Comment by miyoji | Hacker News Reader

Comment by miyoji | Hacker News Reader

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> one of them is not appropriate for elementary schools because it includes essays debating which sexual acts are appropriate for feminists to perform and other adult topics. Why is it "authoritarianism" to say that a book like that doesn't belong in my kids' school library?

Who exactly are you to say what is or isn't appropriate for elementary school libraries?

It's authoritarian because it's about people with authority (parents, teachers), telling people without (students) what kinds of media they are and aren't allowed to consume, which is about controlling which ideas they're allowed to think about. You don't like children thinking or learning about sex, but there is no moral or rational reason for that. You just don't like it, and you wish to use your authority to impose your preferences on people who have no power to stop you. That's authoritarian.

And no, I don't think parents should be able to control their children's media diets, the idea that parents get to control their children is itself authoritarian. You don't own your kids.

You should think this through. The logical endpoint is that all age based content restrictions are "authoritarian".

So it should be ok to stock movies like Martyrs[1] or Men Behind the Sun[2] in elementary school libraries, because who are parents and teachers to decide whether seeing a woman flayed to death or a child vivisected is something that a 6 year old should be allowed to see?

My real takeaway here is that you probably don't have children.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyrs_(2015_film)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Behind_the_Sun

That type of media was never in schools to begin with. The problem here is that schools and districts made their own, informed curation decisions, and those decisions are being overridden by zealous parents informed only by their religious and political persuasions.

The implication here is that schools are making these decisions on a neutral, apolitical basis - but this is not really possible, is it? As many on the left would say: "everything is political". So what we're discussing is (yet another) front in the "culture war", this time about what ideas and values children should be exposed to.

Let's just be honest about that at least.

The banned books movement (on either side) is broadly not about curriculum. It’s about access in non-required spaces such as libraries and clubs.

The issue there isn’t that kids are being exposed to these items, the issue is that other parents are censoring what _my_ kid can be exposed to. They are infringing on _my_ rights.

Meanwhile I’m not requiring their kid to go into a library and checkout Maya Angelou.

Who or what is preventing you from exposing your children to whatever you’d prefer?

The books aren’t banned.

If you don’t allow something to exist in a school or classroom library through statute or governmental action what do you call it?

Would you prefer forbidden? Barred? Censored?

This kind of thing happens commonly with language development over time. If a word or phrase picks up a strong connotation, then the word or phrase stops being used generically. This used to happen so slowly that nobody really noticed it happening to individual words or phrases, I think.

As an example, starting a fire could be called “firing”. If you say you’re going to “fire the stove”, that isn’t typically said, but everyone would know what you meant. If you call your friend group a “squad”, again, this isn’t typically said, but everyone would know what you meant.

If your friend group goes camping and works together to light a fire, you could say that you’re part of a “firing squad”. But, that already has such a strong connotation that it would be confusing and you would have to constantly explain what you actually mean because “firing squad” as a phrase is already taken.

That is of course a synthetic example but I think it illustrates the point. When we say “banned books”, that has a certain connotation. If what we mean is more like “curated books”, because they aren’t actually banned for sale anywhere, even at the local level, then saying “banned books” is confusing in the same way and it carries an undue emotional charge from the typical usage of that phrase.

If that undue emotional charge seems to be getting weaponized, then using it and acting innocent about it is going to ruffle some feathers.

They are banned though. Not curated. You are not allowed to have these in school libraries. It’s not an editorial decision. For instance the Utah law says that a book must be removed from all libraries if 3 school districts in the state ban it.

No librarian, or teacher, or admin or parent in the other school districts gets any say.

That’s a ban. People may not like that their state is engaging in authoritarian behavior, and it’s less authoritarian than other behaviors, but it’s a ban by the simple facts. Doublespeak doesn’t change that.

Okay let’s be clear on what we’re talking about.

I have seen lots of discussions about headlines along the lines of “<state or local government> bans <book X>”. Or just referring to book X as “a banned book in <state or local jurisdiction>”. This has the problem I described, and this is where I see arguments happening that don’t really make sense to me. It isn’t doublespeak to say what I said about this.

If what we’re talking about is actually the more detailed headline “<state or local government> bans <book x> FROM SCHOOL LIBRARIES”, or “book X which is banned FROM SCHOOL LIBRARIES in <state or local jurisdiction>” then that is accurate and fine. I haven’t seen anyone complaining about this, have you?

We can’t pretend the two are the same thing, they aren’t the same thing.

Yes? That’s what the whole movement is about in the US and it’s the lead reason dua lipa quotes in the linked article.

I think a better frame is: will the children be less socially adjusted if they are exposed to the book?

While "everything is political", I can still see some differences. What was presented as "banned on neutral, apolitical basis base" in the previous comment can be seen as political at some level, but they are way less political than "let's ban this book because I don't want my children to be exposed to lefties ideas".

It feels like there is an order of magnitude less importance to "maintaining our children unexposed to others' point of view" in the cases of left-wing book-banning than in the right-wing side. After all, right-wing book banning often works on "leftie keywords" or themes (gender study stuffs, inclusivity, ...) while I don't think there is a real movement to ban books because they use too much of "right-wing keywords" (free market stuffs, nationalism, ...).

> schools are making these decisions on a neutral, apolitical basis - but this is not really possible, is it?

Well, sure, but it's not possible for the religious parent groups to be apolitical either (nor do they make any attempt at even ostensible neutrality). Teachers and administrators are well trained, often have or have had children, and are generally a part of the community where they work and teach. It's not like they are 'coastal elites' making lefty decisions for the community; by and large, they share similar worldviews to the kids and their parents. I think we should give them more of our trust in making these decisions.

I guess you're not aware of the "Libs of TikTok" account?

Not really, no. How it is relevant?

> You should think this through. The logical endpoint is that all age based content restrictions are "authoritarian".

I do think that. It's rude to assume that I haven't thought my position through.

> So it should be ok to stock movies like Martyrs[1] or Men Behind the Sun[2] in elementary school libraries, because who are parents and teachers to decide whether seeing a woman flayed to death or a child vivisected is something that a 6 year old should be allowed to see?

Sure.

> My real takeaway here is that you probably don't have children.

I don't, but I was one, and I accessed all kinds of stuff on the internet that my parents and teachers didn't want me to see. Including gross violence and sex stuff. It didn't kill me. It didn't even hurt me. I'm fine. I'm a better person for having exposed myself to those things than I would be if I'd been sheltered from them.

But now in a vacuum you're advocating from your position (not being a parent) but being a human, that because you turned out ok, that everyone else will. There is no numbers, no statistics, just your anecdote here. Which is ok, but that's why two people immediately called your opinion out as being extreme.

> There is no numbers, no statistics, just your anecdote here. Which is ok, but that's why two people immediately called your opinion out as being extreme.

No one else provided any, either. If you have strong evidence that exposure to media you don't like is bad for your children, please provide it. If you don't have any, my anecdote is better evidence than you've provided.

Two people calling out an opinion as extreme does not make it extreme, and an opinion being extreme does not make it wrong.

This take is pretty extreme.

> Who exactly are you to say what is or isn't appropriate for elementary school libraries?

parents

If you want to go full anti-authoritarian, you are literally advocating anarchy. One in which you have no right to jail someone for killing someone else.

There are many moral systems! Some of them are based in Christian ethics, which many people prescribe to. In fact it's the one the United States is based on. You can also choose something like liberalism. Many or most people would at least agree that "killing randon people at random times" being advocated in a book is not a good thing. And if that's not a good thing, then there is a moral judgement to be made to "ban" said book. I'm not saying that book exists, but if it did - would you "ban" it?

No one "owns" another person, but there are many other forms of relationships between people that allows for one person to dictate a media diet for another.

> parents

Parent-based rights arguments are perfectly adequate for the 80%, but degenerate in some horrific ways for the rest of the population. We need community-level input on how to raise kids so that the leftover 20% don’t just get fucked up by parents that “know best for their kid”.

Anecdotally know of a few times where kids were taught that their molestation was their own fault (both sub-10yo), and had friends whose parents actively pushed them to kill themselves

So that has nothing to do with what I said. Parents, and if 80% of parents are good people, then it makes sense that parents have a say what is in the school library. It also makes sense that if a parent is abusing a child, a teacher will see it.

I don't have a solution for you for all types of families, but this doesn't change that miyoji's take is fairly extreme.

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