‘Maus’ is an Amazon bestseller after Tennessee school ban | Hacker News Reader

‘Maus’ is an Amazon bestseller after Tennessee school ban

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78 pointsdonsupreme40 comments

It’s funny what “bans” we get worked about and which ones we don’t: https://ncac.org/news/blog/images-of-muhammad-banned-from-bo...

The next generation of leaders and elites will be educated at Yale. Meanwhile nobody can even find this town in Tennessee on a map.

Ya last round of book controversy making the rounds was local progressive groups banning Huckleberry Finn.

If you think it is important, please feel free to submit that as a post to news.ycombinator.com.

Seems... not at all really comparable?

It’s not. People in rural America removing a book from the curriculum because of nudity and violence is innocuous. Yale censoring political speech is important.

A bunch of adults negotiating over a university press book --- one about the subject you're saying is being censored --- that nobody in the rest of the world will read seems pretty unimportant to me.

I also don't think that the actions of a random rural K-8 district 45 minutes outside of Chattanooga is all that important, except to the extent that it got a whole bunch of new people to read Maus, and created more fodder for the obligatory bookstore "Banned Books" displays.

Neither incident seems all that impactful, but the Maus incident seems clearly more ignorant and intolerant.

> Neither incident seems all that impactful, but the Maus incident seems clearly more ignorant and intolerant.

Failing to realize you're kowtowing to political Islam is clearly more ignorant than having completely ordinary attitudes about nudity and profanity in a book meant for 8th graders.

I wouldn't want to have to defend either position, but if you put a gun to my head I'd much rather be the Yale Press person than the one earnestly saying that 13 year olds shouldn't read Maus because of "nudity and profanity".

Maybe it's because I'm Catholic and grew up during the whole "Piss Christ" debacle, and recognize that there's nothing all that unusual about observant religious people being upset by art deliberately meant to provoke them, and thus --- like I said, I dont't think Maus and comic depictions of the Prophet Muhammed are all that comparable.

You've read Maus, right?

> The next generation of leaders and elites will be educated at Yale.

But this isn't a decision about material that Yale will stock in libraries or allow in curriculum, but what Yale University Press will publish.

I know it’s not the point you were making, but McMinnville is rather close to the Arnold Engineering Development Complex, which is a pretty large Air Force research facility (massive wind tunnels). There are likely a least a few bright kids at those schools that are being negatively affected by this ban.

Nobody is being negatively affected by this ban. I learned plenty about the holocaust without having it delivered in graphic novel form.

Also available in Hypercard form! https://macintoshgarden.org/games/the-complete-maus

There was no school ban. The district was using Maus (a graphic novel) in the curriculum to teach about the holocaust, and opted to search for an actual textbook to use in its place.

That's all.

The comic book remains in the school library, and if they can't find an actual textbook they'll go back to the comic book. It was the right call.

The extreme freakout over this as well as hordes of sanctimonious diatribes that resulted is unfortunately common in our current social-media driven news cycle, where facts so often succumb to Narrative, in this case, the narrative being that a school does not want to teach the holocaust, rather than the fact that they don't want to use a comic book to do it.

I like Maus, but would not rely on it as textbook, either.

Is there something false or misleading in the above comment? A few people have posted something similar. Why is it getting modded down?

All I can think of is that a lot of people enjoy outrage so when someone points out "No, the facts are different, so there is nothing to be outraged about", instead of viewing that as good news - that hey, schools are not actually censoring the holocaust and Maus was not banned anywhere - they get really angry as the legitimacy of their outrage is threatened.

It's really strange because if you tell someone who was convinced that say, a man was killed a robbery, that actually no, there was no robbery and no one was hurt, most would breathe a sigh of relief and view that as good news. But when it comes to these culture war issues, the reaction of hearing the facts is often people taking offense that their previous offense was not justified.

IMO that's a good way of determining whether something is a real issue or a culture war issue -- if it was a real issue, people would be glad to hear that a bad thing didn't happen.

I would argue that people are primarily reacting to the reasoning given by the parents; they're not upset that the book will not be used, but that the people making the decision feel that the inclusion of (censored) profanity and nudity are objectionable enough to call for a change in curriculum. Certainly this is perhaps somewhat overblown, but I don't think it's fair to say that people are "angry that the legitimacy of their outrage is threatened" - I think your downvoters feel that you're missing the point. (I did not flag your comment, to be clear.)

There's also the matter of disagreement about the word "banned"; personally I think it's not the right word to use here, but there is an argument to be made that the object of the verb is not students - that is, not making the book totally unavailable - but teachers. They have "banned" teachers from using it in the curriculum. Again, I don't agree with this use of the term, but I don't think it's as clear-cut as "the media is lying about what happened to support their narrative."

> where facts so often succumb to Narrative

These kinds of confident assertions about "facts" and "narrative" are also a kind of narrative of their own; they are designed to fit into and reinforce a broad narrative about the world any social outrage is usually just the result of poor research or snap-takes rather than actual differences in ideologies or opinions, and that people's default reaction to them should be to assume everyone is just overreacting because they always do. So let's step away from that narrative as well, and instead look at something that's a bit more tangible.

For anyone who's curious about the actual reasoning, the minutes of the meeting are online (https://core-docs.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/asset/uploaded_...). So you don't need to take a secondhand opinion, you can read the parents' reasoning for yourself. That's a good factual place to start.

And from the minutes, it is very hard to conclude that the objection to Maus was that Maus isn't a textbook. The overwhelming objection was concern over several swear words and a naked image, all of them censored in the books that were to be used for the curriculum, and an objection to minor depictions of nakedness (of cartoon rats being literally marched into camps), and an objection that bringing up disturbing topics like hangings, child deaths, or the existence of swearing/sex to 8th graders was inappropriate in a conversation about the holocaust. Criticism of the board's decision isn't based on a misunderstanding of the facts or people jumping to conclusions without reading the minutes, but rather an assertion that teaching kids about the holocaust necessarily requires mentioning the parts of it that were disturbing.

In fact, far from the removal of Maus from the curriculum being about whether or not Maus is a textbook, the minutes contain criticism from a parent of other school textbooks that contain swearwords. Which should make it really clear that the issue wasn't that Maus isn't a formal text. I do not know how to read the full minutes in a way that supports the parent comment's argument. It confidently misrepresents the entire conflict with no evidence, even as it claims that everyone else is doing the same.

A small school district removed a book because it contained some profanity that made some parents uncomfortable.

Is this supposed to be more important than the massive changes that states like California have quietly pushed through over the last year? How am I supposed to take this incident seriously?

No one has to take it seriously if they don't want to, they just have to avoid chiding people for jumping to baseless conclusions while they simultaneously describe the situation in a way that is entirely fictional.

"Okay, the explanation of events given was completely wrong, but nevertheless it fits the general theme of overreaction" is not really avoiding a narrative.

California recently decided that long division should not be taught until middle school, in order to fight "white supremacy"

Some Tennessee backwater is not the joke here.

Please take whatever fight/flamewar you're trying to start elsewhere. I'm just trying to get people to accurately describe what happened -- particularly if they're also calling out people for not looking up the facts.

OP's description of the events doesn't match the meeting notes of what happened and doesn't accurately describe why people were criticizing the decision. California has nothing to do with that.

You are confusing a public hearing about a decision with the actual decision, which is usually made by administrators and then the board votes up or down. The outcome is generally known beforehand and the public hearing gives an opportunity for board members to speak.

In these hearings, board members talk about all sorts of things -- have you ever been to such a hearing in San Francisco or for the SFUSD? You'd think every school policy was about climate change and racism. You would be groaning in embarrassment at what the schoolboard is saying and you'd be shocked at their ignorance. This is not to pick on San Francisco, it's true of most public meetings at the local level, which are involve lots of politicking and posturing, when the outcome of the vote is known in advance.

I'm not saying this is bad, but it's certainly misleading to be citing the transcript of such a hearing as opposed to the actual text of the resolution being voted on when describing what a schoolboard did.

It's also misleading to say a comic book is being "banned" when it's being replaced by an actual textbook and is still available for students to read if they want to.

Here's the board's statement on the controversy: https://www.mcminn.k12.tn.us/o/mcsd/article/639918

I can't find any reference that implies that this decision was reached because Maus was too informal. Certainly the people who actually voted don't think that was the reason. I also can't find any reference confirming that it's already been replaced or saying what it's been replaced by.

Where are you getting this information? I'd love to check what the administrators were thinking, but I can't find the actual text of the resolution online, and from their own statements it's very clear that the board members -- the people actually responsible for confirming whether the resolution should pass or not -- voted because they thought the book was inappropriate for middleschool children.

> It's also misleading to say a comic book is being "banned"

I think sometimes people use the word "ban" in different ways/contexts that apply different degrees of censorship. It's totally valid to for you to argue that the usage here is inappropriate or that it implies something stronger than what actually happened. However, given that the school board itself uses language saying that they "voted to remove the graphic novel Maus from McMinn County Schools", I don't think "ban" is an completely unreasonable word for someone to use or that using the word "ban" implies that someone is ignorant of the facts of what happened.

Every comment in this thread (except the Hypercard one) has been modded down at the time of writing. Maybe some would like to talk about why they don't like any opinions about this story?

After spending the last few years gleefully cheering for Republicans to be banned from every online platform, it feels pretty fake to be outraged over a single schoolboard somewhere editing their suggested reading list.

I used to see stories like this all the time in my social media feed 10 years ago, during the peak of the new atheist phenomenon. But it feels really out of place now. Especially because of people's warming to censorship.

You've made essentially the same comment in three separate places in this thread. This kind of passive-voice imputation is neither productive nor intellectually honest. _Who_ has been "spending the last few years..."? Is it the same people who are now "outraged over a single schoolboard..."? Can you show that?

I suspect you can't, and that you're suggesting it only because it fits your ideological biases.

> _Who_ has been "spending the last few years..."? Is it the same people who are now "outraged over a single schoolboard..."? Can you show that?

Of course it is the same people, that was implied by my sentence, obviously.

Just being willfully dense and refusing to comprehend what someone says does not refute them.

If you had spent any time reading HN, you would see the plethora of commenters who would defend actions far more egregious than what is alleged to have been done by this schoolboard.

In threads discussing California's changes to their curriculum, there was a sea of commenters defending things far more absurd than the scopes monkey trial.

It would take me less than five minutes to use the hackernews search tool to find these threads, must I do that for you?

Are you really going to make me spoon feed you?

It wasn't banned. It's just no longer mandatory to read.

I do not understand how it's national news that a random school in Tennessee is changing their curriculum by substituting a book.

It was a mix of hilarious and sad to read the transcript of that school meeting, like you read a book about holocaust and your concern is about a open nipple, or come up to say like "the guy used to work for playboy and it's enough to make his works banned"

I don't really like to call people idiots, usually i can justify with myself that people might be having a bad day, but if i have to describe what an idiot is to an extraterrestrial form of life i would let them read that transcript

What if the author said something slightly problematic on Twitter 14 years ago, would that be a good justification for banning their book?

Rednecks stopped being the biggest laughing stock in this country years ago.

Yeah, I mean if we want to make fun of wokes count me in. But I think the situation is different, saying something racist? sexist? As a grown adult on social requires a certain mindset and / or cultural background, that might be considered harder to change

Working for Playboy, is a bit different, there is not substantial issue working for playboy, it's not like being racist or sexist, unless you got a religious brain damage one of those who make you see invisible people in the sky

as is usual with these "bans", it was no such thing; it was merely taken off the curriculum.

Of Maus and Man.

Wait, someone decided to ban Maus, the comic describing the artist’s father’s experiences of going through the Holocaust?

What the hell?!

What are the arguments for this ban?

Didn't read the article, huh. Not even the bullet summary of the article. Just went straight into outraged commenter mode.

You’re right, I did. Turns out nothing’s banned, just no longer required.

Clickbait outrage worked perfectly on me!

> Minutes of the McMinn school board meeting that led to the book being banned show that while some parents said they supported the idea of teaching about the Holocaust, they had problems with some profanity in the book. They also had an issue with an image showing a nude woman, who is Spiegelman's mother. "We can teach them history and we can teach them graphic history," board member Mike Cochran said, according to minutes of the meeting. "We can tell them exactly what happened, but we don't need all the nakedness and all the other stuff."

Is this 1890?

That’s 2021 nearly everyone outside some European countries and parts of America.

It isn't that hard to become a bestseller so it probably happens to any book that gets so much media attention.

I'm not sure why people would upvote this story except to call conservative parents idiots.

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