5 ms·

US public schools banned 10k books in most recent academic year

23 points by TowerTall 2y ago

pjc50 2y ago
[flagged]
- EduardoBautista 2y ago
  No one would bat an eye at banning films or websites from schools that have the content that some of these books have. But because, for some reason, anything that is in text on paper form appears to be more "intellectual" and culturally valuable, it's viewed as a form of oppression. I am not saying I support it, I just don't understand why books are put on a pedestal compared to all other forms of media.
  - chmod775 2y ago
    > No one would bat an eye at banning films or websites from schools that have the content that some of these books have. Only some of these books? It's already hard to defend censorship with saying "it deserved to be censored", but it's even harder if you walk it back to "well, at least some of it deserved to be censored".
    - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
      Out of 10,000 books, I expect that there is at least one that can fairly be labeled as "no really, that's inappropriate for children". Out of 10,000 books, I expect that there is at least one that can fairly be labeled as "what reactionary weirdo wanted that banned?" Not everything is appropriate for children. That's just the reality of what children are. Not everything that someone protests (or even a bunch of people protest) is inappropriate. That's just the reality of what grownups are. So, yes, it's really easy to defend (some) censorship for children. It's hard to defend all censorship that claims to be "for children".
  - autoexec 2y ago
    I think there's a pretty big difference between seeing something recorded or reproduced on screen in HD with audio and having that same thing be described in text. You can explore this yourself by reading something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire and then seeking out video of the event, seeing the bodies and hearing the screams.
  - bloak 2y ago
    Another example of the same phenomenon, perhaps, is the respect given to people who have written a novel compared to the respect given to people who have done journalism. Since I like novels I am not particularly annoyed by this phenomenon, but it does seem strange.
- torlok 2y ago
  It's not remarkable. The vocal ones are mostly right-wingers who vote in the people who initiate and support these bans.
  - spwa4 2y ago
    When I was in high school, I always found the problem to be teachers who were ... lacking in education (due to the compensation available for such jobs). There were at least a few, including the school principal, who were working against this, but against a large majority of teachers bringing in their ideology it worked, at best, only to prevent the worst.
- somedude895 2y ago
  These are public, tax-funded schools we're talking about here. Parents who really want their 10 year old to learn about BDSM practices or breast removal surgeries can still get them those books on their own dime.
  - autoexec 2y ago
    > Parents who really want their 10 year old to learn about BDSM practices or breast removal surgeries can still get them those books on their own dime. In your option was Roots (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_The_Saga_of_an_American_Family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_The_Saga_of_an_American...) teaching 10 years olds about BDSM practices or breast removal surgeries? That book was banned.
    - whycombagator 2y ago
      Never read it and not familiar with it. From the Wikipedia link: > The toubob humiliate Kunta and the other captives by stripping them naked, examining them in every orifice and burning them with hot irons.
    - Johanx64 2y ago
      The article says they banned "more than" 10000 books, and you mentioned one. Thus the rest of 9999 books could easily have many on the subject.
      - autoexec 2y ago
        The vast majority of those 9999 books could just as easily (and far more likely than not) contain zero mention of those two subjects entirely. No, somedude895 was just using extreme examples without evidence or context to justify the banning of more than 10,000 books as though even if one or two out of the more than 10,000 books did somehow happen to mention those topics that it would justify such ridiculous censorship.
- sickofparadox 2y ago
  Always remarkable that the "we don't want to groom your kids" crowd complains when people try to stop them from giving children pornography.
  - spaceribs 2y ago
    [flagged]
akflh 2y ago
[flagged]
- spaceribs 2y ago
  Putting aside sexual orientation for the moment, are you saying children under 12 cannot develop and explore their own gender identity?
  - surgical_fire 2y ago
    When I was under 12 I was completely unprepared and incapable to handling this kind of information. My concerns were playing videogames, watching cartoons, and playing soccer. I didn't think at all about sexuality, much less gender anything. I have no idea what kind of damage to my idea of self this kind of information being pushed onto me would have caused, especially when at that time I was the bullied kid for being short and nerdy, girls especially would always mock me for that reason. Maybe it would have caused none. I always saw school as lame, I did the bare minimum and always had good grades. Maybe it would have been a class that I just didn't pay any attention to. It was a different time back then though. The Internet only became a thing when I was already 13, and at that point things had changed quite a bit for me. Kids these days seem to be exposed to some... er... "objectionable" material a lot earlier. Now that I am a father, I do worry about what kind of information my daughter will receive once she grows up and goes to school. Not sure how people deal with this sort of stuff nowadays.
    - spaceribs 2y ago
      We all have our own individual experience when we pass into adulthood, but keep in mind there was a time that being a "nerd" was far less socially acceptable to your parents growing up than when you were growing up. When I was a kid, a parent on the radio said this about gay marriage: "I am the gatekeeper for what is socially acceptable for my child." I asked my Dad about that statement, and he said pretty clearly "That's an unrealistic expectation of what parenthood is. You're more of a bodyguard or secret service. You can listen and provide context, do your best to stop your child from being put into danger, but you cannot stop, control or manage a child's, much less a teenagers, world experience."
hereme888 2y ago
One person's argument sounds right, until another comes to cross-examine. This article is one-sided and goes to great lengths to hide the reason those books were banned in schools.
- torlok 2y ago
  There's no good reason. This is just more of "don't say gay" nonsense. It's meant to pull people into a culture war so that politicians can win points without solving any real issues.
- Freak_NL 2y ago
  The article is part of ongoing reporting on the issue of book bans in the US. Previous articles in the Guardian (but also other news sources) have focussed on specific legislation already. If you want to find out more about the reasons books are banned, you could start here on the website of PEN America: https://pen.org/book-bans/ https://pen.org/book-bans/ Dig in a little, and you can find out how the various state laws are used, like Tennessee's HB 843 which effectively bans any book containing nudity in school libraries for anyone under 18. The reason these books are banned is not explicitly mentioned in those laws of course.
  - autoexec 2y ago
    > Tennessee's HB 843 which effectively bans any book containing nudity for anyone under 18. It also forbids "sexual excitement", "sexual conduct", and "excess violence" which means that it bans the bible, books on mythology, every single history textbook, just about anything Shakespeare ever wrote, and pretty much any book with a character who has a love interest.
chmod775 2y ago
I'm fine with the idea that some books aren't appropriate to be read by younger people, but a lot of those bans seem to be about wanting children to not be intellectually aware of anything not sanctioned by the board of censors (Really? Banning a book about that gay couple of penguins at New York's Zoo?). Every book removed/withheld should be replaced by a volume explaining why it was withheld, in terms a child can understand. Some of these bans wouldn't have happened because even children could've seen how full of shit some adults are.
- Johanx64 2y ago
  >intellectually aware of anything not sanctioned by the board of censors You are aware that this already happens without bans, right? The ultimate board of censors is the school and library staff that decides on your behalf what kind of books you and your kids should be exposed to. It's not like the school library is some sort of the Great Library of Alexandria and the censors came to take out the "good stuff". What happens is that the library staff is in position to censor and proselytize their ideologies and weird secular religions. These bans really are aimed at library staff than restricting childrens access to read whatever they want.
  - chmod775 2y ago
    Good point. I'm used to most libraries being part of a national system of libraries, which will get you volumes shipped from another one if they don't have it there. Local curation doesn't mean much since your main interface to those libraries nowadays is a digital one that has pretty much any physical media with an ISBN in it, from where you can request non-locally-available media. Maybe the states operate differently and (school) libraries are more independent. Most schools here don't have their own library at all and instead rely on the nearest public one...
  - orwin 2y ago
    If a book isn't taken out of the shelves for two-three years, I would be very surprised it stays there. Where I worked, it would have been sent to the reserve, and only be out for some events (for our 'burned books' week we had 'all is quiet on the western front' in multiple languages, including German, and other book burned by Fascisti and nazis, and that's how I discovered this masterpiece). I highly doubt school libraries function any differently. Every year you receive a magazine with books who received prizes/recommendations, you move older books that aren't read to the reserve and command new ones. In my country, you especially have the 'highschooler prize' (not sure how to translate it), which is voted upon by students from 50 different highschool accross the country, and the winners are always recommended by the magazine. My advice would be, rather than preventing librarians to do their job, maybe write better books? Prevent new commands rather than remove already existing books? Because putting 'Go Tell It on the Mountain' on the shelves isn't ideology, just good taste. Removing it is. What really grind my gear is that I would bet censors don't read or review books. Book reviewing was a staple of my curriculum from 11 to 16, so I imagine it isn't hard. Censors should have to write at least a book review a year, graded (not to prevent them to censor, just publish the grade so we could see their reading level).
spaceribs 2y ago
Sex is all religious fundamentalists can wrap their heads around, because their small, rigid, hetero-normative worldview cannot condone or understand the spectrum of unique beauty that is gender identity. The structure and forms of communication kids have at their fingertips these days provides plenty of ways to explore these topics, unfortunately mixed in with low quality or possibly dangerous content. I think those who push back hard against these topics are accelerating a counter-reaction, and I'm here for it. This is a weird thing to obsess against.
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  I am not at all a religious fundamentalist. Actually an atheist, and I am all support for people being whatever they want to be. It's your life, it is your right to be happy the way you want to be, gender identity and all. But I really don't want that being pushed into my daughter at a young age, not until she can mount her own idea of what she is. Much in the same way I don't want religion being pushed into her from a young age, not until she can have an idea of how she views the world.
  - spaceribs 2y ago
    In the other direction, have you thought about if the gender binary is being pushed on your child?
    - surgical_fire 2y ago
      Yes, of course. But some things requires being practical. The girl has to be dressed. She needs her hair combed and styled. I buy her toys. And yes, it is all very cute and girly. But she is also still a baby, and the wife would hang me by the balls if I bought our baby daughter boy's clothes. Not that I would anyway. It melts my heart seeing her in her tiny little dresses, with cute headbands and all. The practical part is that this is the societal default. And while she is a child there will be many benefits in just following that. As I said, she will have space to explore themes of sexuality and gender once her age is more suitable. Until then, she is the little princess.
roshin 2y ago
I'm not sure of the details for this set of "banned" books, but I recall the previous "scandal". It ends up that school libraries have limited space, so some books were removed in favor of others. The media claimed that the removed books were banned even though kids were allowed to read their copy, bring their copy with them to school and even write a book report on them. So I would take this article with a grain of salt.
- chomp 2y ago
  Why you trying to run interference for this article? A book ban can take many forms, it can be diminished access, it can be explicit removal, it can be shuffled to a back room to make room for other content. What is common though, is administration, the school board, or legislature being the impetus in the decision of the removal of content. > The media claimed that the removed books were banned even though kids were allowed to read their copy This statement is why I’m thinking you’re not arguing in good faith.
glimshe 2y ago
Parents are free to buy used books or borrow books for their kids in the local library. My school growing up didn't even have a library, so most of my reading came from used books. Schools do well in steering cleer of controversial topics, I don't think it's their job to preach politics or religion.

23 points by TowerTall 2y ago

pjc50 2y ago

[flagged]

EduardoBautista 2y ago
No one would bat an eye at banning films or websites from schools that have the content that some of these books have. But because, for some reason, anything that is in text on paper form appears to be more "intellectual" and culturally valuable, it's viewed as a form of oppression. I am not saying I support it, I just don't understand why books are put on a pedestal compared to all other forms of media.
- chmod775 2y ago
  > No one would bat an eye at banning films or websites from schools that have the content that some of these books have. Only some of these books? It's already hard to defend censorship with saying "it deserved to be censored", but it's even harder if you walk it back to "well, at least some of it deserved to be censored".
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    Out of 10,000 books, I expect that there is at least one that can fairly be labeled as "no really, that's inappropriate for children". Out of 10,000 books, I expect that there is at least one that can fairly be labeled as "what reactionary weirdo wanted that banned?" Not everything is appropriate for children. That's just the reality of what children are. Not everything that someone protests (or even a bunch of people protest) is inappropriate. That's just the reality of what grownups are. So, yes, it's really easy to defend (some) censorship for children. It's hard to defend all censorship that claims to be "for children".
- autoexec 2y ago
  I think there's a pretty big difference between seeing something recorded or reproduced on screen in HD with audio and having that same thing be described in text. You can explore this yourself by reading something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Station_nightclub_fire and then seeking out video of the event, seeing the bodies and hearing the screams.
- bloak 2y ago
  Another example of the same phenomenon, perhaps, is the respect given to people who have written a novel compared to the respect given to people who have done journalism. Since I like novels I am not particularly annoyed by this phenomenon, but it does seem strange.
torlok 2y ago
It's not remarkable. The vocal ones are mostly right-wingers who vote in the people who initiate and support these bans.
- spwa4 2y ago
  When I was in high school, I always found the problem to be teachers who were ... lacking in education (due to the compensation available for such jobs). There were at least a few, including the school principal, who were working against this, but against a large majority of teachers bringing in their ideology it worked, at best, only to prevent the worst.
somedude895 2y ago
These are public, tax-funded schools we're talking about here. Parents who really want their 10 year old to learn about BDSM practices or breast removal surgeries can still get them those books on their own dime.
- autoexec 2y ago
  > Parents who really want their 10 year old to learn about BDSM practices or breast removal surgeries can still get them those books on their own dime. In your option was Roots (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_The_Saga_of_an_American_Family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_The_Saga_of_an_American...) teaching 10 years olds about BDSM practices or breast removal surgeries? That book was banned.
  - whycombagator 2y ago
    Never read it and not familiar with it. From the Wikipedia link: > The toubob humiliate Kunta and the other captives by stripping them naked, examining them in every orifice and burning them with hot irons.
  - Johanx64 2y ago
    The article says they banned "more than" 10000 books, and you mentioned one. Thus the rest of 9999 books could easily have many on the subject.
    - autoexec 2y ago
      The vast majority of those 9999 books could just as easily (and far more likely than not) contain zero mention of those two subjects entirely. No, somedude895 was just using extreme examples without evidence or context to justify the banning of more than 10,000 books as though even if one or two out of the more than 10,000 books did somehow happen to mention those topics that it would justify such ridiculous censorship.
sickofparadox 2y ago
Always remarkable that the "we don't want to groom your kids" crowd complains when people try to stop them from giving children pornography.
- spaceribs 2y ago
  [flagged]

akflh 2y ago

[flagged]

spaceribs 2y ago
Putting aside sexual orientation for the moment, are you saying children under 12 cannot develop and explore their own gender identity?
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  When I was under 12 I was completely unprepared and incapable to handling this kind of information. My concerns were playing videogames, watching cartoons, and playing soccer. I didn't think at all about sexuality, much less gender anything. I have no idea what kind of damage to my idea of self this kind of information being pushed onto me would have caused, especially when at that time I was the bullied kid for being short and nerdy, girls especially would always mock me for that reason. Maybe it would have caused none. I always saw school as lame, I did the bare minimum and always had good grades. Maybe it would have been a class that I just didn't pay any attention to. It was a different time back then though. The Internet only became a thing when I was already 13, and at that point things had changed quite a bit for me. Kids these days seem to be exposed to some... er... "objectionable" material a lot earlier. Now that I am a father, I do worry about what kind of information my daughter will receive once she grows up and goes to school. Not sure how people deal with this sort of stuff nowadays.
  - spaceribs 2y ago
    We all have our own individual experience when we pass into adulthood, but keep in mind there was a time that being a "nerd" was far less socially acceptable to your parents growing up than when you were growing up. When I was a kid, a parent on the radio said this about gay marriage: "I am the gatekeeper for what is socially acceptable for my child." I asked my Dad about that statement, and he said pretty clearly "That's an unrealistic expectation of what parenthood is. You're more of a bodyguard or secret service. You can listen and provide context, do your best to stop your child from being put into danger, but you cannot stop, control or manage a child's, much less a teenagers, world experience."

hereme888 2y ago

One person's argument sounds right, until another comes to cross-examine. This article is one-sided and goes to great lengths to hide the reason those books were banned in schools.

torlok 2y ago
There's no good reason. This is just more of "don't say gay" nonsense. It's meant to pull people into a culture war so that politicians can win points without solving any real issues.
Freak_NL 2y ago
The article is part of ongoing reporting on the issue of book bans in the US. Previous articles in the Guardian (but also other news sources) have focussed on specific legislation already. If you want to find out more about the reasons books are banned, you could start here on the website of PEN America: https://pen.org/book-bans/ https://pen.org/book-bans/ Dig in a little, and you can find out how the various state laws are used, like Tennessee's HB 843 which effectively bans any book containing nudity in school libraries for anyone under 18. The reason these books are banned is not explicitly mentioned in those laws of course.
- autoexec 2y ago
  > Tennessee's HB 843 which effectively bans any book containing nudity for anyone under 18. It also forbids "sexual excitement", "sexual conduct", and "excess violence" which means that it bans the bible, books on mythology, every single history textbook, just about anything Shakespeare ever wrote, and pretty much any book with a character who has a love interest.

chmod775 2y ago

I'm fine with the idea that some books aren't appropriate to be read by younger people, but a lot of those bans seem to be about wanting children to not be intellectually aware of anything not sanctioned by the board of censors (Really? Banning a book about that gay couple of penguins at New York's Zoo?). Every book removed/withheld should be replaced by a volume explaining why it was withheld, in terms a child can understand. Some of these bans wouldn't have happened because even children could've seen how full of shit some adults are.

Johanx64 2y ago
>intellectually aware of anything not sanctioned by the board of censors You are aware that this already happens without bans, right? The ultimate board of censors is the school and library staff that decides on your behalf what kind of books you and your kids should be exposed to. It's not like the school library is some sort of the Great Library of Alexandria and the censors came to take out the "good stuff". What happens is that the library staff is in position to censor and proselytize their ideologies and weird secular religions. These bans really are aimed at library staff than restricting childrens access to read whatever they want.
- chmod775 2y ago
  Good point. I'm used to most libraries being part of a national system of libraries, which will get you volumes shipped from another one if they don't have it there. Local curation doesn't mean much since your main interface to those libraries nowadays is a digital one that has pretty much any physical media with an ISBN in it, from where you can request non-locally-available media. Maybe the states operate differently and (school) libraries are more independent. Most schools here don't have their own library at all and instead rely on the nearest public one...
- orwin 2y ago
  If a book isn't taken out of the shelves for two-three years, I would be very surprised it stays there. Where I worked, it would have been sent to the reserve, and only be out for some events (for our 'burned books' week we had 'all is quiet on the western front' in multiple languages, including German, and other book burned by Fascisti and nazis, and that's how I discovered this masterpiece). I highly doubt school libraries function any differently. Every year you receive a magazine with books who received prizes/recommendations, you move older books that aren't read to the reserve and command new ones. In my country, you especially have the 'highschooler prize' (not sure how to translate it), which is voted upon by students from 50 different highschool accross the country, and the winners are always recommended by the magazine. My advice would be, rather than preventing librarians to do their job, maybe write better books? Prevent new commands rather than remove already existing books? Because putting 'Go Tell It on the Mountain' on the shelves isn't ideology, just good taste. Removing it is. What really grind my gear is that I would bet censors don't read or review books. Book reviewing was a staple of my curriculum from 11 to 16, so I imagine it isn't hard. Censors should have to write at least a book review a year, graded (not to prevent them to censor, just publish the grade so we could see their reading level).

spaceribs 2y ago

Sex is all religious fundamentalists can wrap their heads around, because their small, rigid, hetero-normative worldview cannot condone or understand the spectrum of unique beauty that is gender identity. The structure and forms of communication kids have at their fingertips these days provides plenty of ways to explore these topics, unfortunately mixed in with low quality or possibly dangerous content. I think those who push back hard against these topics are accelerating a counter-reaction, and I'm here for it. This is a weird thing to obsess against.

surgical_fire 2y ago
I am not at all a religious fundamentalist. Actually an atheist, and I am all support for people being whatever they want to be. It's your life, it is your right to be happy the way you want to be, gender identity and all. But I really don't want that being pushed into my daughter at a young age, not until she can mount her own idea of what she is. Much in the same way I don't want religion being pushed into her from a young age, not until she can have an idea of how she views the world.
- spaceribs 2y ago
  In the other direction, have you thought about if the gender binary is being pushed on your child?
  - surgical_fire 2y ago
    Yes, of course. But some things requires being practical. The girl has to be dressed. She needs her hair combed and styled. I buy her toys. And yes, it is all very cute and girly. But she is also still a baby, and the wife would hang me by the balls if I bought our baby daughter boy's clothes. Not that I would anyway. It melts my heart seeing her in her tiny little dresses, with cute headbands and all. The practical part is that this is the societal default. And while she is a child there will be many benefits in just following that. As I said, she will have space to explore themes of sexuality and gender once her age is more suitable. Until then, she is the little princess.

roshin 2y ago

I'm not sure of the details for this set of "banned" books, but I recall the previous "scandal". It ends up that school libraries have limited space, so some books were removed in favor of others. The media claimed that the removed books were banned even though kids were allowed to read their copy, bring their copy with them to school and even write a book report on them. So I would take this article with a grain of salt.

chomp 2y ago
Why you trying to run interference for this article? A book ban can take many forms, it can be diminished access, it can be explicit removal, it can be shuffled to a back room to make room for other content. What is common though, is administration, the school board, or legislature being the impetus in the decision of the removal of content. > The media claimed that the removed books were banned even though kids were allowed to read their copy This statement is why I’m thinking you’re not arguing in good faith.

glimshe 2y ago

Parents are free to buy used books or borrow books for their kids in the local library. My school growing up didn't even have a library, so most of my reading came from used books. Schools do well in steering cleer of controversial topics, I don't think it's their job to preach politics or religion.