4 ms·

Whenever the topic of “banned books” comes up, a bunch of people argue about whether they should be called “banned”. What I haven’t seen mentioned in these dis

Whenever the topic of “banned books” comes up, a bunch of people argue about whether they should be called “banned”. What I haven’t seen mentioned in these discussions is where the mental association of “banned books” comes from. In America, at least, the school curriculum spends a lot of time talking about dictators. It mentions, numerous times over many years of a child’s life, that something dictators often do is to ban books that could make people question them or that could make people support people the dictator doesn’t like, etc. In all such cases covered in the school curriculum, dictators’ “banned books” are not allowed to be sold in the country at all, and are often destroyed, sometimes even in mass burnings. So, this is the psychological association people typically have with the phrase “banned books”. The news articles over the past X years declaring something like “Government Y bans books!” seem to be leveraging this mental association to give people the emotional impression that Government Y is doing dictatorships things. I think this is why people get annoyed, since not allowing whatever books in the school library is not a dictator thing (okay dictators do it but it’s like drinking milk or being against animal cruelty, it’s not something that is primarily done by dictators). So, when people say that not allowing a book in a school library is a type of ban, they are correct, but they ignore this association which most people have from school.

Levitz 3mo ago
I think it's a little bit naive to think they ignore the association. They know it perfectly well, which is why they are using it. Same thing with concentration camps, same thing with mentions of Gestapo.
glimshe 3mo ago
I've banned a number of books from my household as I don't want my child exposed to them. And I support banning them from the school. Children aren't adults. It's reasonable to expect that education caters to a common denominator within society. I would only have a problem if adults couldn't acquire these books.
- vasco 3mo ago
  To a common denominator yes but if you aim for too much breath then you miss out on a lot of good things if you ban until almost everyone is satisfied. And some fads that get popular to ban things I disagree with like when people said violent games were the reason for violence or that rock and metal music made teenagers angry or that grunge makes them kill themselves. Many times some groups latch on to some popular culture topic as the reason for X pre-existing problem of the world.
- mossTechnician 3mo ago
  Can you list some of these books you want removed from school libraries, along with why?
  - BJones12 3mo ago
    Mein Kampf?
    - croes 3mo ago
      No, make it part of the curriculum. Read it and shown how boring and stupid it is. Demystify such nonsense
      - stronglikedan 3mo ago
        > Read it and shown how boring and stupid it is. Except it's not, or it couldn't have continued to radicalize people to this very day.
        rsynnott 3mo ago
        ... Wait, are you claiming that people are, having not previously been exposed to Nazism, reading it, and going "well, this seems like a pretty good idea really"? I'm fairly sure that's not a thing. No-one's being radicalised by it; rather the only people who really read it are already radicalised, because, otherwise, why would you bother? There may be books which radicalise people. But I'm fairly sure Mein Kampf is not one of them.
like_any_other 3mo ago
[flagged]
Aurornis 3mo ago
The “banned books” theme has become intentionally vague because it has become a marketing tool. That’s how we got to Dua Lipa doing a promotional photo op holding up books that can be purchased on Amazon and delivered to your Kindle to read immediately. Attaching the “banned” word to a book turns the purchase into an act of rebellion and a reason to talk about it, and the marketers are not going to waste that opportunity. That’s why the “banned books” category has been expanded so much to include not only books that governments or corporations have tried to suppress, but also books that some school board in Kansas decided shouldn’t be included in the elementary school library. Unfortunately once a term becomes this overloaded it loses meaning. The original topics of government censorship and oppression get less attention because it’s drowned out by pop stars holding up Margaret Atwood books for photo ops and people buying books on Amazon as a form of slacktivism.
- mossTechnician 3mo ago
  Banning a book in a school district still signifies a form of authoritarianism. If someone is prevented from reading Maus[0] (or finding out they are in a cult, or a victim of domestic abuse), what is the effective difference to them between an authoritarian censoring it at the national level or the local one? [0]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/holocaust-novel-maus-banned-in-tennessee-school-district https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/holocaust-novel-maus-banne...
  - Aurornis 3mo ago
    We "ban" things from school kids all the time, though: Pornography, gambling, smoking, alcohol, R-rated movies. Dua Lipa wasn't doing a photo op with Maus. In the photos she's posing with modern books that are still being promoted by their publishers. I'm not familiar with all of them, but a quick search shows one of them is not appropriate for elementary schools because it includes essays debating which sexual acts are appropriate for feminists to perform and other adult topics. Why is it "authoritarianism" to say that a book like that doesn't belong in my kids' school library? This is a promotional stunt, and I'm surprised more people aren't seeing through it.
frumplestlatz 3mo ago
Declining to buy and stock a book in a school library is not a ban at all. The book can still be printed, bought, and read. It can be brought into that same school, and read there. It’s not banned.
- amanaplanacanal 3mo ago
  If the school declines to put a book in the library, that's not a ban. If people outside the school with power over the school demand that books be removed, that's a ban. The groups demanding books be removed are often not even parents of children in the school. It external parties driving this stuff.
  - frumplestlatz 3mo ago
    Removing a book from the library is not a ban any more than a publisher rejecting a manuscript is a ban. Declining to provide a book is not the same as prohibiting the possession, use, or distribution of a book. As for “external parties”, schools in the US are public institutions.
    - amanaplanacanal 3mo ago
      If rather have folks that are trained in childhood education doing that job than randos.
ozgung 3mo ago
Banning and burning books is from an era when there was no digital publishing. Only way of distributing text/thoughts was by printing press. Today we don't burn books but we constantly ban/shadow ban digital content. This is independent of which country you are from. Corporations do the censorship mostly, in place of the governments. Try writing a Reddit comment opposing mainstream politics. You are only allowed to play in a sandbox. AI shadow-burns your comments automatically and blacklists you if you go out of your human guiderails. No human dictators to blame. So yes, if this is a dictator thing (I think it is), we all live in a kind of modern dictatorship.
citadel_melon 3mo ago
Is there a valid reason to ban a book? On one hand, I agree there are books which are dangerous. But usually the most dangerous ones are one’s that are more innocuous. I think Catcher in the Rye is dangerous as I have seen grown men misread Holden as a hero to look up to rather than as a flawed mis-socialized man child. On the other hand, I have seen people go too far the other way and say that this book proves that everyone who rejects authority is just a bitter, poorly-socialized man baby. How painfully common these two misreadings provide me reason to ban my children from reading this book outside of my supervision. However, Catcher in the Rye is banned not primarily for these nuanced misreadings, but instead primarily for its profanity. Meaning if we stripped the profanity out, this dangerous book would likely never have been banned in the first place. When you allow these bureaucratic institutions to ban books, they are not going to Socraticly reason through what should and should not be banned in a rigorous manner. They are going to ban books that vibe against their “sensibilities”. Given that we do not have philosopher kings making these ban decisions, the least bad option is to not have any ban. Encourage kids to read broadly and get many different perspectives. More importantly, teach them to act as a scouts who should be proud/excited when they find a new opinion other than their own — and even more excited to find an opinion better than their own to adopt — rather than a warrior who is proud that their previous opinion was “right the whole time”. Sometimes your old opinion was proven right by new information, but that should not make you excited/proud. I’m confident that if all children are taught this scout-mindset that solving the intractable problem of banning books “correctly” would be completely unnecessary. Matter of fact, having children build immunity to bad ideas through learning how to be a “good scout” would be strictly better than making little bubble-boys who are safe from bad ideas only because the thin bubble the “philosopher kings” set up for them. The latter bubble makes children’s immune system unprepared for the real world while the scout mindset helps build hyper-capable, curious, and civically engaged adults.
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
pohl 3mo ago
Is it useful to limit these thoughts to a dictator doing dictator stuff, though? What would be the material difference be between that and operatives of his political party astroturfing local school boards to remove books that teach about the racial history of the country or the existance of trans folk, to make it appear as though the local community decided to do it?
grahamburger 3mo ago
On the other hand, there is a persistent idea that schools are just making curation decisions for the children in their district, and people are calling that book banning. That's what you seem to be suggesting here. In all cases I'm aware of, that's not what's happening either; it's generally a parent, or a small group of parents, generally all from the same religious group and political party, bullying the library or school district into reversing curation decisions they had already made. A small, vocal group ultimately makes decisions about what all the kids in the district can read at school, based on their own religious and political affiliation. That comes much closer to your "banned book mental association" than I think you give it credit for.
- JuniperMesos 3mo ago
  You're more likely to be aware of a library book curation decision where parents are publicly fighting to remove a book the school library management wants to keep; compared to a curation decision where the school library management simply never decides to make a book available to begin with.
  - grahamburger 3mo ago
    Personally, I am OK with the library making their own curation decisions. That's part of how a library functions, I understand that they can't carry everything. I have a problem when zealous parents try to override those decisions, especially when they are motivated by political or religious worldviews. I think the Bible should be in school libraries (and it always has been), but if you're keeping it while removing other books for sex, violence, genocide, pedophilia, rape, homosexuality, or other objectionable things that are also included in the Bible, I think you're being inconsistent and overzealous.
    - JuniperMesos 3mo ago
      Do you think the librarians' choice about what books to stock in their library aren't motivated by political or religious worldviews? What kind of person becomes a school librarian? One motivation is that they want to influence what kinds of written information young people do and do not readily have access to.
iamtheworstdev 3mo ago
book burnings like this? https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/09/gop-lawmakers-hold-symbolic-book-burning-with-flamethrowers/ https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/09/gop-lawmakers-hold-symbo...
tough 3mo ago
One can only wonder how American Schools will talk about the current US Gov and presidents in a few decades...
- suburban_strike 3mo ago
  Given the track we're on, in 80 years Americans will be extinct and whoever's occupying my current space will be living in the Managed Democracy of Monocolored Benetton. Their kids will be taught that's all it ever was since the first colony was established in this otherwise-uninhabited land on Stardate 2302.5.
jt2190 3mo ago
> In America, at least, the school curriculum spends a lot of time talking about dictators. I don’t think this is actually true. What’s your source for this? States set K-12 curriculum.

Levitz 3mo ago

I think it's a little bit naive to think they ignore the association. They know it perfectly well, which is why they are using it. Same thing with concentration camps, same thing with mentions of Gestapo.

glimshe 3mo ago

I've banned a number of books from my household as I don't want my child exposed to them. And I support banning them from the school. Children aren't adults. It's reasonable to expect that education caters to a common denominator within society. I would only have a problem if adults couldn't acquire these books.

vasco 3mo ago
To a common denominator yes but if you aim for too much breath then you miss out on a lot of good things if you ban until almost everyone is satisfied. And some fads that get popular to ban things I disagree with like when people said violent games were the reason for violence or that rock and metal music made teenagers angry or that grunge makes them kill themselves. Many times some groups latch on to some popular culture topic as the reason for X pre-existing problem of the world.
mossTechnician 3mo ago
Can you list some of these books you want removed from school libraries, along with why?
- BJones12 3mo ago
  Mein Kampf?
  - croes 3mo ago
    No, make it part of the curriculum. Read it and shown how boring and stupid it is. Demystify such nonsense
    - stronglikedan 3mo ago
      > Read it and shown how boring and stupid it is. Except it's not, or it couldn't have continued to radicalize people to this very day.
      - rsynnott 3mo ago
        ... Wait, are you claiming that people are, having not previously been exposed to Nazism, reading it, and going "well, this seems like a pretty good idea really"? I'm fairly sure that's not a thing. No-one's being radicalised by it; rather the only people who really read it are already radicalised, because, otherwise, why would you bother? There may be books which radicalise people. But I'm fairly sure Mein Kampf is not one of them.

like_any_other 3mo ago

[flagged]

Aurornis 3mo ago

The “banned books” theme has become intentionally vague because it has become a marketing tool. That’s how we got to Dua Lipa doing a promotional photo op holding up books that can be purchased on Amazon and delivered to your Kindle to read immediately. Attaching the “banned” word to a book turns the purchase into an act of rebellion and a reason to talk about it, and the marketers are not going to waste that opportunity. That’s why the “banned books” category has been expanded so much to include not only books that governments or corporations have tried to suppress, but also books that some school board in Kansas decided shouldn’t be included in the elementary school library. Unfortunately once a term becomes this overloaded it loses meaning. The original topics of government censorship and oppression get less attention because it’s drowned out by pop stars holding up Margaret Atwood books for photo ops and people buying books on Amazon as a form of slacktivism.

mossTechnician 3mo ago
Banning a book in a school district still signifies a form of authoritarianism. If someone is prevented from reading Maus[0] (or finding out they are in a cult, or a victim of domestic abuse), what is the effective difference to them between an authoritarian censoring it at the national level or the local one? [0]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/holocaust-novel-maus-banned-in-tennessee-school-district https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/holocaust-novel-maus-banne...
- Aurornis 3mo ago
  We "ban" things from school kids all the time, though: Pornography, gambling, smoking, alcohol, R-rated movies. Dua Lipa wasn't doing a photo op with Maus. In the photos she's posing with modern books that are still being promoted by their publishers. I'm not familiar with all of them, but a quick search shows one of them is not appropriate for elementary schools because it includes essays debating which sexual acts are appropriate for feminists to perform and other adult topics. Why is it "authoritarianism" to say that a book like that doesn't belong in my kids' school library? This is a promotional stunt, and I'm surprised more people aren't seeing through it.

frumplestlatz 3mo ago

Declining to buy and stock a book in a school library is not a ban at all. The book can still be printed, bought, and read. It can be brought into that same school, and read there. It’s not banned.

amanaplanacanal 3mo ago
If the school declines to put a book in the library, that's not a ban. If people outside the school with power over the school demand that books be removed, that's a ban. The groups demanding books be removed are often not even parents of children in the school. It external parties driving this stuff.
- frumplestlatz 3mo ago
  Removing a book from the library is not a ban any more than a publisher rejecting a manuscript is a ban. Declining to provide a book is not the same as prohibiting the possession, use, or distribution of a book. As for “external parties”, schools in the US are public institutions.
  - amanaplanacanal 3mo ago
    If rather have folks that are trained in childhood education doing that job than randos.

ozgung 3mo ago

Banning and burning books is from an era when there was no digital publishing. Only way of distributing text/thoughts was by printing press. Today we don't burn books but we constantly ban/shadow ban digital content. This is independent of which country you are from. Corporations do the censorship mostly, in place of the governments. Try writing a Reddit comment opposing mainstream politics. You are only allowed to play in a sandbox. AI shadow-burns your comments automatically and blacklists you if you go out of your human guiderails. No human dictators to blame. So yes, if this is a dictator thing (I think it is), we all live in a kind of modern dictatorship.

citadel_melon 3mo ago

Is there a valid reason to ban a book? On one hand, I agree there are books which are dangerous. But usually the most dangerous ones are one’s that are more innocuous. I think Catcher in the Rye is dangerous as I have seen grown men misread Holden as a hero to look up to rather than as a flawed mis-socialized man child. On the other hand, I have seen people go too far the other way and say that this book proves that everyone who rejects authority is just a bitter, poorly-socialized man baby. How painfully common these two misreadings provide me reason to ban my children from reading this book outside of my supervision. However, Catcher in the Rye is banned not primarily for these nuanced misreadings, but instead primarily for its profanity. Meaning if we stripped the profanity out, this dangerous book would likely never have been banned in the first place. When you allow these bureaucratic institutions to ban books, they are not going to Socraticly reason through what should and should not be banned in a rigorous manner. They are going to ban books that vibe against their “sensibilities”. Given that we do not have philosopher kings making these ban decisions, the least bad option is to not have any ban. Encourage kids to read broadly and get many different perspectives. More importantly, teach them to act as a scouts who should be proud/excited when they find a new opinion other than their own — and even more excited to find an opinion better than their own to adopt — rather than a warrior who is proud that their previous opinion was “right the whole time”. Sometimes your old opinion was proven right by new information, but that should not make you excited/proud. I’m confident that if all children are taught this scout-mindset that solving the intractable problem of banning books “correctly” would be completely unnecessary. Matter of fact, having children build immunity to bad ideas through learning how to be a “good scout” would be strictly better than making little bubble-boys who are safe from bad ideas only because the thin bubble the “philosopher kings” set up for them. The latter bubble makes children’s immune system unprepared for the real world while the scout mindset helps build hyper-capable, curious, and civically engaged adults.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

pohl 3mo ago

Is it useful to limit these thoughts to a dictator doing dictator stuff, though? What would be the material difference be between that and operatives of his political party astroturfing local school boards to remove books that teach about the racial history of the country or the existance of trans folk, to make it appear as though the local community decided to do it?

grahamburger 3mo ago

On the other hand, there is a persistent idea that schools are just making curation decisions for the children in their district, and people are calling that book banning. That's what you seem to be suggesting here. In all cases I'm aware of, that's not what's happening either; it's generally a parent, or a small group of parents, generally all from the same religious group and political party, bullying the library or school district into reversing curation decisions they had already made. A small, vocal group ultimately makes decisions about what all the kids in the district can read at school, based on their own religious and political affiliation. That comes much closer to your "banned book mental association" than I think you give it credit for.

JuniperMesos 3mo ago
You're more likely to be aware of a library book curation decision where parents are publicly fighting to remove a book the school library management wants to keep; compared to a curation decision where the school library management simply never decides to make a book available to begin with.
- grahamburger 3mo ago
  Personally, I am OK with the library making their own curation decisions. That's part of how a library functions, I understand that they can't carry everything. I have a problem when zealous parents try to override those decisions, especially when they are motivated by political or religious worldviews. I think the Bible should be in school libraries (and it always has been), but if you're keeping it while removing other books for sex, violence, genocide, pedophilia, rape, homosexuality, or other objectionable things that are also included in the Bible, I think you're being inconsistent and overzealous.
  - JuniperMesos 3mo ago
    Do you think the librarians' choice about what books to stock in their library aren't motivated by political or religious worldviews? What kind of person becomes a school librarian? One motivation is that they want to influence what kinds of written information young people do and do not readily have access to.

iamtheworstdev 3mo ago

book burnings like this? https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/09/gop-lawmakers-hold-symbolic-book-burning-with-flamethrowers/ https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/09/gop-lawmakers-hold-symbo...

tough 3mo ago

One can only wonder how American Schools will talk about the current US Gov and presidents in a few decades...

suburban_strike 3mo ago
Given the track we're on, in 80 years Americans will be extinct and whoever's occupying my current space will be living in the Managed Democracy of Monocolored Benetton. Their kids will be taught that's all it ever was since the first colony was established in this otherwise-uninhabited land on Stardate 2302.5.

jt2190 3mo ago

> In America, at least, the school curriculum spends a lot of time talking about dictators. I don’t think this is actually true. What’s your source for this? States set K-12 curriculum.