I'm not in favor of bluenoses haunting school libraries and demanding the removal of anything they find offensive. Honest!
Still, for the folks yelling about "book burners" and whatnot, a quick note: you realize, don't you, that every school library has a school librarian who makes judgments about which books to buy? And those judgments depend a lot on the community the school is in. This has been true forever.
In other words, local decisions about which books to buy and which books to get rid of are baked into the cake and always have been. In rural communities, it's more likely that sexually explicit books will never be purchased or will be the eventual target of removal. In urban communities, it's more likely that old books which treat race or sex or gender in ways no longer considered acceptable will be tossed out.
It's fine to fight over this. That's the American way. But please understand that it's way, way less important than you probably think. Deciding which books are and aren't suitable for children happens in millions of households and thousands of libraries every single day. Maybe in yours, in fact.
Is this about this Mississippi mayor who's decided he's going to start vetting what's in his city's library? https://tinyurl.com/2p873vts
After apparently being okay with ot for 25+ years. Exposing Kevin yet again as a fool.
Kevin Drum is Conor Friedersdork's dad.
Apples don't fall far from trees.
Okay that was good, capable of raising a child LOL!
But now we're seeing more school board meetings flooded the people protesting ...something. They may pick a book, probably never read by them, spout talking points (Fox News?), and demand action.
Perhaps schools should institute a new rule: you want to complain about a book, then you bring in a copy, show all the parts you consider offensive, and discuss why these parts override any other value the book might have. You'll have to both read and understand the books in question.
That would take significant backbone on the part of school administrators and school boards. The librarians I've met are tough, first amendment-honoring types who are ready and eager to fight. Their bosses? Meh. Get a pack of mouth-frothing adults yelling and screaming, and they wilt like spinach salad in August.
Apropos of nothing, periodically our local city/county libraries will honor "Banned Books month", and have displays of some of the many books that have been banned at one time or another. People are encouraged to check them out and read them.
I would send you a prize for this comment, if I had:
(a) your address, and
(b) a prize to award.
So just consider that this comment is my prize for you--well earned.
I am not putting my face next to anyone unmasked and probably spewing coronavirus.
That would take significant backbone on the part of school administrators and school boards.
It would also require a level of literacy many of these people lack.
>> School libraries are not post-apocalyptic battlegrounds<<
But apparently many school board meetings are.
This take seems hopelessly naive (to be kind) about what is going on. Maybe if the board said it was important to remove degenerative art, it would be easier to understand.
The controversy is not about the school board's authority to remove the book. Of course, decisions are made all the time about what books are or are not in school libraries. The uproar is about the judgment and stated reasons of the board. Not to mention, in a time of resurgent white nationalism, how do we ignore the fact that an 80%-Trump county is removing a book that dares to depict the horrors of Nazis, while elsewhere in the South efforts are underway to remove not only the nonexistent scourge of CRT but the teaching of the history of American slavery, if it makes white people uncomfortable. from school curricula.
By all appearances, this is not about the age-appropriateness of nudity and language but an effort to erase an uncomfortable chapter of history from kids' educations.
It is hard to take the board's stated reasons at face value. For one: “concerns about profanity and an image of female nudity in its depiction of Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust.” It is beyond ridiculous that the objections to a book about the extermination of 6 million Jews would be about a few instances of words like "damn" and the depiction of a nude woman -- a woman who is drawn as a MOUSE.
School board member Tony Allman: "It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids, why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff, it is not wise or healthy." Anybody who does not understand the difference between depicting horrors of the Holocaust and promoting those horrors does not belong anywhere near a seat on a school board deciding what books belong in an a school library. He and the rest o the school board deserve every bit of the condemnation they're getting.
Another school district with its head up its ass. Apparently, objections to the book are about the use of the n-word by a white author.
'To Kill a Mockingbird' will be removed from ninth-grade required reading list in Mukilteo
https://www.king5.com/video/news/education/to-kill-a-mockingbird-will-be-removed-from-ninth-grade-required-reading-list-in-mukilteo/281-4458a068-6f87-471e-a01d-f356b89b4810
In this case, the censorship is not coming from the right. Just want you to know that. Also, as your posts states - it really isn't being censored. It is still in the library. It was removed from the required reading list.
This take seems hopelessly naive (to be kind) about what is going on.
Maybe so. And it should be noted that book-banning is only one part of a wider right wing effort to engage in muscular thought-policing. We're seeing sundry red state governments attempting to purge public education of politically unacceptable (that is, non-right wing, or anything deemed as being insufficiently nationalistic) lesson content.
I'm guessing most folks here haven't actually used a library in over a decade. Most library things -- books, music, videos -- are online now. You still have to wait if there's demand for items and the library has only X-many number of licenses.
In 25 years half of us will be dead and book-burning will be an anachronism.
The fight will move towards the erection of walls -- fascism's next steps -- to block/limit access to data. What China does today is what authoritarian-leaning people will be pushing for, tomorrow.
What China does today is what authoritarian-leaning people will be pushing for, tomorrow.
This.
The dynamic reminds me (forgive me for geeking out for a moment) of Saruman's seduction by the Dark Lord. If you become obsessed by the enemy, you run the risk of becoming exactly like the enemy. We certainly saw this in the rampant, Stalinesque excesses of the McCarthy era. Or a concrete example from today: you literally can't say anything positive about China in a comment thread (especially in mainstream newspapers) without immediately being accused of shilling for the Chinese Communist Party. The thread could be something quite unrelated to China's government or system. It doesn't matter. It doesn't occur to those making the reflexive "Wumao" accusations that their utterly Pavlovian response to the mere mention of the Middle Kingdom (a noun+verb+China bad!) is pretty much a mirror image of the very thing they decry. Unlike these useful idiots, at least the CCP's online shills are getting paid.
So, why does Amazon often refuse to sell many conservative-leaning books?
Amazon is not a library.
"School libraries are not post-apocalypic battlegrounds."
I will have to dust off my copy of Fahrenheit 451.
This is yet another GOP faux outrage du jour (remember CRT) to stir up the base. The rest is just noise.
From an ex-school teacher and this in not a value-judgment of human beings:
Many kids don't learn much in school. Many of them continue that ignorance of school learning throughout their lives. They learn what they need and what interests them instead of what was mandated by a school district.
Some will read Maus and Mockingbird later. Many will not and would not have learned anything from it in high school. I'm with Kevin.
And schools need to change to teach everyone; we're all capable, but not as schools are configured today -- and I mean before the pandemic.