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Filtering content for children is not 'banning books'. By this definition, The Bible is the most "banned book" across the country, even though it's probably th

Filtering content for children is not 'banning books'. By this definition, The Bible is the most "banned book" across the country, even though it's probably the most consequential piece of literature ever written. This continuous doublespeak is even more humorous considering the site has actual shopping links to every 'banned book'.

m00x 10mo ago
Agreed, this is very politically charged. The method for qualifying a "banned book" is not described in detail and seems to only include those with a political lean, when there are obviously other books that aren't shown to kids that didn't make the list.
- giraffe_lady 10mo ago
  The system they're using is in their faq, in detail. Basically it is books that were previously available but have been removed due to external pressure.
  - m00x 10mo ago
    So it's not really fair to say it's a ban. You can have the book at school, but the school library won't have it. Would you agree for the school to have the book "The Passing of the Great Race", a famously racist and white supremacist book in your school library?
    - macintux 10mo ago
      For high school students, sure. I'd be very uncomfortable, but know thy enemy.
      - antonymoose 10mo ago
        In my state (South Carolina) this is exactly how they handled it. If a parent or activist wishes see a book banned it goes through reviewed based on school-level appropriateness. A book like The Kite Runner with its deprecations of Bacha Bazi are a bit rough for a 5th grader but considered acceptable for a High Schooler given the cultural significance of the work.
    - giraffe_lady 10mo ago
      I don't know, I didn't come in here with particularly strong feelings about what "ban" means or should mean re books but people keep coming at me extremely hot for saying not much about it at all. Personally I think using banned for "actively prevented from accessing in ways other books are not" makes plenty of sense even if you can effectively circumvent those attempts somehow. The strict meaning that people seem to want to apply in here does not seem particularly useful to me. Almost no books have ever been banned by that standard, but there is a clearly organized movement in the US to remove all reference to queerness from public life. Flexible on nomenclature here but that context is very important.
      - khaki54 10mo ago
        It may seem like an attack on queer books, but as far as I can tell none of the straight books seem to be trying to explain how minors should get access to adult dating apps to meet older men, or showing obscene graphical depictions of sodomy involving children. I think if librarians were buying "straight" books with the same explicit and adult content and putting them in elementary, middle, and high schools, the same parents would be complaining about those too.
        jkestner 10mo ago
        What queer book with that content was in libraries?
        LexiMax 10mo ago
        I suspect that whatever example they had in mind, it's a passage that is descriptive of someone's personal experience while not being prescriptive in telling the reader step-by-step how to follow in their footsteps.
        deleted 10mo ago
        [deleted]
        gumby271 10mo ago
    - everybodyknows 10mo ago
      As cryptically referred to by the villain in the perhaps most famous of American novels. Credit Wikipedia: > Grant became a part of popular culture in 1920s America. Author F. Scott Fitzgerald made a lightly disguised reference to Grant in The Great Gatsby. In the book, the character Tom Buchanan reads a book called The Rise of the Colored Empires by "this man Goddard", a combination of Grant and his colleague Lothrop Stoddard. ... > ... "Everybody ought to read it", the character said. "The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be — will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved."
    - jfindper 10mo ago
      >You can have the book at school, but the school library won't have it. False.
    - mcphage 10mo ago
      Is it currently there now?
    - UncleMeat 10mo ago
      Good things are good and bad things are bad. I have absolutely no problem saying that bigots who insist that no books containing LGBT characters appear in libraries are bad people while also thinking that The Turner Diaries shouldn't be in public schools.
      - 46996435797643 10mo ago
        [flagged]
        LexiMax 10mo ago
        A very commonly banned book here in the United States - at least historically - is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. There's a specific chapter that my mind has returned to, again and again, in situations where anonymous cowards issue threats from behind the veil of anonymity: https://americanliterature.com/author/mark-twain/book/the-adventures-of-huckleberry-finn/chapter-22 https://americanliterature.com/author/mark-twain/book/the-ad... The older I get, the more I think that there is wisdom in the words of Col. Sherburn on the cowardice of the average person. By the way, I wonder if HN is aware of whose alt account this is. If they are, I wonder if they would punish the original poster for issuing threats on an anonymous account. I...admit that I don't have high hopes, but I live to be surprised.
      - pfannkuchen 10mo ago
        > who insist that no books containing LGBT characters appear in libraries Is this a common stance? I thought it was more like, no books glorifying LGBT lifestyle or teaching it as if it’s not controversial and it’s just a fact of life (as proponents sincerely believe, of course, not saying no one is thinks it is a fact of life, that’s just the part that is controversial). I understand disagreeing with that, but it isn’t the same as opponents pushing for zero gay/etc characters period, right? I haven’t been following this topic too closely though so I might be missing what people are screeching about on the right today.
        LexiMax 10mo ago
- tastyfreeze 10mo ago
  Without the banning method this is just click bait to sell books. Every book on a ban list is still easily available. It would be weird for something as explicit as a kama sutra book to be found in an elementary school library. It might be appropriate at a high school library. But any kid at any time can go to a public library or book store and find just such a book. The parents get to decide when sexually explicit material is appropriate for their children. Schools do the same by proxy. There is nothing wrong with this setup.
  - 6510 10mo ago
    1984
    - tastyfreeze 10mo ago
      Not sure what your point is. 1984 is available at my middle school, high school and public libraries and every book store. Not available at elementary schools because it is generally above grade level.
      - beardyw 10mo ago
        I don't know what the poster's intention was but perhaps "Fahrenheit 451" would have made the point more clearly?
        tastyfreeze 10mo ago
        Nobody is going around hunting for banned books in all formats and destroying them let alone a government agency for that purpose.
        6510 10mo ago
        True but the internet is scrubbed all the time and we will never know how many people know not to mention things.
      - 10mo ago
_vqpz 10mo ago
ban to forbid (= refuse to allow) something, especially officially
- m00x 10mo ago
  If you look at their definition, it's when the book is "missing" from the book selection, so it's essentially filtered out from a curated list, not an outright ban. The school won't kick you out for having the book, but they won't buy it.
  - jfindper 10mo ago
    >The school won't kick you out for having the book, but they won't buy it. You keep saying this all over this thread, can you please tell me how you are reaching this conclusion? I have linked you to at least one entire state (covering 40+ school districts) where what you are saying is completely false. Typically, if a school bans something, it also means that the children are not allowed to bring the banned thing onto the school premises.
  - cycomanic 10mo ago
    Your quotes around the missing do a lot of work here. From the FAQ: > PEN America defines a school book ban as any action taken against a book based on its content and as a result of parent or community challenges, administrative decisions, or in response to direct or threatened action by lawmakers or other governmental officials, that leads to a book being either completely removed from availability to students, or where access to a book is restricted or diminished. Diminished access is a form of censorship and has educational implications that extend beyond a title’s removal. Accessibility forms the core of PEN America’s definition of a school book ban and emphasizes the multiple ways book bans infringe on the rights of students, professional educators, and authors. It is important to recognize that books available in schools, whether in a school or classroom library, or as part of a curriculum, were selected by librarians and educators as part of the educational offerings to students. Book bans occur when those choices are overridden by school boards, administrators, teachers, or politicians, on the basis of a particular book’s content. In particular it's when the decisions of the professionals are being overruled for political purposes. It is particularly clear when reading the list, many of these books are children/young adults books which have won highest national and international awards, but somehow they are "age inappropriate"?
burkaman 10mo ago
Why would the Bible meet that definition? It is generally available for children in school libraries.
- hylaride 10mo ago
  Separation of church and state, especially when schools don’t allow alternative books (eg in some Bible Belt areas). Also, the bible does have violence, sex (including rape and incest), etc.
  - burkaman 10mo ago
    I understand there are reasons it could be banned, but I'm saying that in reality it is not. It is widely available in elementary and middle school libraries.
    - hylaride 10mo ago
      There have been many attempts to ban it, but a backlash usually results in its reinstatement. IIRC there are often cases where questionable verses are blotted out or it's only the new testament (which is in general less "graphic"), but it really depends on the jurisdiction.
  - stvltvs 10mo ago
    Except for one case in Texas that made a splash in the news last year, I didn't find other cases of the Bible being banned from school libraries. Did I miss something? If not, it would make sense that Texas made the news because it's out of the ordinary.
- legitster 10mo ago
  I think OP is over-generalizing. The Bible is the most banned book around the world, but definitely not in the US.
rpsw 10mo ago
Filtering content sounds like doublespeak for banning to me. The title is Top 52 Banned Books: The Most Banned Books in U.S. Schools, how is it that inaccurate?
- zzzeek 10mo ago
  because that would suggest something very bad is happening in the US and the HN party line is "this is nothing unusual, typical woke [1] panic attack over nothing, now please get back to your HN job of trying to win VC money" [1] https://paulgraham.com/woke.html https://paulgraham.com/woke.html
  - everdrive 10mo ago
    At least in my mind it's unfair because the books are not in any way banned. Anyone can get them. They're more available than perhaps any time in history. The school's decision not to stock them may merit criticism, but the books are hardly "banned" in the traditional sense of the word.
    - tavavex 10mo ago
      99.99% of all books ever are not going to be available at your local library. But we don't consider those to be "banned" either. Here, the difference is that these books were selected and stocked in the past, but were removed due to political pressure - or these books weren't available, but a ruling from up above blanket banned their libraries from being able to consider them in the first place. It's frustrating to see so many people in this comment section equate these two. Just because you can find those books online or elsewhere doesn't mean that the rulings to ban them from school libraries isn't about trying to restrict access to that information.
      - seec 10mo ago
        Yes, there a selection, it reflected the previous political power sensibilities, now the current power doesn't like them that much, so they are not selected. As far as I'm concerned, if we really wanted to do things right, any book in a school library should be no less than a hundred years old. This way, no current politics.
gizzlon 10mo ago
The title is .. "in US schools" . So in this context, yes it is. You can argue banning or filtering some books for kids is the right thing to do, but the obvious question is then: what books and why? Seems like you are fighting a strawman.
bjourne 10mo ago
> Filtering content for children is not 'banning books'. If "filtering content for children" is not banning books, then why is "filtering content for adults" banning books? > By this definition, The Bible is the most "banned book" across the country According to the source the high score is 147. Has the Bible been banned 148 times or more in the US?
chasd00 10mo ago
Yeah this is a strange way to define "banned books". I would think Hustler has to be universally "banned" in all US schools, it has to be in the top 10 most banned books. Or maybe because it's a magazine Hustler doesn't count so the author left it out... The only books I can think of that are actually banned, as in it's against the law to obtain, in the US would be like a B2 bomber capability manual or some other classified documentation.
- btilly 10mo ago
  Given the First Amendment, the only thing that I can think of as banned is copyright violations. The Pentagon Papers case says that, once revealed, classified information can be published. How about dangerous information. Want to know how to make a fusion bomb? Start at https://www.atomicarchive.com/science/fusion/index.html https://www.atomicarchive.com/science/fusion/index.html. More detailed schematics are easy to find. All that said, I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
  - drcongo 10mo ago
    Do most school libraries carry Hustler? Wow.
    - btilly 10mo ago
      No. But carrying it is unlikely to be against the law either.
      - drcongo 10mo ago
        But if they don't carry it, it can't have been removed from the libraries, and therefore couldn't qualify for this list. Weird insight into someone's mind that they would bring up Hustler in a discussion about school libraries.
- jfindper 10mo ago
  >Yeah this is a strange way to define "banned books". Pen clearly defines what they consider a ban. Hustler would not meet the definition (hint: it's not because its a magazine).
slillibri 10mo ago
I expect the bible is in virtually every public and school library in the US. It’s hardly a banned book by any measure.
ofconsequence 10mo ago
> The Bible ... it's probably the most consequential piece of literature ever written. Even if you really dial in your definition of "consequential", ie. the amount of stagnated technological and societal progress and murder as a result of the Bible's adherents' efforts, this seems an absurd claim. Most consequential piece of literature is likely the Plimpton 322 or Euclid's Elements or The Epic Of Gilgamesh. The Bible is an embarrassing footnote.
forzerpendulum 10mo ago
Well, you chose to completely ignore the part about "in U.S. schools." I immediately knew what the title meant. Do you lack the form of common sense that allows understanding implication?

m00x 10mo ago

Agreed, this is very politically charged. The method for qualifying a "banned book" is not described in detail and seems to only include those with a political lean, when there are obviously other books that aren't shown to kids that didn't make the list.

giraffe_lady 10mo ago
The system they're using is in their faq, in detail. Basically it is books that were previously available but have been removed due to external pressure.
- m00x 10mo ago
  So it's not really fair to say it's a ban. You can have the book at school, but the school library won't have it. Would you agree for the school to have the book "The Passing of the Great Race", a famously racist and white supremacist book in your school library?
  - macintux 10mo ago
    For high school students, sure. I'd be very uncomfortable, but know thy enemy.
    - antonymoose 10mo ago
      In my state (South Carolina) this is exactly how they handled it. If a parent or activist wishes see a book banned it goes through reviewed based on school-level appropriateness. A book like The Kite Runner with its deprecations of Bacha Bazi are a bit rough for a 5th grader but considered acceptable for a High Schooler given the cultural significance of the work.
  - giraffe_lady 10mo ago
    I don't know, I didn't come in here with particularly strong feelings about what "ban" means or should mean re books but people keep coming at me extremely hot for saying not much about it at all. Personally I think using banned for "actively prevented from accessing in ways other books are not" makes plenty of sense even if you can effectively circumvent those attempts somehow. The strict meaning that people seem to want to apply in here does not seem particularly useful to me. Almost no books have ever been banned by that standard, but there is a clearly organized movement in the US to remove all reference to queerness from public life. Flexible on nomenclature here but that context is very important.
    - khaki54 10mo ago
      It may seem like an attack on queer books, but as far as I can tell none of the straight books seem to be trying to explain how minors should get access to adult dating apps to meet older men, or showing obscene graphical depictions of sodomy involving children. I think if librarians were buying "straight" books with the same explicit and adult content and putting them in elementary, middle, and high schools, the same parents would be complaining about those too.
      - jkestner 10mo ago
        What queer book with that content was in libraries?
        LexiMax 10mo ago
        I suspect that whatever example they had in mind, it's a passage that is descriptive of someone's personal experience while not being prescriptive in telling the reader step-by-step how to follow in their footsteps.
        deleted 10mo ago
        [deleted]
      - gumby271 10mo ago
  - everybodyknows 10mo ago
    As cryptically referred to by the villain in the perhaps most famous of American novels. Credit Wikipedia: > Grant became a part of popular culture in 1920s America. Author F. Scott Fitzgerald made a lightly disguised reference to Grant in The Great Gatsby. In the book, the character Tom Buchanan reads a book called The Rise of the Colored Empires by "this man Goddard", a combination of Grant and his colleague Lothrop Stoddard. ... > ... "Everybody ought to read it", the character said. "The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be — will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved."
  - jfindper 10mo ago
    >You can have the book at school, but the school library won't have it. False.
  - mcphage 10mo ago
    Is it currently there now?
  - UncleMeat 10mo ago
    Good things are good and bad things are bad. I have absolutely no problem saying that bigots who insist that no books containing LGBT characters appear in libraries are bad people while also thinking that The Turner Diaries shouldn't be in public schools.
    - 46996435797643 10mo ago
      [flagged]
      - LexiMax 10mo ago
        A very commonly banned book here in the United States - at least historically - is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. There's a specific chapter that my mind has returned to, again and again, in situations where anonymous cowards issue threats from behind the veil of anonymity: https://americanliterature.com/author/mark-twain/book/the-adventures-of-huckleberry-finn/chapter-22 https://americanliterature.com/author/mark-twain/book/the-ad... The older I get, the more I think that there is wisdom in the words of Col. Sherburn on the cowardice of the average person. By the way, I wonder if HN is aware of whose alt account this is. If they are, I wonder if they would punish the original poster for issuing threats on an anonymous account. I...admit that I don't have high hopes, but I live to be surprised.
    - pfannkuchen 10mo ago
      > who insist that no books containing LGBT characters appear in libraries Is this a common stance? I thought it was more like, no books glorifying LGBT lifestyle or teaching it as if it’s not controversial and it’s just a fact of life (as proponents sincerely believe, of course, not saying no one is thinks it is a fact of life, that’s just the part that is controversial). I understand disagreeing with that, but it isn’t the same as opponents pushing for zero gay/etc characters period, right? I haven’t been following this topic too closely though so I might be missing what people are screeching about on the right today.
      - LexiMax 10mo ago
tastyfreeze 10mo ago
Without the banning method this is just click bait to sell books. Every book on a ban list is still easily available. It would be weird for something as explicit as a kama sutra book to be found in an elementary school library. It might be appropriate at a high school library. But any kid at any time can go to a public library or book store and find just such a book. The parents get to decide when sexually explicit material is appropriate for their children. Schools do the same by proxy. There is nothing wrong with this setup.
- 6510 10mo ago
  1984
  - tastyfreeze 10mo ago
    Not sure what your point is. 1984 is available at my middle school, high school and public libraries and every book store. Not available at elementary schools because it is generally above grade level.
    - beardyw 10mo ago
      I don't know what the poster's intention was but perhaps "Fahrenheit 451" would have made the point more clearly?
      - tastyfreeze 10mo ago
        Nobody is going around hunting for banned books in all formats and destroying them let alone a government agency for that purpose.
        6510 10mo ago
        True but the internet is scrubbed all the time and we will never know how many people know not to mention things.
    - 10mo ago

_vqpz 10mo ago

ban to forbid (= refuse to allow) something, especially officially

m00x 10mo ago
If you look at their definition, it's when the book is "missing" from the book selection, so it's essentially filtered out from a curated list, not an outright ban. The school won't kick you out for having the book, but they won't buy it.
- jfindper 10mo ago
  >The school won't kick you out for having the book, but they won't buy it. You keep saying this all over this thread, can you please tell me how you are reaching this conclusion? I have linked you to at least one entire state (covering 40+ school districts) where what you are saying is completely false. Typically, if a school bans something, it also means that the children are not allowed to bring the banned thing onto the school premises.
- cycomanic 10mo ago
  Your quotes around the missing do a lot of work here. From the FAQ: > PEN America defines a school book ban as any action taken against a book based on its content and as a result of parent or community challenges, administrative decisions, or in response to direct or threatened action by lawmakers or other governmental officials, that leads to a book being either completely removed from availability to students, or where access to a book is restricted or diminished. Diminished access is a form of censorship and has educational implications that extend beyond a title’s removal. Accessibility forms the core of PEN America’s definition of a school book ban and emphasizes the multiple ways book bans infringe on the rights of students, professional educators, and authors. It is important to recognize that books available in schools, whether in a school or classroom library, or as part of a curriculum, were selected by librarians and educators as part of the educational offerings to students. Book bans occur when those choices are overridden by school boards, administrators, teachers, or politicians, on the basis of a particular book’s content. In particular it's when the decisions of the professionals are being overruled for political purposes. It is particularly clear when reading the list, many of these books are children/young adults books which have won highest national and international awards, but somehow they are "age inappropriate"?

burkaman 10mo ago

Why would the Bible meet that definition? It is generally available for children in school libraries.

hylaride 10mo ago
Separation of church and state, especially when schools don’t allow alternative books (eg in some Bible Belt areas). Also, the bible does have violence, sex (including rape and incest), etc.
- burkaman 10mo ago
  I understand there are reasons it could be banned, but I'm saying that in reality it is not. It is widely available in elementary and middle school libraries.
  - hylaride 10mo ago
    There have been many attempts to ban it, but a backlash usually results in its reinstatement. IIRC there are often cases where questionable verses are blotted out or it's only the new testament (which is in general less "graphic"), but it really depends on the jurisdiction.
- stvltvs 10mo ago
  Except for one case in Texas that made a splash in the news last year, I didn't find other cases of the Bible being banned from school libraries. Did I miss something? If not, it would make sense that Texas made the news because it's out of the ordinary.
legitster 10mo ago
I think OP is over-generalizing. The Bible is the most banned book around the world, but definitely not in the US.

rpsw 10mo ago

Filtering content sounds like doublespeak for banning to me. The title is Top 52 Banned Books: The Most Banned Books in U.S. Schools, how is it that inaccurate?

zzzeek 10mo ago
because that would suggest something very bad is happening in the US and the HN party line is "this is nothing unusual, typical woke [1] panic attack over nothing, now please get back to your HN job of trying to win VC money" [1] https://paulgraham.com/woke.html https://paulgraham.com/woke.html
- everdrive 10mo ago
  At least in my mind it's unfair because the books are not in any way banned. Anyone can get them. They're more available than perhaps any time in history. The school's decision not to stock them may merit criticism, but the books are hardly "banned" in the traditional sense of the word.
  - tavavex 10mo ago
    99.99% of all books ever are not going to be available at your local library. But we don't consider those to be "banned" either. Here, the difference is that these books were selected and stocked in the past, but were removed due to political pressure - or these books weren't available, but a ruling from up above blanket banned their libraries from being able to consider them in the first place. It's frustrating to see so many people in this comment section equate these two. Just because you can find those books online or elsewhere doesn't mean that the rulings to ban them from school libraries isn't about trying to restrict access to that information.
    - seec 10mo ago
      Yes, there a selection, it reflected the previous political power sensibilities, now the current power doesn't like them that much, so they are not selected. As far as I'm concerned, if we really wanted to do things right, any book in a school library should be no less than a hundred years old. This way, no current politics.

gizzlon 10mo ago

The title is .. "in US schools" . So in this context, yes it is. You can argue banning or filtering some books for kids is the right thing to do, but the obvious question is then: what books and why? Seems like you are fighting a strawman.

bjourne 10mo ago

> Filtering content for children is not 'banning books'. If "filtering content for children" is not banning books, then why is "filtering content for adults" banning books? > By this definition, The Bible is the most "banned book" across the country According to the source the high score is 147. Has the Bible been banned 148 times or more in the US?

chasd00 10mo ago

Yeah this is a strange way to define "banned books". I would think Hustler has to be universally "banned" in all US schools, it has to be in the top 10 most banned books. Or maybe because it's a magazine Hustler doesn't count so the author left it out... The only books I can think of that are actually banned, as in it's against the law to obtain, in the US would be like a B2 bomber capability manual or some other classified documentation.

btilly 10mo ago
Given the First Amendment, the only thing that I can think of as banned is copyright violations. The Pentagon Papers case says that, once revealed, classified information can be published. How about dangerous information. Want to know how to make a fusion bomb? Start at https://www.atomicarchive.com/science/fusion/index.html https://www.atomicarchive.com/science/fusion/index.html. More detailed schematics are easy to find. All that said, I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
- drcongo 10mo ago
  Do most school libraries carry Hustler? Wow.
  - btilly 10mo ago
    No. But carrying it is unlikely to be against the law either.
    - drcongo 10mo ago
      But if they don't carry it, it can't have been removed from the libraries, and therefore couldn't qualify for this list. Weird insight into someone's mind that they would bring up Hustler in a discussion about school libraries.
jfindper 10mo ago
>Yeah this is a strange way to define "banned books". Pen clearly defines what they consider a ban. Hustler would not meet the definition (hint: it's not because its a magazine).

slillibri 10mo ago

I expect the bible is in virtually every public and school library in the US. It’s hardly a banned book by any measure.

ofconsequence 10mo ago

> The Bible ... it's probably the most consequential piece of literature ever written. Even if you really dial in your definition of "consequential", ie. the amount of stagnated technological and societal progress and murder as a result of the Bible's adherents' efforts, this seems an absurd claim. Most consequential piece of literature is likely the Plimpton 322 or Euclid's Elements or The Epic Of Gilgamesh. The Bible is an embarrassing footnote.

forzerpendulum 10mo ago

Well, you chose to completely ignore the part about "in U.S. schools." I immediately knew what the title meant. Do you lack the form of common sense that allows understanding implication?