The Banning of “Maus.” It’s Dumber Than You Think
motherjones.com
motherjones.com
But the book was not banned; it was simply removed from the curriculum. The board even suggested adding it back if they couldn't find an alternative they preferred.
According to the minutes of the 2022-01-10 McMinn County Board of Education meeting [1]:
> Jonathan Pierce: My motion was to remove this particular book from our curriculum and that if possible, find a book that will supplement the one there.
> ...
> Rob Shamblin: At that point if it’s been removed, it could be added back if there is no better alternative, I assume? I don’t know what it’s going to take to find an alternative.
The motion passed unanimously (10-0).
[1] https://core-docs.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/asset/uploaded_...
I have seen this disingenuous copy-paste objection show up in every thread on this topic on HN, and it hurts to see people swallow it.
Especially since it then conveniently leads down the slippery slope into aggrieved complaining about scumbag reporters and scumbag press and how newspapers were newspapers and news was news back in the good ole days in the nineteen umpties.
What happened is that the board approved a motion to remove Maus from the list of prescribed materials for the 8th grade unit on the Holocaust. Lord of the Rings isn't on that list either. Neither book has been "banned".
> Prohibiting books from being added to a curriculum is what banning is.
The board didn't "prohibit" anything from being added to the curriculum. They are the ones responsible for the curriculum and they simply removed Maus from it. As noted in the meeting, they could add it back at any time if they choose.
In any event, can we agree that it's misleading to describe what happened simply as "banning" without further qualification? As an example of a more accurate description, I would point to Reason's article on the subject [1]:
> Tennessee School Board Pulls Maus From Eighth-Grade Curriculum
> A grim sign of the bureaucratic mentality controlling public education
[1] https://reason.com/2022/01/27/tennessee-school-board-pulls-m...
To avoid difficult, real subjects is to lie to children and make them into ignorant, naive, uneducated adults.
To be fair, your comment is objectively more generic and closer to a "copy-paste objection" than the GP's.
I have no idea how the press were in nineteen umpties, but it seems clear to me that the reporting by Mother Jones is pretty biased, and they have their fair share of polemic-level opinion pieces.
Do you think they would cover the recent removal of To Kill A Mockingbird (which is ironically a book they do mention in the article) from the curriculum by a Washington school board [1] in the same way? I don't think so. I searched their website, and it looks like they haven't covered it at all.
[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/schools-drop-kill-mockingbird-requi...
Generic straw mans are not conducive to good faith arguments, HN or elsewhere.
If we are to get up in arms about something, it should be because they are being deceptive (or worse, publishing false information), not because they are merely biased or guilty of omission.
That is broadly correct, though not all of them are equally biased. However, journalistic objectivity [1] is something we could demand them to strive for. I'm not sure if the press have always been like this.
> Likewise, it’s not particularly noteworthy that WSJ and Fox News have a conservative bias.
Most of the US mainstream outlets are biased in a particular direction. I've said the before here, but you can see that by taking any reasonable list of major outlets [1], and checking their biases [2][3].
> If we are to get up in arms about something, it should be because they are being deceptive (or worse, publishing false information), not because they are merely biased.
Paltering is also a form of deception, and you could argue that it is quite pervasive and pernicious. I think Mother Jones, and many other outlets, are guilty of that.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalistic_objectivity
[2]: e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_media_in_the_United_State...
There is no such thing as "unbiased" reporting, just as it is impossible to "eliminate racism" or "eliminate rape". Journalists aren't robots. Anyone who tells you they're "unbiased" is either a liar or a fool. Reasonable and accurate reporting, without word weaseling or playing favorites, is honest journalism.
I'm pretty sure they're referring to the depiction of the author's mother's nude corpse in a bathtub full of bloody water.
(Also, what does English have to do with anything? We can teach both English and history to children in the same day. I and my peers were taught both when I was in school. Oh, and math and science, too.)
> Why "teach" the Holocaust? Why make young children carry the burden of a monstrous time in history? How does it make them better at English?
Since you’re unwilling to explain the rationale behind your objection, it’s reasonable to conclude you’re just trolling and are wasting everyone’s time.
Get real or be ignorant.
Shortly after the author describes one of the complaints against the book as that it includes animal nudity. In fact the book includes drawn human nudity from the images I've seen.
If white supremacists and Nazis had taken over a school board and were trying to conceal the Holocaust - that would be a story. If a school board thinks they can find more age appropriate material for their students... Well, that's their role. Is there some law that everyone needs to read Maus?
In general, the fact that a random Tennessee school is adjusting their Holocaust curriculum based on what they think is age appropriate is a non-story. People like this author dishonestly sensationalize it to get clicks.
My rule of thumb here is "go to the primary sources".
https://twitter.com/theVoltist/status/1487550149509406722?t=...
That's an image showing human nudity for example.
There were examples of books that the conservatives banned because they really were sexually explicit. This doesn't seem to be one of them.
I do have an opinion on the meta level though. That is, I have an opinion about the "controversy" which is that it has been sensationalized. A school board decided to sideline this book if they could find a suitable replacement and use it if not. They are the proper authorities to set the curriculum and they seem to be following a reasonable approach (listening to complaints from parents, and taking time to see if they can find a solution, defaulting to what they have if they can't). There is absolutely no reason for this to repeatedly hit national news outlets. Further, I think it's perverse to sensationalize non-events like this and act like they are censorious or evidence of latent-Nazi'ism.
And that’s really the story here - that politics, rather than educational effectiveness, seems to be prevailing with this and other school boards across the U.S.
That panel comes from a short sequence in the book called Prisoner on Hell Planet. I first read Maus as a child (10 or 11 years old, so younger than 8th grade) and I found that whole sequence incredibly confronting. The characters are suddenly depicted as humans (the rest of the book they are anthropomorphic animals), the art style changes to become harsher and scarier, and it depicts the suicide of the artist's mother, including the author's last memory of her alive and his feelings of guilt over her death. When I read the book as a child that sequence stuck out to me as particularly graphic and disturbing, and on my subsequent readings I would skip it. I think it's a really important part of the book precisely because it's so jarring and intensely personal. I also think it's a great book to have in a school curriculum, but it doesn't surprise me that parents would complain.
What I found somewhat bemusing about the whole discussion in the meeting minutes was that it didn't focus on the content of the book that may disturb children, but rather on the occasional use of crude language and sexual discussions. One of the board members goes on a bizarre tangent about a poem which includes the line "The heavenly blisses of his kisses, fill me with ecstasy," and how one of the discussion questions for that poem is for children to define the word "ecstasy." He goes on to say:
> So, my problem is, it looks like the entire curriculum is developed to normalize sexuality, normalize nudity and normalize vulgar language. If I was trying to indoctrinate somebody’s kids, this is how I would do it. You put this stuff just enough on the edges, so the parents don’t catch it but the kids, they soak it in. I think we need to relook at the entire curriculum.
Which is such a weird thing to say in a discussion over whether a particular text is appropriate for a module on the Holocaust.
Pointing out that the author drew comics for Playboy is also a really weird thing to say when the nudity being discussed is an image of the author's dead mother.
Yeah, it seems to miss the point.
You can ask whether a topic like this is appropriate for children of a certain age. For eighth graders, I think it is. But for younger children, maybe not.
There is also a question of whether exposure to this sort of thing -- this true destruction of innocence -- achieves what it sets out to. I have seen historical sites like these that have made a serious impression on me -- and I'm not sure a good one. Combined with the forms of argument, the dehumanization, the dishonesty, that I see routinely on the Internet, I end up profoundly distrustful of people, especially people in groups. And then I think -- is that a good thing? For it to be brought to everyone's attention that genocide is an option and a possibility? One that, perhaps, they need to prepare for? One that, perhaps, their enemies are plotting? "God, well if that's what's going on, maybe we need to get them first!" I don't know. I'm not really making this argument. When push comes to shove I think it's part of a complete education. But seeing some of these things has actually fucked with me a little.
The "poem" is actually the lyric to the 1921 song, "I'm Just Wild About Harry", for a Broadway musical, "Shuffle Along"; it was the most popular song in the show. It was later sung in a movie by Judy Garland and and was covered by other artists such as Peggy Lee. It was also used as a campaign song by Harry S. Truman in his run for president.
The song has a Wikipedia page [0] as does the show "Shuffle Along" from which it came [1], which was the first Black Broadway musical and which launched the careers of notables such as Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson and which was "credited with inspiring the Harlem Renaissance" [1].
P.S. The original (it's a comic duet in the show) [2] Judy Garland's version [3] A new rendition was used in 2020 as the theme for a TV rom-com [4]
And there are other versions on YouTube.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Just_Wild_About_Harry
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuffle_Along
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IlwAuSEunM
Seemed like an ad hominem attack to me -- here's the passage from the article:
Allman went on to say that Spiegelman had once done artwork for Playboy: “You can look at his history, and we’re letting him do graphics in books for students in elementary school.”
https://www.democracynow.org/2022/2/2/art_spiegelman_maus_a_...
PS: Book bans are the best form of promotion ever. Thank you stupid people! I hope it makes Art richer to promote sanity and education.