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Comment by newbamboo | Hacker News Reader

How silly. As though there are gangs of teenagers throughout the country that can’t get “banned” books, whatever that means, despite having the freaking internet, and books being basically free. As though they’re living in communist China or something! Kids can buy these books, and get all sorts of other vile pornographic material online well before their teenage years. Local school boards are not the CCP and they have different liabilities, funding sources and constituencies than public libraries. Signaling likes this needs to be mocked or we end up with purity spirals. There is no problem being solved by this, just adults acting out a larp to feel like the saviors of “literature.” Why not actually save literature by promoting the reading of great books? There’s plenty of sex and debauchery in Shakespeare, even for Brooklyn kids like Howard Bloom (rip).

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The banned books part is besides the point.

> allows anyone across the country between the ages of 13 and 21 to get a free eCard from BPL, which will give them access to 350,000 ebooks and 200,000 audiobooks, as well as access to databases.

The cool part is that BPL made all of their ebooks available to a group of people around the country. All libraries should go this route and not just for teens.

Id say it's very much the point. I agree this should be more widespread, but unfortunately since the motivation is based on disseminating banned books rather than simply increasing access across the country we won't see that. This is more of a culture war move than a move to vincrease access. Just because it effectively has a positive outcome, doesn't mean it's even close to ideal

I've read too much history to be an idealist about this kind of stuff. If any good change happens for any reason (that isn't seriously harming people) I'm happy about it.

But you should be empirical. Does this change meaningfully impact public literacy? If it helps even a few kids, that’s great. Let us see if this moves the needle. There are opportunity costs with public policy, and so we should try and try to be results oriented when deciding what constitutes “good change.” Look at all of the problems in the world right now which can be directly linked to frivolous and performative policy moves, made with little consideration for the actual impact they have. I will be, very pleasantly, surprised if this does anything more than sow greater cultural division in a hot election cycle.

>Why not actually save literature by promoting the reading of great books?

Isn't that what is being done?

Or, is 'great', defined only by yourself?

As for Shakespeare - i love the stuff, but my goodness, i would never suggest it for a kid: not for content, but more that it's in an almost foreign language. Why make them suffer?

The books in question aren't about sexual content (which was never available to schoolkids anyway). It's a bunch of stuff about racial discrimination and alternative gender presentations and orientations that's being censored. The attempt to liken books about "two mommies" or "it's hard to be black in the USA" to porn is exactly the kind of disinformation that led to this travesty.

Well, a huge chunk of them are/were.

Some months ago when reading stories about banned books in TX - I started comparing articles written about it from left-wing / main stream news - and other places.

Then I ordered several of the books listed as being banned.

I must say that I don't think the graphic-novel version of the handmaids tale should be on the shelf at the local under 18 school (imho).

The teen's underground guide to sexual.. something like that. I think parts of it are great for high schoolers who want to learn, and/if their parents are cool with that knowledge being sought after - I like the way it's worded.. but then the chapters on abortion and gay stuff.. I can understand why there is a movement to keep it off the shelves of school libraries. (which further research I found that those things were added in to the book after it had been in print for a number of years )

The linked story links to a page which highlights race/gay/historical percentages / numbers.. which links to a pen america study (https://pen.org/banned-in-the-usa/) for it's gist..

which states: Health-related and/or Sexual Content

A subset of 283 titles (25%) deal with sexual or health-related content.

After doing to small amount of research I did, I would say there is much more overlap on these things than is being shown in the raw numbers - and I could see that even if a group of parents in town X were okay with a gay black two mommies living hard in the USA story - if it had graphic illustrations like the ones in the hand maids tale I got - I would expect that many would say no - that should not be there for unfettered access to the kids.

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