"Banned in the United States" does not mean the same thing as "Removed from Middle School Libraries"
1) "Books that were banned, somewhere within the US"
2) "Books that were banned, across the US"
In this case, at the behest of state and municipal governments, there are books that fit into reading one.
The actual levels are books being:
1) removed from classroom curriculum;
2) removed from a school library;
3) confiscated from students at school;
4) removed from a public library; and
5) confiscated from adults anywhere.
One seems unproblematic in general. Five is universally alarming. Two is largely what is being discussed, though it has a habit of sliding into Four. Three is a strange one; I haven't thought about it.
The context is "books banned by governments." There are areligious, apolitical and even legitimate reasons for school boards to remove books from classroom curriculums. In general, the action is not problematic. That doesn't preclude problematic instances.
Where is "Where the Sidewalk Ends" by Shel Silverstein banned in the US by a state, local, or federal government?
If you want to complain that this is not what you meant by “banning” books, I fully agree with you, but that’s the whole issue here: activists decided to name some normal stuff like removing some books from some public libraries to be “banning”, despite the fact that this is not anywhere close to what normal people think of when they hear “book banning”.
That is not what is happening here
[edit] Anyone who believes in freedom of expression and the first amendment should recognize this as a negative step, and a clear thin-edge issue. These are ideological decisions made by partisans with the goal being to shape the corpus of thinking of youth. "Will someone think of the children" is a well worn path. There's plenty of books about this kind of thing, like The Giver, but you know, it's probably on the list.
You support neo-nazi propaganda not being in school libraries, so certainly you too believe that it is the duty of school libraries to curate the content. It is just incredibly dishonest to pretend that you are upset at this for any reason other than that you want these particular books available to children, which is exactly as partisan as demanding their absence.
That's not possible, as, and this is true, I didn't go through the list. I suggest that you may be assuming a lot about me.
My claim is that: - Everybody supports the removal of certain books - Demanding the exclusion or demanding the inclusion are both partisan issues. Neither is a politically neutral stance.
This suggests that this is not a free speech issue at all, but a political issue with two sides wanting/not wanting children to read particular books.
No.
One group of people don’t want any children reading certain books. The rest leaves the choice of reading the books in question up to the children (and/or their parents).
An important distinction.
Complete nonsense. Libraries are not staffed by children nor their parents. What goes into a school library is not some ideologically neutral ground where books just happen to appear, because of the inner desires of children. These books are bought because the people in charge off filling a library want children to read them. This is true for all books in a library, but it automatically guarantees that school libraries are curated. And curation is not ideologically neutral.
It is totally disingenious to pretend that this is not about you wanting children to read those particular books.
I wonder how many books that had explicit material within them were not properly labeled as such by their publishers? This seems like a very subjective standard that would be very easy to manipulate.
You presume those ratings mean something.
"Getting It: A Guide to Hot, Healthy Hookups and Shame-Free Sex. An empowering guide to casual sex and hooking up from sex educator and Girl Sex 101 author Allison Moon."
I'm sure that's entirely age appropriate for my 13-year-old daughter to be reading from the high-school library.
Have you actually read this book? Or are you making assumptions based on the title?
And FWIW, the age of consent in the U.S. is 16+.
13...my goodness man...
Again, if you had bothered to actually read the book, rather than make a snap judgment based on a one-sentence summary on the internet, you'd probably be better informed.
Getting It: A Guide to Hot, Healthy Hookups and Shame-Free Sex. An empowering guide to casual sex and hooking up
Dude, stop trying to teach 13-year-olds how to have casual sex.
Fwiw, I think psychologists would say it's healthier than stigmatizing sex and pretending it's a concept that pops into existence once people turn 16 or 18. (Ironically, some people are molested way before that age and don't even understand what's happening and why it's bad -- probably because they had no educational resources on the subject thanks to attitudes like yours.)
If 5% of teens use drugs, we're going to team them how to score fentanyl-free coke?
From an international-vs-US perspective, education being state-run or locally-governed is really more of a technicality than anything, because education policy is largely a national concern.
In many (or most?) other developed countries, there is a public-private divide where there is a pretty well established expectation that the government doesn’t ban things it deems “merely immoral”, an expectation exemplified by the separation of church and state. Private institutions on the other hand are given more leeway on that front, because their services are opt-in.
There's a huge difference between "we're not going to stock this in the school library" and people not being allowed to read it.
> education policy is largely a national concern
Education is entirely controlled by the states, except that federal funding comes with some strings attached.