be 525.1 ( https://www.librarything.com/mds/525.1 )
Under the LCC that is QB275-343 ( https://www.librarything.com/lcc/QB275-343 )
Note that this is right next to books such as "ANTIGRAVITY PROPULSION: Human or Alien Technologies?" that has a review of:
> This book includes never before mentioned accounts of popular UFO topics like Area 51, Roswell and alien abduction claims. Also subjects such as Nazi and Japanese antigravity experiments and rare theories involving quantum physics and lost civilizations of the ancients.
> The book is well written and researched. I found the photos and (photos) of articles intriguing, compelling, shocking and last, thought provoking. I was never one to believe in aliens, UFO's or anything of that nature.
> But after reading this, I am open minded and am beginning to wonder how much has been kept secret from society. It now has crossed my mind that there very well is truth in this theory, and the possibility of a government cover up seems more probable than improbable.
> I highly recommend ANTIGRAVITY PROPULSION: Human or Alien Technologies? to those who are curious about the unexplained (Aliens, UFO's, cover-ups)and science. A definite 5 star read! I feel should be on everyone's TBR list.
I am completely ok with a book on UFOs, flat earth, or a technical manual for drones disguised as birds being find in a library as long as the library is able to remain impartial on its collection.
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How can we expect to teach children skills in critical thinking if only a particular group's orthodoxy is available?
If the answer to that is "we aren't expecting to teach critical thinking" then I would contend that this is what is setting school systems to fail - not poor teachers or overpaid administrators.
If someone is to utter "both sides are to blame" then it is important that students learning about this and seeking context of both sides have the material available to them in a manner that is allowed to present both sides without judgement - such as a library.
Additionally, as you point out of the gulf between this and 1940s Germany, I will point out the gulf between "flat earther science" and "books on critical race theory, LGBTQ studies, and The Hunger Games". That's a strawman. Curriculum time is a limited resource, absolutely, so some concessions have to be made; we should be skeptical when those concessions are politically, religiously, or ideologically motivated, rather than academically, scientifically, artistically, or societally. Even with a title like the Hunger Games (or Harry Potter, which lest anyone forget was also very contentious with the Religious Right upon its release, due to concerns about kids studying witchcraft); sure, its not exactly Gödel, Escher, Bach; but its still reading! Do you know how rare reading is, especially among our children who have spent their entire lives connected to the internet, having instant access to the latest dopamine-inducing content on Tik Tok? Any book which can capture their interest, and maybe open a door to a more critical and insightful fifth, sixth, and seventh book, should be in consideration.