4 ms·

It Only Takes One Parent to Get All Graphic Novels Removed from School Library

13 points by isaacfrond 4y ago

isaacfrond 4y ago
What am I missing here? A school library, with three thousand graphic novels? That seems like an awful lot of them. I doubt if my school library even had 3000 books at all, let along graphic novels.
- CJefferson 4y ago
  A school district, not just a single school. Often districts will rotate books between schools.
- Symbiote 4y ago
  It's a library system shared between multiple schools. If it's similar to how this works in England (a friend is a teacher), an area that runs public schools -- in England a county -- owns all the books. Schools can borrow e.g. 30 copies of MacBeth one year, and 30 copies of Hamlet the next year, if the teacher doesn't feel like teaching the same thing every year. They can also borrow 250 different books for 12 year olds, 250 for 13 year olds, etc, to put in the school library. These are gradually rotated between all the schools in the district.
chmod775 4y ago
If "an autobiographical coming-of-age story [..] about questioning blind faith in a fundamentalist Christian household" makes someone upset, then all I have to say to them is: Good. This bending over backwards trying to offend nobody, not even the impossible-to-please screaming crazy people, is utterly alien to me.
- smitty1e 4y ago
  At the far end of the spectrum, I would not want my tax dollars spent to provide "The 120 Days of Sodom" for kids. There is room for discussion.
- BackBlast 4y ago
  This is a graphic novel, in other words graphic depictions of sexuality/sex. This isn't "bending over backwards". It is simply wrong to have that material there. This kind of material is damaging to children and should not be freely available in the public school library system.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Symbiote 4y ago
    Have you read the book? I skimmed (very quickly) through it. The "graphic depictions" of naked people are very tame. It seems reasonable for teenagers to read this. There's a picture of a boy's drawing of a naked woman, in thick pen. There's a scene where two adolescents are shirtless and close in bed. There's a picture of penises, but they boys are ~8 years old or so. It's a bad memory from childhood.
  - chmod775 4y ago
    > This is a graphic novel, in other words graphic depictions of sexuality/sex. Here's a sample page from Amazon's preview: https://i.imgur.com/dFHyQ4d.png https://i.imgur.com/dFHyQ4d.png I don't think even at the height of puberty could I have managed to masturbate to that, even assuming it actually contained drawings meant to arouse. The word graphic doesn't always imply sexually explicit. In "graphic novel" it merely means "drawn". > This kind of material is damaging to children Citation needed. The sight of naked humans being damaging to children may just be an invention by America's Bible Belt. In other words damaged adults projecting and being made uncomfortable themselves by proxy, not realizing their children are not yet damaged the same way they are. Making the human body taboo is how you raise another generation who apparently gets uncontrollably aroused by the mere sight of some skin and thus is made uncomfortable by it. I believe intellectually everyone knows this isn't the natural state of things, but rather something instilled by culture and upbringing? Others, both within and without the US, seem to be doing fine raising their children sans this thinking. One may even argue other approaches yield more competent adults.
jleyank 4y ago
https://medium.com/la-mia-biblioteca/where-they-burn-books-they-will-ultimately-burn-people-also-34b835d13b7d https://medium.com/la-mia-biblioteca/where-they-burn-books-t... These types would “remove” people as they remove books if the could. Keep history in mind. “The other” is a powerful and commonly used boogeyman which should be fought. There’s also https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-nie... Doesn’t matter where on the political or social spectrum one sits, monocultures aren’t good or healthy.
readthenotes1 4y ago
Reminds me of the story of the lady who got her mic turned off at a school board meeting after reading from a book in the library. The head of the school board chided her for reading the material while a child was in the room.

13 points by isaacfrond 4y ago

What am I missing here? A school library, with three thousand graphic novels? That seems like an awful lot of them. I doubt if my school library even had 3000 books at all, let along graphic novels.

CJefferson 4y ago
A school district, not just a single school. Often districts will rotate books between schools.
Symbiote 4y ago
It's a library system shared between multiple schools. If it's similar to how this works in England (a friend is a teacher), an area that runs public schools -- in England a county -- owns all the books. Schools can borrow e.g. 30 copies of MacBeth one year, and 30 copies of Hamlet the next year, if the teacher doesn't feel like teaching the same thing every year. They can also borrow 250 different books for 12 year olds, 250 for 13 year olds, etc, to put in the school library. These are gradually rotated between all the schools in the district.

chmod775 4y ago

If "an autobiographical coming-of-age story [..] about questioning blind faith in a fundamentalist Christian household" makes someone upset, then all I have to say to them is: Good. This bending over backwards trying to offend nobody, not even the impossible-to-please screaming crazy people, is utterly alien to me.

smitty1e 4y ago
At the far end of the spectrum, I would not want my tax dollars spent to provide "The 120 Days of Sodom" for kids. There is room for discussion.
BackBlast 4y ago
This is a graphic novel, in other words graphic depictions of sexuality/sex. This isn't "bending over backwards". It is simply wrong to have that material there. This kind of material is damaging to children and should not be freely available in the public school library system.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Symbiote 4y ago
  Have you read the book? I skimmed (very quickly) through it. The "graphic depictions" of naked people are very tame. It seems reasonable for teenagers to read this. There's a picture of a boy's drawing of a naked woman, in thick pen. There's a scene where two adolescents are shirtless and close in bed. There's a picture of penises, but they boys are ~8 years old or so. It's a bad memory from childhood.
- chmod775 4y ago
  > This is a graphic novel, in other words graphic depictions of sexuality/sex. Here's a sample page from Amazon's preview: https://i.imgur.com/dFHyQ4d.png https://i.imgur.com/dFHyQ4d.png I don't think even at the height of puberty could I have managed to masturbate to that, even assuming it actually contained drawings meant to arouse. The word graphic doesn't always imply sexually explicit. In "graphic novel" it merely means "drawn". > This kind of material is damaging to children Citation needed. The sight of naked humans being damaging to children may just be an invention by America's Bible Belt. In other words damaged adults projecting and being made uncomfortable themselves by proxy, not realizing their children are not yet damaged the same way they are. Making the human body taboo is how you raise another generation who apparently gets uncontrollably aroused by the mere sight of some skin and thus is made uncomfortable by it. I believe intellectually everyone knows this isn't the natural state of things, but rather something instilled by culture and upbringing? Others, both within and without the US, seem to be doing fine raising their children sans this thinking. One may even argue other approaches yield more competent adults.

jleyank 4y ago

https://medium.com/la-mia-biblioteca/where-they-burn-books-they-will-ultimately-burn-people-also-34b835d13b7d https://medium.com/la-mia-biblioteca/where-they-burn-books-t... These types would “remove” people as they remove books if the could. Keep history in mind. “The other” is a powerful and commonly used boogeyman which should be fought. There’s also https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-nie... Doesn’t matter where on the political or social spectrum one sits, monocultures aren’t good or healthy.

readthenotes1 4y ago

Reminds me of the story of the lady who got her mic turned off at a school board meeting after reading from a book in the library. The head of the school board chided her for reading the material while a child was in the room.