14 ms·

Brave New World banned from High School curriculum

282 points by mfukar 16y ago

rbanffy 16y ago
"the text lacks literary value" Oh boy... Why not ban Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 while we are at it. And let's burn all copies too. What kind of spineless school principal is this?
- tomjen3 16y ago
  People don't know what literary value is - since they read so few books, how could they possible know what it is?
  - jameskilton 16y ago
    Aye, the irony here is sickening. And that a single parent who obviously hasn't actually read a book in ages is able to negatively affect an entire school board that easily is sad beyond measure. Sometimes people are wrong. In fact it happens a lot. Apparently calling someone out for being wrong is as bad as calling someone out for being fat. Can't have controversy! Huxley is spinning in his grave.
    - fogus 16y ago
      > Huxley is spinning in his grave. Huxley was cremated.
- enjo 16y ago
  I wish I could get 1984 banned. Far too many believe that saying "it's just like 1984!" somehow makes it a valid argument against something. Really I just want a required class in formal logic for everyone.
  - JoelMcCracken 16y ago
    Same thing with "It's just like Hitler!", "It's not what the founding father's wanted!", etc. I many times support the formal logic requirement.
    - chc 16y ago
      "It's not what the Founding Fathers wanted" is not generally an issue of logic. If something is flagrantly against the values they espoused, then whether or not that thing should be opposed is simply a matter of your values. If it's not entirely clear whether they would have supported something but there could be reasonable arguments either way, then it's a matter of opinion. In neither case is it an example of faulty logic.
      - JoelMcCracken 16y ago
        I could explain what I'm referring to, but then, why do so when wikipedia does it so well? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    And what exactly does a faulty logic have to do with Orwell's dystopia?
  - arethuza 16y ago
    You don't happen to work at Amazon?
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      Thanks for the laugh. This discussion makes me want to grab a box of Prozac and eat the pills like cereal...
  - dinkumthinkum 16y ago
    So why doesn't it exactly? What exactly do you think formal logic is and what is it used for? I mean, this sort of thing is an observation and an insinuation not a syllogism. Who needs all these formal logic classes again? The structure of the society in 1984 is widely considered "bad" and it is quite clear what is meant by saying something like "this is like 1984" when it deal with something quite analogous. It's quite clear what is meant by this and the reasoning is very evident. Now, you could counter with something like "No, no I think we need Big Brother because ..." or "We must burn books because ..." I don't think everyone has to construct formal syllogisms for all their arguments, presumably we are intelligent people rather than some kind of x86 processor that can't deal with anything beyond very formal, rigid syntax.
- dangrossman 16y ago
  Especially in wealthier areas, school administrations have to bend over backwards to please parents or they really will sue the school districts over insane things like this.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    No. Their job is to educate kids. Unfortunately, they bend over backwards to please kids who complain to their parents about how crappy their school is.
    - dangrossman 16y ago
      "No. My job is to educate kids." will not stop a parent from suing the school.
- cubicle67 16y ago
  where by "literary value" I think they mean dragons and vampires
  - anigbrowl 16y ago
    Or perhaps they're referring to potential merchandising revenue...
- moxiemk1 16y ago
  The argument as to whether _Brave New World_ has literary value is completely separate from _Fahrenheit 451_ and _1984_. Please, make the argument that it isn't the case on this particular book, but I'd say no book belongs in English classes because of the warning or political message it delivers. At the high school level, different (academically higher?) standards are looked at. This may include _Brave New World_, or it might not, but taking offense that a popular dystopian fiction novel isn't in the curriculum any longer isn't the right argument: removing an important work on literature and replacing it with a less important one is.
  - mfukar 16y ago
    I doubt that makes it OK to remove an important work of literature and replace it with a more important one, neither.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    The importance of the political message embedded in those books has no more relation to their literary value (which is something quite hard to define) than their political correctness (or lack of it) that offends an overzealous (and ignorant) mother. I found the idea of banning a politically loaded book (that speaks of, among other things, banning books) irresistibly funny. I am not sure Fahrenheit 451 or 1984 are required reading in the US, but they should be. They should be required reading everywhere.
- Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
  I wish we'd been able to unilaterally decree books as lacking literary value at my school and have them removed from the reading list. Screw you Thomas Hardy, you're off the curriculum, some 14 year old has decided you lack literary value because they find all those descriptions of countryside dull and don't want to read them. (Obviously in this instance that 14 year old would have been me and I'd have been right but I'd also have said something similar about Dickens and been about as spectacularly wrong as it's possible to be).
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Maybe we are missing the point when we think school is about making kids happy. 1984 made me miserable. But it also helped make me into the man I am now.
BigZaphod 16y ago
It's not exactly banned, but just removed from their curriculum. It will still be found in the school's library.
- sammcd 16y ago
  Yup, banned is very different from 'removed from reading list'.
  - anamax 16y ago
    There are lots of books that aren't on the reading list. Are they all "banned"?
    - sukuriant 16y ago
      No; however, they aren't on the reading list for potentially different reasons. This book (I have not read it) was on the reading list, but has now been stripped from the reading list because someone didn't like it and was vocal about this. A very contrived example of a similar vein would be: Cooking with a Microwave isn't on the reading list. 1984 isn't on the reading list because some bureaucrat didn't like how it portrayed the government. Again, I have not read this book and know nothing of how it portrays individuals in it, except that some person didn't like this portrayal. I know nothing of the accuracy of the portrayal, the intention of the portrayal or anything like that. I am attempting to create two instances of a book "not being on the reading list" and their absence from it being due to two starkly different reasons. Any reading beyond that is a misunderstanding and a misrepresentation of what I said and attempted to say
      - pivo 16y ago
        My guess is that the sole objection was the parts that describe the casual, multi-partner sex that's encouraged in the civilized world. The author's attitude towards the practice probably doesn't matter to the people who want this to remain unread by high school students.
      - 16y ago
Evgeny 16y ago
Ironically, I'm reading the book now ... "You can't consume much if you sit still and read books."
- brandnewlow 16y ago
  I.e. You can't consume much while in the act of consuming?
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    It takes a couple days for me to "consume" US$5 of books. It takes me a couple seconds to spend the same amount of money during lunch.
daeken 16y ago
Why do I feel like I'm being indirectly trolled? I mean, this woman can't be serious about this, right? Sad. Seriously, seriously sad...
alanh 16y ago
> What Sense-Wilson and her daughter seem to be having trouble grasping is that the "savages" in the book are only called "savages" because the mainstream society which they aren't a part of is so perverted. In reality, Huxley's savages are indeed the heroes… Indeed. The “savage” reads Shakespeare, which no one else in the book does anymore, for example. It’s just like people wanting to ban Huck Finn because it uses the word “nigger,” without realizing the friendship between Huck and Jim shows just how silly racism actually is, or how the novel basically satirizes slave ownership by making Huck explicitly contemplate the “immorality” of helping a slave escape.
- burgerbrain 16y ago
  What we really need is some good civil disobedience on the part of teachers. When my highschool schooldistrict banned Huck Finn, my 10th grade english teacher assigned it as an optional assignment with a shitton of bonus credit. He explained why he was willing to do this by pointing out that teachers have an absolutely nuts union. They couldn't do more than give him a slap on the wrist. Now, is Huck Finn that important as a piece of literature? Arguably. However what definitely was important was that all his students learned a good lesson about censorship and having a proper disrespect for authority when needed.
  - TomOfTTB 16y ago
    I'm not sure that's true. Civil Disobedience is a tool to draw attention to a broken system. So in the 1950s and 1960s I don't believe most white Americans realized segregation was a problem (remember segregation was largely gone from the North and West by 1950: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_United_States#In_the_North http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_Unite...). So Civil Disobedience was necessary to draw people's attention to the problems still in the South. Here almost everyone knows this woman is crazy they just don't want to confront her on it. So the civil disobedience you suggest would draw attention to the wrong problem (censorship) and leave the right problem (crazy people getting their way) untouched.
    - 16y ago
sp4rki 16y ago
If test tube people that the deserving ones and natural born people are the savages, what does that make the poorly educated self righteous kid and the retarded mother? At least it had nothing to do with the fact that natural born people need to have sex to do so, but I'm sure it'll happen eventually.
forgotAgain 16y ago
>The school eventually agreed, promising to remove the book from students' required reading list and releasing a statement apologizing that the "cultural insensitivity embedded in this book makes it an inappropriate choice as a central text in our 10th grade curriculum." Anyone who played a part in releasing the statement should be fired for failure to understand the concept of a free society. The rational for government supported education is that a democracy needs educated citizens to survive. The people involved obviously don't grasp that.
- SkyMarshal 16y ago
  >The people involved obviously don't grasp that. Or maybe they've just read and understood Brave New World all too well.
Overmind 16y ago
This is ridiculous. They also shouldn't teach history because you know someone might be offended the same way.
- VladRussian 16y ago
  if you compare history curriculum of different countries, you'll notice that it is already happening, everywhere. Check WWII history, for example, in Japan and China, WWI in Turkey and Armenia, etc...
- mfukar 16y ago
  Hehe. I eagerly await the first German to be offended by the Allies winning WWII. Should be fun to watch. :-)
mathgladiator 16y ago
Does anyone else find the best books are usually banned? I've heard of this book, and meant to buy it; now I've bought it. This is great PR for the book.
kenjackson 16y ago
It is a bit more nuanced. As pointed out by the appeal record (http://www.seattleschools.org/area/board/10-11agendas/111710agenda/appealrecord.pdf http://www.seattleschools.org/area/board/10-11agendas/111710...) there were three required non-fiction books for the 10th grade list: BNW, Othello, and Lord of the Flies. Apparently all three make reference to native or indigenous people as "savages". And then apparently in one lecture they promoted an inaccurate view as to why we have reservations. It's kind of like the Huck Finn example. If you read that book and it says the n-word -- that's one thing. But if the other two required books also say it, then it begins to get a little odd. I think people would reasonably begin to ask, "you couldn't find one book that didn't say nigger/savage in it?" Although her attacks on the text itself were misplaced and uncalled for.
- anigbrowl 16y ago
  No, it's worse - the whole episode is a glaring case of illteracy run wild. The original complaint and supporting documentation describes BNW and the other cited works as 'non-fiction.' The complaint about the word 'savage' appears predicated on the assumption that it has never been applied to anyone other than Native Americans. The members of the reconsideration panel seem oblivious to why the objections are so misplaced. After being notified (via a form letter) of the decision to take it off the curriculum and her right to appeal said decision - which she does, requesting it should be removed from the required reading list for the whole school district and not just that which her daughter attends. Despite attempts by the faculty and principal to explain the meaning of the book she apparently still believes it's a work of non-fiction. Cluelessness all round...at best. At worst, abuse of process as a poor justification for a shakedown.
- corin_ 16y ago
  non-fiction?
  - MarkSweep 16y ago
    The person writing the complaint letters repeatedly referred to the books as "non-fiction". See page 10 and 12 in the parent comment's PDF link.
tokenadult 16y ago
I was assigned to read Brave New World in high school. I had already read it at home, as it was in the collection of books my parents had in our house when I was growing up. The term "savages" occurs in the book to make a comment about the persons speaking the term, not to make a comment about the persons described as savages. The best book I was assigned to read in high school was The Chosen by Chaim Potok. I later read most of Potok's other books on my own. A few years ago I reread The Chosen--that is a very fine book for a reader of any age.
makmanalp 16y ago
Why do people think they have a right not to be offended? They don't.
auxbuss 16y ago
I don't think that removing it from the curriculum is a bad thing. But not for the reasons suggested by the article. BNW isn't a great piece of literature, imo. I understand it's place in literary history, but it's aged badly, and pretty clunky because of that. The themes are certainly important, and will continue to be retold, I'm sure. There's great modern literature and contemporary YA fiction that is far more entertaining and tackles equally difficult moral issues.
rodericksilva 16y ago
I guess this makes us HN readers savages!
sdh 16y ago
The book is about sterile, future society. "Savages" is completely relative. We'd all be considered savages by BNW standards. If that school focused more on educating and less on banning it, the student might have understood the context of the book.
- mapphusel 16y ago
  It's not even relative: it's ironic. The term is used ignorantly by the people outside the reservation. The 'Savage' cares for his mother and reads Shakespeare, something that people outside the reservation don't do any more. It's clear that Huxley does not regard the 'Savage' as being savage.
  - theoden 16y ago
    But we can't have those nuances in our multicultural brave new world! It's the person being offended who decides what's offensive (so long as they belong to a protected group). Four legs good! Two legs bad!
wiredfool 16y ago
Brave New World was banned from my 6th grade class. (or, at least, the teacher was told in no uncertain terms to not continue reading it out loud to the class)
araneae 16y ago
This reminds me of the case in a University of Michigan museum where a Native American woman and her son got those little dioramas of native people removed. Apparently after seeing them, her son asked how he could be Native American if Native Americans were dead (because only dead cultures are depicted in the museum). So this woman, a graduate student, bullied the museum into removing the dioramas.
grellas 16y ago
The Enlightenment was premised on the broad idea that people were rational and that, once education became widespread, reason would eventually stamp out superstition and other evils and would cause humanity to want to promote and defend liberty. This thinking broadly underlies the idea that we are continuing to progress as a species and will ultimately learn to solve the problems that historically have beset us. This sort of episode should serve to remind us that passion and prejudice are ever at-the-ready to spring up and override reason. On the side of reason: 1. You have a classic work of literature that is widely recognized as an important indictment of totalitarian societies, something that young people in a free society should presumably regard as a staple of their learning. 2. You have a significant historical work that is a product of its times, which sound learning should suggest ought to be taken on its own terms, notwithstanding that society has changed since then in what it regards as acceptable cultural references. Again, even if regressive, one would think those raised in a free society would encourage its study, if nothing else than to understand why the older cultural references existed and why people accepted and later rejected them (if that is indeed what happened). 3. You have reasonable arguments that the references to "savages," taken in context, were not intended to be demeaning at all but were essentially a literary device used to promote the themes of the work. Again, in a free society, one would think these would be topics that ought to be debated as part of coming to grips with a classic work. On the side of passion and prejudice: 1. You have public school systems that are charged with developing strong young minds and yet willingly succumb to the premise that some forms of expression ought to be censored or circumscribed at the whims of pressure groups in the community. 2. You have serious subjects being resolved by supposedly responsible public officials at the level of pure emotion. 3. You have what amounts to open demagoguery holding sway over that which scholars would widely if not unanimously oppose. The stunning thing here is how one-sided this all was, with cravenly officials scarcely even putting up resistance. The next thing you know, they will be banning books that use the word "niggardly." Based on the logic on display here, that is surely next in line.
- alex_c 16y ago
  Sadly, it doesn't FEEL like we live in particularly enlightened times... Although, objectively, we are probably simply living in amplified times - more people, more connections, more communication will lead to more progress than at any other time, but also to more situations like this. I think the problem, as is often the case, comes down to incentives. School officials have few incentives to make decisions on the side of reason, which may be difficult or unpopular, and many incentives to make "popular" decisions, which tend to err on the side of passion and prejudice. Exploring why that is the case is a true rabbit hole...
seldo 16y ago
If I buy Brave New World as a result of reading this article, is that ironic? What if it's the Kindle edition? Meta-ironic?
jdavid 16y ago
When I read "Brave New World" just last year again. The terms "savage" and "reservation" never once conjured an image of American Indians. Instead I more or less saw the sort of savages one might see in "sanctuary" in the film "logan's run." Of course in this world it's much easier to be offended than to tolerate. #legalism and #liability is the death of us.
ivanzhao 16y ago
My family moved from China to Canada during my high school years. It was Brave New World (along with Animal Farm) that really opened up my eyes what a Communist world I was raised in. Yes, Huxley could be cruel on his depicting of the native stereotypes (like most elitists during his days). But besides stereotypes, I think it's equally important to educate kids about ideologies -- and the big social and political systems we live in -- with that in mind few literature titles could come even close to Brave New World.
malandrew 16y ago
best comment on the article: "Brave New World takes place in London... I'm left wondering how many Native American reservations are near London, England."
- bmunro 16y ago
  But it doesn't take place entirely in London. The reservation is in New Mexico. Two of the characters go on a trip there and meet a white man that lives among the native americans, but is not fully accepted by them. TThe above is just another comment by someone that does not appear to have read the book.
  - malandrew 16y ago
    Now that you mention that, I remember the book a bit better. I personally need to re-read it. It was so long ago and although I liked the book a lot, the experience was spoilt by English Lit class. Catch22 is another I remember only vaguely but need to reread.
roel_v 16y ago
I realize the 'ban' is because of the Native American/savages angle, but now that the book comes up I'd like to ask: I read Brave New World expecting a dystopic society, but failed to understand why the world that is described is dystopic. Huxley seems to go out of his way to ascribe all sorts of pejorative attributes to the society in the book, to the point where the promiscuous sex lives of the inhabitants are presented so prominently that I got the feeling he did this mostly to instigate the (presumably morally much more strict) early 20th century reader against it. Still, he described a world where the vast majority of people were happy, actually happy and content with their lives, and managed to live those lives without much hardship or grief. Now maybe if one takes the position that hardship and grief are somehow morally virtuous (a position that is surprisingly common and that I as, I think, a rational person have a very hard time understanding, especially since the reasons for it are very seldom given in coherent theories) there is merit to this argument. But even then I still fail to see why the 'savages' in the book, or the protagonist, are somehow morally better than the other people. So if anyone has read the book and wants to explain why they feel the world described in there is bad, I'd be very interested to hear why they think so. (I'm leaving aside some what I think are minor issues, like the apparent destructive qualities of soma addictions - that was one of those other points I felt Huxley just put in there to get his point across, the technical deficiencies of the drug are irrelevant to the moral position he's (presumably) arguing).
- wazoox 16y ago
  You don't find it dystopic because the Brave New World so frighteningly resembles ours. The people on the article actually behaves like the idiot mainstream inhabitants of the Brave New World. That you don't even find it dystopic is probably another sign that it's actually the parody of the world we're living it; superficial, commercial, filled with porn and vulgarity, reality TV and shitty music, individualistic and thoughtless. We don't even need a Thought Police to enforce proper thinking.
  - roel_v 16y ago
    You're ascribing all sorts of moral judgments to this world but don't make a case for why any of these things are bad, if they manage to make people feel (truly) content and happy. What's wrong with reality TV, Lady Gaga and advertisements if that's what people like? Do you honestly thing people would be better off if they didn't have those things and only had a Chopin record to put on at night? Maybe I'm reading your comment wrong but the pseudo-intellectual snobbery, not backed up with anything but an general contempt for anything that is mainstream, irks me. I guess in the same way the Brave New World did. (that said, calling the society of Brave New World to be similar to ours is hyperbole, and I'd pretty sure that it's not why I feel the way I do about the book. Don't forget that the 1930's had their own 'shitty music and vulgarity', in the form of jazz and skirts that showed ankles. It's so easy to make an extremely generalized case for why Brave New World resembles any society; hell I figure that some grumpy inhabitants of Pompei would make the same argument about their city 2000 years ago.).
CallMeV 16y ago
A supreme irony, since on the same HN page this link appears concerning a letter written about Aldous Huxley's "most beautiful death" on November 22, 1963:- http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/03/most-beautiful-death.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/03/most-beautiful-death.ht...
konad 16y ago
hehe savages, what will they do next
theoden 16y ago
"the text lacks literary value" No, but the mother lacks human value.
yock 16y ago
Ironic too is the fact that the book was banned at "Nathan Hale High School." Leave it to literary fools to name a high school for a man who, while depicted as a hero, was uncovered as a spy after confiding that very fact in the people on which he was spying. Nathan Hale was a fool, and so are this school's administrators.
chopsueyar 16y ago
Yet they are all still watching "South Park"?

282 points by mfukar 16y ago

"the text lacks literary value" Oh boy... Why not ban Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 while we are at it. And let's burn all copies too. What kind of spineless school principal is this?

tomjen3 16y ago
People don't know what literary value is - since they read so few books, how could they possible know what it is?
- jameskilton 16y ago
  Aye, the irony here is sickening. And that a single parent who obviously hasn't actually read a book in ages is able to negatively affect an entire school board that easily is sad beyond measure. Sometimes people are wrong. In fact it happens a lot. Apparently calling someone out for being wrong is as bad as calling someone out for being fat. Can't have controversy! Huxley is spinning in his grave.
  - fogus 16y ago
    > Huxley is spinning in his grave. Huxley was cremated.
enjo 16y ago
I wish I could get 1984 banned. Far too many believe that saying "it's just like 1984!" somehow makes it a valid argument against something. Really I just want a required class in formal logic for everyone.
- JoelMcCracken 16y ago
  Same thing with "It's just like Hitler!", "It's not what the founding father's wanted!", etc. I many times support the formal logic requirement.
  - chc 16y ago
    "It's not what the Founding Fathers wanted" is not generally an issue of logic. If something is flagrantly against the values they espoused, then whether or not that thing should be opposed is simply a matter of your values. If it's not entirely clear whether they would have supported something but there could be reasonable arguments either way, then it's a matter of opinion. In neither case is it an example of faulty logic.
    - JoelMcCracken 16y ago
      I could explain what I'm referring to, but then, why do so when wikipedia does it so well? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
- rbanffy 16y ago
  And what exactly does a faulty logic have to do with Orwell's dystopia?
- arethuza 16y ago
  You don't happen to work at Amazon?
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Thanks for the laugh. This discussion makes me want to grab a box of Prozac and eat the pills like cereal...
- dinkumthinkum 16y ago
  So why doesn't it exactly? What exactly do you think formal logic is and what is it used for? I mean, this sort of thing is an observation and an insinuation not a syllogism. Who needs all these formal logic classes again? The structure of the society in 1984 is widely considered "bad" and it is quite clear what is meant by saying something like "this is like 1984" when it deal with something quite analogous. It's quite clear what is meant by this and the reasoning is very evident. Now, you could counter with something like "No, no I think we need Big Brother because ..." or "We must burn books because ..." I don't think everyone has to construct formal syllogisms for all their arguments, presumably we are intelligent people rather than some kind of x86 processor that can't deal with anything beyond very formal, rigid syntax.
dangrossman 16y ago
Especially in wealthier areas, school administrations have to bend over backwards to please parents or they really will sue the school districts over insane things like this.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  No. Their job is to educate kids. Unfortunately, they bend over backwards to please kids who complain to their parents about how crappy their school is.
  - dangrossman 16y ago
    "No. My job is to educate kids." will not stop a parent from suing the school.
cubicle67 16y ago
where by "literary value" I think they mean dragons and vampires
- anigbrowl 16y ago
  Or perhaps they're referring to potential merchandising revenue...
moxiemk1 16y ago
The argument as to whether _Brave New World_ has literary value is completely separate from _Fahrenheit 451_ and _1984_. Please, make the argument that it isn't the case on this particular book, but I'd say no book belongs in English classes because of the warning or political message it delivers. At the high school level, different (academically higher?) standards are looked at. This may include _Brave New World_, or it might not, but taking offense that a popular dystopian fiction novel isn't in the curriculum any longer isn't the right argument: removing an important work on literature and replacing it with a less important one is.
- mfukar 16y ago
  I doubt that makes it OK to remove an important work of literature and replace it with a more important one, neither.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  The importance of the political message embedded in those books has no more relation to their literary value (which is something quite hard to define) than their political correctness (or lack of it) that offends an overzealous (and ignorant) mother. I found the idea of banning a politically loaded book (that speaks of, among other things, banning books) irresistibly funny. I am not sure Fahrenheit 451 or 1984 are required reading in the US, but they should be. They should be required reading everywhere.
Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
I wish we'd been able to unilaterally decree books as lacking literary value at my school and have them removed from the reading list. Screw you Thomas Hardy, you're off the curriculum, some 14 year old has decided you lack literary value because they find all those descriptions of countryside dull and don't want to read them. (Obviously in this instance that 14 year old would have been me and I'd have been right but I'd also have said something similar about Dickens and been about as spectacularly wrong as it's possible to be).
- rbanffy 16y ago
  Maybe we are missing the point when we think school is about making kids happy. 1984 made me miserable. But it also helped make me into the man I am now.

BigZaphod 16y ago

It's not exactly banned, but just removed from their curriculum. It will still be found in the school's library.

sammcd 16y ago
Yup, banned is very different from 'removed from reading list'.
- anamax 16y ago
  There are lots of books that aren't on the reading list. Are they all "banned"?
  - sukuriant 16y ago
    No; however, they aren't on the reading list for potentially different reasons. This book (I have not read it) was on the reading list, but has now been stripped from the reading list because someone didn't like it and was vocal about this. A very contrived example of a similar vein would be: Cooking with a Microwave isn't on the reading list. 1984 isn't on the reading list because some bureaucrat didn't like how it portrayed the government. Again, I have not read this book and know nothing of how it portrays individuals in it, except that some person didn't like this portrayal. I know nothing of the accuracy of the portrayal, the intention of the portrayal or anything like that. I am attempting to create two instances of a book "not being on the reading list" and their absence from it being due to two starkly different reasons. Any reading beyond that is a misunderstanding and a misrepresentation of what I said and attempted to say
    - pivo 16y ago
      My guess is that the sole objection was the parts that describe the casual, multi-partner sex that's encouraged in the civilized world. The author's attitude towards the practice probably doesn't matter to the people who want this to remain unread by high school students.
    - 16y ago

Evgeny 16y ago

Ironically, I'm reading the book now ... "You can't consume much if you sit still and read books."

brandnewlow 16y ago
I.e. You can't consume much while in the act of consuming?
- rbanffy 16y ago
  It takes a couple days for me to "consume" US$5 of books. It takes me a couple seconds to spend the same amount of money during lunch.

daeken 16y ago

Why do I feel like I'm being indirectly trolled? I mean, this woman can't be serious about this, right? Sad. Seriously, seriously sad...

alanh 16y ago

> What Sense-Wilson and her daughter seem to be having trouble grasping is that the "savages" in the book are only called "savages" because the mainstream society which they aren't a part of is so perverted. In reality, Huxley's savages are indeed the heroes… Indeed. The “savage” reads Shakespeare, which no one else in the book does anymore, for example. It’s just like people wanting to ban Huck Finn because it uses the word “nigger,” without realizing the friendship between Huck and Jim shows just how silly racism actually is, or how the novel basically satirizes slave ownership by making Huck explicitly contemplate the “immorality” of helping a slave escape.

burgerbrain 16y ago
What we really need is some good civil disobedience on the part of teachers. When my highschool schooldistrict banned Huck Finn, my 10th grade english teacher assigned it as an optional assignment with a shitton of bonus credit. He explained why he was willing to do this by pointing out that teachers have an absolutely nuts union. They couldn't do more than give him a slap on the wrist. Now, is Huck Finn that important as a piece of literature? Arguably. However what definitely was important was that all his students learned a good lesson about censorship and having a proper disrespect for authority when needed.
- TomOfTTB 16y ago
  I'm not sure that's true. Civil Disobedience is a tool to draw attention to a broken system. So in the 1950s and 1960s I don't believe most white Americans realized segregation was a problem (remember segregation was largely gone from the North and West by 1950: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_United_States#In_the_North http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_Unite...). So Civil Disobedience was necessary to draw people's attention to the problems still in the South. Here almost everyone knows this woman is crazy they just don't want to confront her on it. So the civil disobedience you suggest would draw attention to the wrong problem (censorship) and leave the right problem (crazy people getting their way) untouched.
  - 16y ago

sp4rki 16y ago

If test tube people that the deserving ones and natural born people are the savages, what does that make the poorly educated self righteous kid and the retarded mother? At least it had nothing to do with the fact that natural born people need to have sex to do so, but I'm sure it'll happen eventually.

forgotAgain 16y ago

>The school eventually agreed, promising to remove the book from students' required reading list and releasing a statement apologizing that the "cultural insensitivity embedded in this book makes it an inappropriate choice as a central text in our 10th grade curriculum." Anyone who played a part in releasing the statement should be fired for failure to understand the concept of a free society. The rational for government supported education is that a democracy needs educated citizens to survive. The people involved obviously don't grasp that.

SkyMarshal 16y ago
>The people involved obviously don't grasp that. Or maybe they've just read and understood Brave New World all too well.

Overmind 16y ago

This is ridiculous. They also shouldn't teach history because you know someone might be offended the same way.

VladRussian 16y ago
if you compare history curriculum of different countries, you'll notice that it is already happening, everywhere. Check WWII history, for example, in Japan and China, WWI in Turkey and Armenia, etc...
mfukar 16y ago
Hehe. I eagerly await the first German to be offended by the Allies winning WWII. Should be fun to watch. :-)

mathgladiator 16y ago

Does anyone else find the best books are usually banned? I've heard of this book, and meant to buy it; now I've bought it. This is great PR for the book.

kenjackson 16y ago

It is a bit more nuanced. As pointed out by the appeal record (http://www.seattleschools.org/area/board/10-11agendas/111710agenda/appealrecord.pdf http://www.seattleschools.org/area/board/10-11agendas/111710...) there were three required non-fiction books for the 10th grade list: BNW, Othello, and Lord of the Flies. Apparently all three make reference to native or indigenous people as "savages". And then apparently in one lecture they promoted an inaccurate view as to why we have reservations. It's kind of like the Huck Finn example. If you read that book and it says the n-word -- that's one thing. But if the other two required books also say it, then it begins to get a little odd. I think people would reasonably begin to ask, "you couldn't find one book that didn't say nigger/savage in it?" Although her attacks on the text itself were misplaced and uncalled for.

anigbrowl 16y ago
No, it's worse - the whole episode is a glaring case of illteracy run wild. The original complaint and supporting documentation describes BNW and the other cited works as 'non-fiction.' The complaint about the word 'savage' appears predicated on the assumption that it has never been applied to anyone other than Native Americans. The members of the reconsideration panel seem oblivious to why the objections are so misplaced. After being notified (via a form letter) of the decision to take it off the curriculum and her right to appeal said decision - which she does, requesting it should be removed from the required reading list for the whole school district and not just that which her daughter attends. Despite attempts by the faculty and principal to explain the meaning of the book she apparently still believes it's a work of non-fiction. Cluelessness all round...at best. At worst, abuse of process as a poor justification for a shakedown.
corin_ 16y ago
non-fiction?
- MarkSweep 16y ago
  The person writing the complaint letters repeatedly referred to the books as "non-fiction". See page 10 and 12 in the parent comment's PDF link.

tokenadult 16y ago

I was assigned to read Brave New World in high school. I had already read it at home, as it was in the collection of books my parents had in our house when I was growing up. The term "savages" occurs in the book to make a comment about the persons speaking the term, not to make a comment about the persons described as savages. The best book I was assigned to read in high school was The Chosen by Chaim Potok. I later read most of Potok's other books on my own. A few years ago I reread The Chosen--that is a very fine book for a reader of any age.

makmanalp 16y ago

Why do people think they have a right not to be offended? They don't.

auxbuss 16y ago

I don't think that removing it from the curriculum is a bad thing. But not for the reasons suggested by the article. BNW isn't a great piece of literature, imo. I understand it's place in literary history, but it's aged badly, and pretty clunky because of that. The themes are certainly important, and will continue to be retold, I'm sure. There's great modern literature and contemporary YA fiction that is far more entertaining and tackles equally difficult moral issues.

rodericksilva 16y ago

I guess this makes us HN readers savages!

sdh 16y ago

The book is about sterile, future society. "Savages" is completely relative. We'd all be considered savages by BNW standards. If that school focused more on educating and less on banning it, the student might have understood the context of the book.

mapphusel 16y ago
It's not even relative: it's ironic. The term is used ignorantly by the people outside the reservation. The 'Savage' cares for his mother and reads Shakespeare, something that people outside the reservation don't do any more. It's clear that Huxley does not regard the 'Savage' as being savage.
- theoden 16y ago
  But we can't have those nuances in our multicultural brave new world! It's the person being offended who decides what's offensive (so long as they belong to a protected group). Four legs good! Two legs bad!

wiredfool 16y ago

Brave New World was banned from my 6th grade class. (or, at least, the teacher was told in no uncertain terms to not continue reading it out loud to the class)

araneae 16y ago

This reminds me of the case in a University of Michigan museum where a Native American woman and her son got those little dioramas of native people removed. Apparently after seeing them, her son asked how he could be Native American if Native Americans were dead (because only dead cultures are depicted in the museum). So this woman, a graduate student, bullied the museum into removing the dioramas.

grellas 16y ago

The Enlightenment was premised on the broad idea that people were rational and that, once education became widespread, reason would eventually stamp out superstition and other evils and would cause humanity to want to promote and defend liberty. This thinking broadly underlies the idea that we are continuing to progress as a species and will ultimately learn to solve the problems that historically have beset us. This sort of episode should serve to remind us that passion and prejudice are ever at-the-ready to spring up and override reason. On the side of reason: 1. You have a classic work of literature that is widely recognized as an important indictment of totalitarian societies, something that young people in a free society should presumably regard as a staple of their learning. 2. You have a significant historical work that is a product of its times, which sound learning should suggest ought to be taken on its own terms, notwithstanding that society has changed since then in what it regards as acceptable cultural references. Again, even if regressive, one would think those raised in a free society would encourage its study, if nothing else than to understand why the older cultural references existed and why people accepted and later rejected them (if that is indeed what happened). 3. You have reasonable arguments that the references to "savages," taken in context, were not intended to be demeaning at all but were essentially a literary device used to promote the themes of the work. Again, in a free society, one would think these would be topics that ought to be debated as part of coming to grips with a classic work. On the side of passion and prejudice: 1. You have public school systems that are charged with developing strong young minds and yet willingly succumb to the premise that some forms of expression ought to be censored or circumscribed at the whims of pressure groups in the community. 2. You have serious subjects being resolved by supposedly responsible public officials at the level of pure emotion. 3. You have what amounts to open demagoguery holding sway over that which scholars would widely if not unanimously oppose. The stunning thing here is how one-sided this all was, with cravenly officials scarcely even putting up resistance. The next thing you know, they will be banning books that use the word "niggardly." Based on the logic on display here, that is surely next in line.

alex_c 16y ago
Sadly, it doesn't FEEL like we live in particularly enlightened times... Although, objectively, we are probably simply living in amplified times - more people, more connections, more communication will lead to more progress than at any other time, but also to more situations like this. I think the problem, as is often the case, comes down to incentives. School officials have few incentives to make decisions on the side of reason, which may be difficult or unpopular, and many incentives to make "popular" decisions, which tend to err on the side of passion and prejudice. Exploring why that is the case is a true rabbit hole...

seldo 16y ago

If I buy Brave New World as a result of reading this article, is that ironic? What if it's the Kindle edition? Meta-ironic?

jdavid 16y ago

When I read "Brave New World" just last year again. The terms "savage" and "reservation" never once conjured an image of American Indians. Instead I more or less saw the sort of savages one might see in "sanctuary" in the film "logan's run." Of course in this world it's much easier to be offended than to tolerate. #legalism and #liability is the death of us.

ivanzhao 16y ago

My family moved from China to Canada during my high school years. It was Brave New World (along with Animal Farm) that really opened up my eyes what a Communist world I was raised in. Yes, Huxley could be cruel on his depicting of the native stereotypes (like most elitists during his days). But besides stereotypes, I think it's equally important to educate kids about ideologies -- and the big social and political systems we live in -- with that in mind few literature titles could come even close to Brave New World.

malandrew 16y ago

best comment on the article: "Brave New World takes place in London... I'm left wondering how many Native American reservations are near London, England."

bmunro 16y ago
But it doesn't take place entirely in London. The reservation is in New Mexico. Two of the characters go on a trip there and meet a white man that lives among the native americans, but is not fully accepted by them. TThe above is just another comment by someone that does not appear to have read the book.
- malandrew 16y ago
  Now that you mention that, I remember the book a bit better. I personally need to re-read it. It was so long ago and although I liked the book a lot, the experience was spoilt by English Lit class. Catch22 is another I remember only vaguely but need to reread.

roel_v 16y ago

I realize the 'ban' is because of the Native American/savages angle, but now that the book comes up I'd like to ask: I read Brave New World expecting a dystopic society, but failed to understand why the world that is described is dystopic. Huxley seems to go out of his way to ascribe all sorts of pejorative attributes to the society in the book, to the point where the promiscuous sex lives of the inhabitants are presented so prominently that I got the feeling he did this mostly to instigate the (presumably morally much more strict) early 20th century reader against it. Still, he described a world where the vast majority of people were happy, actually happy and content with their lives, and managed to live those lives without much hardship or grief. Now maybe if one takes the position that hardship and grief are somehow morally virtuous (a position that is surprisingly common and that I as, I think, a rational person have a very hard time understanding, especially since the reasons for it are very seldom given in coherent theories) there is merit to this argument. But even then I still fail to see why the 'savages' in the book, or the protagonist, are somehow morally better than the other people. So if anyone has read the book and wants to explain why they feel the world described in there is bad, I'd be very interested to hear why they think so. (I'm leaving aside some what I think are minor issues, like the apparent destructive qualities of soma addictions - that was one of those other points I felt Huxley just put in there to get his point across, the technical deficiencies of the drug are irrelevant to the moral position he's (presumably) arguing).

wazoox 16y ago
You don't find it dystopic because the Brave New World so frighteningly resembles ours. The people on the article actually behaves like the idiot mainstream inhabitants of the Brave New World. That you don't even find it dystopic is probably another sign that it's actually the parody of the world we're living it; superficial, commercial, filled with porn and vulgarity, reality TV and shitty music, individualistic and thoughtless. We don't even need a Thought Police to enforce proper thinking.
- roel_v 16y ago
  You're ascribing all sorts of moral judgments to this world but don't make a case for why any of these things are bad, if they manage to make people feel (truly) content and happy. What's wrong with reality TV, Lady Gaga and advertisements if that's what people like? Do you honestly thing people would be better off if they didn't have those things and only had a Chopin record to put on at night? Maybe I'm reading your comment wrong but the pseudo-intellectual snobbery, not backed up with anything but an general contempt for anything that is mainstream, irks me. I guess in the same way the Brave New World did. (that said, calling the society of Brave New World to be similar to ours is hyperbole, and I'd pretty sure that it's not why I feel the way I do about the book. Don't forget that the 1930's had their own 'shitty music and vulgarity', in the form of jazz and skirts that showed ankles. It's so easy to make an extremely generalized case for why Brave New World resembles any society; hell I figure that some grumpy inhabitants of Pompei would make the same argument about their city 2000 years ago.).

CallMeV 16y ago

A supreme irony, since on the same HN page this link appears concerning a letter written about Aldous Huxley's "most beautiful death" on November 22, 1963:- http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/03/most-beautiful-death.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/03/most-beautiful-death.ht...

konad 16y ago

hehe savages, what will they do next

theoden 16y ago

"the text lacks literary value" No, but the mother lacks human value.

yock 16y ago

Ironic too is the fact that the book was banned at "Nathan Hale High School." Leave it to literary fools to name a high school for a man who, while depicted as a hero, was uncovered as a spy after confiding that very fact in the people on which he was spying. Nathan Hale was a fool, and so are this school's administrators.

chopsueyar 16y ago

Yet they are all still watching "South Park"?