2 ms·
If a teacher is forbidden from getting copies of a book (even at their own expense), distributing them to students, and assigning reading and giving lessons on
by otterley 5y ago
If a teacher is forbidden from getting copies of a book (even at their own expense), distributing them to students, and assigning reading and giving lessons on the book, then it’s effectively banned. Let’s not play semantics here.
- bumbledraven 5y agoYes, that would qualify as banning if it happened, but as far as I can tell, neither the article nor the meeting minutes state that McMinn County teachers are forbidden from doing any of those things.
- otterley 5y agoIt’s pretty reasonable to infer from the circumstances that such an attempt would immediately get the teacher into big trouble. It would certainly have a chilling effect at the very least.
- bumbledraven 5y agoI think reasonable people can disagree about the extent to which removing a book from the required reading list would have such a chilling effect. In any event, can we agree that it's misleading to describe what happened simply as "banning" without further qualification? As an example of a more accurate description, I would point to Reason's article on the subject [1]: > Tennessee School Board Pulls Maus From Eighth-Grade Curriculum > A grim sign of the bureaucratic mentality controlling public education [1] https://reason.com/2022/01/27/tennessee-school-board-pulls-maus-from-eighth-grade-curriculum/ https://reason.com/2022/01/27/tennessee-school-board-pulls-m...
- otterley 5y agoI still disagree because my experience with the way schools operate is that “removed from the curriculum” and “banned” amount to the same thing in practice. It’s a distinction without a difference.
- errcorrectcode 5y agoI'm baffled there is such obvious hairsplitting on this on HN, of all places, against a notable educational book about the freakin Holocaust. One of my college roommates was assigned this text in a contemporary literature course as it was and is a contemporary historical fiction graphic novel.
- errcorrectcode 5y agoExactly. Banning a book about the Holocaust and saying it's not banning reeks of the appearance of Holocaust denialism, white nationalism, and/or antisemitism. To avoid difficult, real subjects is to lie to children and make them into ignorant, naive, uneducated adults.