
Brave New World banned from High School curriculum - mfukar
http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2010/11/brave_new_world_banned_from_cu.php
======
grellas
The Enlightenment was premised on the broad idea that people were rational and
that, once education became widespread, reason would eventually stamp out
superstition and other evils and would cause humanity to want to promote and
defend liberty. This thinking broadly underlies the idea that we are
continuing to progress as a species and will ultimately learn to solve the
problems that historically have beset us.

This sort of episode should serve to remind us that passion and prejudice are
ever at-the-ready to spring up and override reason.

On the side of reason:

1\. You have a classic work of literature that is _widely_ recognized as an
important indictment of totalitarian societies, something that young people in
a free society should presumably regard as a staple of their learning.

2\. You have a significant historical work that is a product of its times,
which sound learning should suggest ought to be taken on its own terms,
notwithstanding that society has changed since then in what it regards as
acceptable cultural references. Again, even if regressive, one would think
those raised in a free society would encourage its study, if nothing else than
to understand why the older cultural references existed and why people
accepted and later rejected them (if that is indeed what happened).

3\. You have reasonable arguments that the references to "savages," taken in
context, were not intended to be demeaning at all but were essentially a
literary device used to promote the themes of the work. Again, in a free
society, one would think these would be topics that ought to be debated as
part of coming to grips with a classic work.

On the side of passion and prejudice:

1\. You have public school systems that are charged with developing strong
young minds and yet willingly succumb to the premise that some forms of
expression ought to be censored or circumscribed at the whims of pressure
groups in the community.

2\. You have serious subjects being resolved by supposedly responsible public
officials at the level of pure emotion.

3\. You have what amounts to open demagoguery holding sway over that which
scholars would widely if not unanimously oppose.

The stunning thing here is how one-sided this all was, with cravenly officials
scarcely even putting up resistance. The next thing you know, they will be
banning books that use the word "niggardly." Based on the logic on display
here, that is surely next in line.

~~~
swombat
_The next thing you know, they will be banning books that use the word
"niggardly."_

Worth pointing out, because when I saw this word while reading Hermann Hesse's
Steppenwolf recently I did a double-take, that niggardly has absolutely
nothing to do with "niggers".

Niggardly means "miserly" or "stingy". It is based on "niggard", not "nigger",
which means the same - a miser, a stingy person. The roots of this word are:

 _Derived from the Old Norse verb nigla, meaning "to fuss about small
matters". Cognate to the English word "niggle", which retains the original
Norse meaning._

<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/niggard> has further information:

 _This word, along with its adverbial form niggardly, should be used with
caution. Owing to the sound similarity to the highly inflammatory racial
epithet nigger, these words can cause unnecessary confusion and unintentional
offense. The word is not related to the word nigger (a corruption of the
Spanish word negro, meaning "black"), though someone unfamiliar with the word
niggardly might take offense due to the phonetic similarity between the
words._

Talk about an unhelpful coincidence. I wonder how many words fall out of
disuse not because of their meaning but because of their phonetic similarity
to words considered offensive.

~~~
eru
I guess the philosopher Kant would have had some problems with his name in
English. (In German Kant just sounds very similar to the name for edge Kante,
and not female anatomy.)

But I guess you get around that impasse by just pronouncing it wrong. (German
pronunciation: [ɪˈmaːnu̯eːl ˈkant])

~~~
moconnor
I've had philosophical discussions with Germans that ended abruptly because
one party suddenly exclaimed 'Kant!'

~~~
eru
Could be me. I'm not a friend of Kant's philosophy.

------
alanh
> _What Sense-Wilson and her daughter seem to be having trouble grasping is
> that the "savages" in the book are only called "savages" because the
> mainstream society which they aren't a part of is so perverted. In reality,
> Huxley's savages are indeed the heroes…_

Indeed. The “savage” reads Shakespeare, which no one else in the book does
anymore, for example.

It’s just like people wanting to ban Huck Finn because it uses the word
“nigger,” without realizing the friendship between Huck and Jim shows just how
silly racism actually is, or how the novel basically satirizes slave ownership
by making Huck explicitly contemplate the “immorality” of helping a slave
escape.

~~~
NathanKP
It seems to me that in case such as this the ones who ban the book haven't
really read it. Anyone who reads "Brave New World" and actually thinks about
it will see its true message, and anyone who reads "Huck Finn" and actually
thinks about it won't find its use of the word "nigger" objectionable.

The problem is that it is easier to jump to a conclusion than it is to stop
and think.

~~~
TomOfTTB
> The problem is that it is easier to jump to a conclusion than it is to stop
> and think.

I think the problem is that our society gives in to stupid people if they
scream loud enough. There always has been and always will be fools in the
world. People who don't think, don't read and jump to anger as their first
reaction.

The difference here is the fool got her way because a school board full of
people not wanting to cause trouble backed down rather than confront her.

~~~
ascuttlefish
I think you've nailed it. Bill Maher asked the media '[C]ould you please stop
pitting the ignorant vs. the educated and framing it as a "debate."'
Acknowledging ignorant views and handling those who hold them with kids gloves
is just another of many possible paths to Idiocracy.

~~~
rbanffy
Careful.

One of the cornerstones of democracy is that the ignorant will chose who also
governs the educated if they are numerous enough.

~~~
knieveltech
s/cornerstones of/major bugs in/ There. Fixed that for you.

~~~
rglullis
No. It is one of the cornerstones. Democracy is about being treated as equal
_according to the law_ . Anyone who thought that was a bug and tried to "fix
it" ended up bringing authoritarianism, slavery and less liberty.

------
kenjackson
It is a bit more nuanced. As pointed out by the appeal record
([http://www.seattleschools.org/area/board/10-11agendas/111710...](http://www.seattleschools.org/area/board/10-11agendas/111710agenda/appealrecord.pdf))
there were three required non-fiction books for the 10th grade list: BNW,
Othello, and Lord of the Flies. Apparently all three make reference to native
or indigenous people as "savages".

And then apparently in one lecture they promoted an inaccurate view as to why
we have reservations.

It's kind of like the Huck Finn example. If you read that book and it says the
n-word -- that's one thing. But if the other two required books also say it,
then it begins to get a little odd. I think people would reasonably begin to
ask, "you couldn't find one book that didn't say nigger/savage in it?"

Although her attacks on the text itself were misplaced and uncalled for.

~~~
kenjackson
Here's a story from a local blog that goes into greater detail.

[http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2010/11/brave-new-
wor...](http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2010/11/brave-new-world-
indeed.html)

~~~
protomyth
That blog post (and the comments at the end) sure give a really different
impression of the event than the article.

~~~
kenjackson
Our news media is a narrative driven media. They find their narrative and
build the story around that. Details, subtleties, and complexities get shoved
under the rug.

For example, look at the health care debate. Headline news for over a year.
Here's a quiz, ask 10 people to name 3 concrete aspects of Health Care reform.
I tried an not one person game me 3. A few gave me two. The mode was zero
concrete aspects.

The narrative never was the bill itself. What everyone did know was that Obama
and the Dems won and the Republicans lost, and it it costs a lot of money. For
a year of coverage, this was the only narrative. Win/Lose + costs money.

A lot of people wonder if the decline of newspapers means that things like
city council meetings don't get coverage. I've discovered that you often get
better coverage from reading a couple of blogs -- and there almost certainly
will be better targeted blogs than you get from your major city paper.

------
BigZaphod
It's not exactly banned, but just removed from their curriculum. It will still
be found in the school's library.

~~~
burgerbrain
Defacto ban.

~~~
mtsmith85
I'm not sure why this is being voted down... maybe because there isn't
anything to back it up. But, I do think in a way it is a defacto ban. There
will be some kids who seek out this book, but chances are those are not the
kids that need to read this book. When you take important literature out of
the classroom, you are preventing the kids who would at least pick up the main
ideas from getting at those main ideas.

~~~
electromagnetic
Edit: Just realized a key difference, I'm used to the GCSE reading lists not
the US-style 'Required' Reading list. I remember getting Terry Pratchett
novels in my reading list.

A defacto ban is "We're removing it from our reading list, removing it from
our library... but we not discouraging our students from reading the book".
Removing it from a reading list isn't a defacto ban, it's modernization. If
the kids at a specific school don't seem to respond well to a text, _PULL IT_.
I don't care what text, even if it's one of my own beloveds just _PULL IT_ and
put in something the children will read and will learn from.

Brave New World is a classic, beyond perhaps, but if kids today aren't
learning from it then so long. For every new book that goes on the list, an
old one is going to come off of it. I'd much rather see kids get something
like Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett that they'll respond to. Fuck, give
them Harry Potter or a goddamn Halo novel if the kids will actually _read_ it.

~~~
Nitramp
> If the kids at a specific school don't seem to respond well to a text, PULL
> IT.

That seems like a very weird understanding of education to me. The whole point
of the exercise is getting children to read something they might otherwise
miss. If students oppose a book's content - very good, you have a debate
running, and you can clearly learn from that (e.g., Huxley's use of the term
savages does not dehumanize them, quite the contrary).

Education is not about taking the easy path to something, it's about taking
the hard path, and learning on the way.

~~~
rbanffy
> Huxley's use of the term savages does not dehumanize them, quite the
> contrary

I would go as far and explain those parents who are so afraid of it, that it's
just a word that means something for the "civilized" characters of the book
that's very different than it means to us or them.

And that "civilized" is also just a word.

Meaning is in the brain of the reader. A book is only dehydrated knowledge.
You have to add a brain to it.

------
rbanffy
"the text lacks literary value"

Oh boy... Why not ban Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 while we are at it. And let's
burn all copies too.

What kind of spineless school principal is this?

~~~
enjo
I wish I could get 1984 banned. Far too many believe that saying "it's just
like 1984!" somehow makes it a valid argument against something.

Really I just want a required class in formal logic for everyone.

~~~
JoelMcCracken
Same thing with "It's just like Hitler!", "It's not what the founding father's
wanted!", etc.

I many times support the formal logic requirement.

~~~
chc
"It's not what the Founding Fathers wanted" is not generally an issue of
logic. If something is flagrantly against the values they espoused, then
whether or not that thing should be opposed is simply a matter of your values.
If it's not entirely clear whether they would have supported something but
there could be reasonable arguments either way, then it's a matter of opinion.
In neither case is it an example of faulty logic.

~~~
JoelMcCracken
I could explain what I'm referring to, but then, why do so when wikipedia does
it so well?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority>

------
roel_v
I realize the 'ban' is because of the Native American/savages angle, but now
that the book comes up I'd like to ask: I read Brave New World expecting a
dystopic society, but failed to understand why the world that is described is
dystopic. Huxley seems to go out of his way to ascribe all sorts of pejorative
attributes to the society in the book, to the point where the promiscuous sex
lives of the inhabitants are presented so prominently that I got the feeling
he did this mostly to instigate the (presumably morally much more strict)
early 20th century reader against it. Still, he described a world where the
vast majority of people were happy, actually happy and content with their
lives, and managed to live those lives without much hardship or grief.

Now maybe if one takes the position that hardship and grief are somehow
morally virtuous (a position that is surprisingly common and that I as, I
think, a rational person have a very hard time understanding, especially since
the reasons for it are very seldom given in coherent theories) there is merit
to this argument. But even then I still fail to see why the 'savages' in the
book, or the protagonist, are somehow morally better than the other people.

So if anyone has read the book and wants to explain why they feel the world
described in there is bad, I'd be very interested to hear why they think so.

(I'm leaving aside some what I think are minor issues, like the apparent
destructive qualities of soma addictions - that was one of those other points
I felt Huxley just put in there to get his point across, the technical
deficiencies of the drug are irrelevant to the moral position he's
(presumably) arguing).

~~~
wazoox
You don't find it dystopic because the Brave New World so frighteningly
resembles ours. The people on the article actually behaves like the idiot
mainstream inhabitants of the Brave New World.

That you don't even find it dystopic is probably another sign that it's
actually the parody of the world we're living it; superficial, commercial,
filled with porn and vulgarity, reality TV and shitty music, individualistic
and thoughtless. We don't even need a Thought Police to enforce proper
thinking.

~~~
roel_v
You're ascribing all sorts of moral judgments to this world but don't make a
case for why any of these things are bad, if they manage to make people feel
(truly) content and happy. What's wrong with reality TV, Lady Gaga and
advertisements if that's what people like? Do you honestly thing people would
be better off if they didn't have those things and only had a Chopin record to
put on at night? Maybe I'm reading your comment wrong but the pseudo-
intellectual snobbery, not backed up with anything but an general contempt for
anything that is mainstream, irks me. I guess in the same way the Brave New
World did.

(that said, calling the society of Brave New World to be similar to ours is
hyperbole, and I'd pretty sure that it's not why I feel the way I do about the
book. Don't forget that the 1930's had their own 'shitty music and vulgarity',
in the form of jazz and skirts that showed ankles. It's so easy to make an
extremely generalized case for why Brave New World resembles any society; hell
I figure that some grumpy inhabitants of Pompei would make the same argument
about their city 2000 years ago.).

~~~
wazoox
_> You're ascribing all sorts of moral judgments to this world but don't make
a case for why any of these things are bad, if they manage to make people feel
(truly) content and happy._

Most probably sheep are perfectly happy in their pen. Being perfectly happy
because you don't think about why you live and what you may be good for isn't
in my opinion a good way to be happy. My opinion is that human being should
aim higher than living an happy cattle life. These are personal values, but I
think that some values are better than others, and that general relativism
isn't good.

And about the intellectual snobbery : I _am_ a proud intellectual snob.
Intellectual snobs know better, that's why I chose to be one :)

~~~
roel_v
"...a good way to be happy..." ... "...should aim higher than living an happy
cattle life..."

I'm not sure. Some other posters also brought up a similar argument. I'm not
convinced that there is a moral ordering or ways to be happy, as long as the
criteria are constrained to internal ones (i.e., as long as the criteria don't
affect others - a society of 9 male rapists and one woman is presumably one
where 90% of the population is happy, but that doesn't make it a just or right
society)

I don't agree that hardship and/or grief are required for great achievements.
On the contrary, I think that most achievements are done by people who are
already in the 5th layer of Maslow's hierarchy. It's subjective what 'great
achievement' is, but in the trend of this site, let's take some big software
companies; were Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg living in mud huts,
going to sleep every night feeling hungry? I don't know the details about any
of them, but it seems from a cursory Wikipedia glance that all of them grew up
in environments where the 'happy cattle life' was the norm, and it was some
other internal motivation that drove them to create and not a desire to get
away from hardship.

Also, note that I didn't say 'intellectual snobbery', but 'pseudo-intellectual
snobbery'. Being a rebel for rebellion's sake, agitating against everything
that is mainstream, is not intellectualism, it's mostly a trait of wannabe
students and hipsters who are still in their formative years and derive their
self image from contrasting themselves with the rest of society. Now actual
intellectual thought can also be contrary to mainstream thinking of course,
but it needs to be backed up with solid reasoning from data, axioms etc. and
not with 'most people are stupid, so what most people are thinking is wrong'
(even leaving apart that by definition it's impossible for most people to be
stupid, unless one sets the benchmark for stupidity at an arbitrarily high
level, at which point it's just definition again).

~~~
wazoox
_> I'm not convinced that there is a moral ordering or ways to be happy, as
long as the criteria are constrained to internal ones ..._

This is an interesting and debatable matter. I'm probably not really convinced
too :)

 _> I don't agree that hardship and/or grief are required for great
achievements._

Neither do I, but I don't seem to have implied it.

------
ivanzhao
My family moved from China to Canada during my high school years. It was Brave
New World (along with Animal Farm) that really opened up my eyes what a
Communist world I was raised in.

Yes, Huxley could be cruel on his depicting of the native stereotypes (like
most elitists during his days). But besides stereotypes, I think it's equally
important to educate kids about ideologies -- and the big social and political
systems we live in -- with that in mind few literature titles could come even
close to Brave New World.

------
daeken
Why do I feel like I'm being indirectly trolled? I mean, this woman can't be
serious about this, right? Sad. Seriously, seriously sad...

------
tokenadult
I was assigned to read Brave New World in high school. I had already read it
at home, as it was in the collection of books my parents had in our house when
I was growing up. The term "savages" occurs in the book to make a comment
about the persons speaking the term, not to make a comment about the persons
described as savages.

The best book I was assigned to read in high school was The Chosen by Chaim
Potok. I later read most of Potok's other books on my own. A few years ago I
reread The Chosen--that is a very fine book for a reader of any age.

------
forgotAgain
> _The school eventually agreed, promising to remove the book from students'
> required reading list and releasing a statement apologizing that the
> "cultural insensitivity embedded in this book makes it an inappropriate
> choice as a central text in our 10th grade curriculum._ "

Anyone who played a part in releasing the statement should be fired for
failure to understand the concept of a free society.

The rational for government supported education is that a democracy needs
educated citizens to survive. The people involved obviously don't grasp that.

~~~
SkyMarshal
>The people involved obviously don't grasp that.

Or maybe they've just read and understood _Brave New World_ all too well.

------
sp4rki
If test tube people that the deserving ones and natural born people are the
savages, what does that make the poorly educated self righteous kid and the
retarded mother?

At least it had nothing to do with the fact that natural born people need to
have sex to do so, but I'm sure it'll happen eventually.

------
Evgeny
Ironically, I'm reading the book now ...

"You can't consume much if you sit still and read books."

~~~
brandnewlow
I.e. You can't consume much while in the act of consuming?

~~~
rbanffy
It takes a couple days for me to "consume" US$5 of books. It takes me a couple
seconds to spend the same amount of money during lunch.

------
araneae
This reminds me of the case in a University of Michigan museum where a Native
American woman and her son got those little dioramas of native people removed.
Apparently after seeing them, her son asked how he could be Native American if
Native Americans were dead (because only dead cultures are depicted in the
museum).

So this woman, a graduate student, bullied the museum into removing the
dioramas.

------
sdh
The book is about sterile, future society. "Savages" is completely relative.
We'd all be considered savages by BNW standards.

If that school focused more on educating and less on banning it, the student
might have understood the context of the book.

~~~
mapphusel
It's not even relative: it's ironic. The term is used ignorantly by the people
outside the reservation. The 'Savage' cares for his mother and reads
Shakespeare, something that people outside the reservation don't do any more.

It's clear that Huxley does not regard the 'Savage' as being savage.

~~~
theoden
But we can't have those nuances in our multicultural brave new world! It's the
person being offended who decides what's offensive (so long as they belong to
a protected group). Four legs good! Two legs bad!

------
jdavid
When I read "Brave New World" just last year again. The terms "savage" and
"reservation" never once conjured an image of American Indians. Instead I more
or less saw the sort of savages one might see in "sanctuary" in the film
"logan's run."

Of course in this world it's much easier to be offended than to tolerate.
#legalism and #liability is the death of us.

------
makmanalp
Why do people think they have a right not to be offended? They don't.

------
Overmind
This is ridiculous. They also shouldn't teach history because you know someone
might be offended the same way.

~~~
mfukar
Hehe. I eagerly await the first German to be offended by the Allies winning
WWII. Should be fun to watch. :-)

------
wiredfool
Brave New World was banned from my 6th grade class. (or, at least, the teacher
was told in no uncertain terms to not continue reading it out loud to the
class)

------
mathgladiator
Does anyone else find the best books are usually banned? I've heard of this
book, and meant to buy it; now I've bought it. This is great PR for the book.

------
auxbuss
I don't think that removing it from the curriculum is a bad thing. But not for
the reasons suggested by the article.

BNW isn't a great piece of literature, imo. I understand it's place in
literary history, but it's aged badly, and pretty clunky because of that. The
themes are certainly important, and will continue to be retold, I'm sure.

There's great modern literature and contemporary YA fiction that is far more
entertaining and tackles equally difficult moral issues.

------
malandrew
best comment on the article:

"Brave New World takes place in London... I'm left wondering how many Native
American reservations are near London, England."

~~~
bmunro
But it doesn't take place entirely in London.

The reservation is in New Mexico. Two of the characters go on a trip there and
meet a white man that lives among the native americans, but is not fully
accepted by them.

TThe above is just another comment by someone that does not appear to have
read the book.

~~~
malandrew
Now that you mention that, I remember the book a bit better. I personally need
to re-read it. It was so long ago and although I liked the book a lot, the
experience was spoilt by English Lit class.

Catch22 is another I remember only vaguely but need to reread.

------
yock
Ironic too is the fact that the book was banned at "Nathan Hale High School."
Leave it to literary fools to name a high school for a man who, while depicted
as a hero, was uncovered as a spy after confiding that very fact in the people
on which he was spying. Nathan Hale was a fool, and so are this school's
administrators.

------
CallMeV
A supreme irony, since on the same HN page this link appears concerning a
letter written about Aldous Huxley's "most beautiful death" on November 22,
1963:- [http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/03/most-beautiful-
death.ht...](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/03/most-beautiful-death.html)

------
seldo
If I buy Brave New World as a result of reading this article, is that ironic?
What if it's the Kindle edition? Meta-ironic?

------
rodericksilva
I guess this makes us HN readers savages!

------
chopsueyar
Yet they are all still watching "South Park"?

------
konad
hehe savages, what will they do next

------
theoden
"the text lacks literary value"

No, but the mother lacks human value.

