There’s a difference from banning a book in public libraries (or even Amazon) vs a school board saying it’s not appropriate in school libraries.
The former I agree has the reaction of the Streisand effect (like Dr Seuss-gate)
However if a kid can get the book from online store with relative ease, or lookup why it’s banned and find it’s benign, I don’t think it’ll have nearly the effect this article predicts.
In a school setting, I’m not against the library within the school being more restricted - it should be on the parents to provide, or withhold, books from kids when they deem appropriate.
And if a board elects to have a book removed, then the process worked. Let the PTA or others voice concerns, or better yet, just get the book for your kid.
I’d rather have the school library too strict than too relaxed with selection.
Let the parents parent. If they want to take their kid to a public library, or get the books themselves, let that happen. This isn’t some mass societal book burning
The books in a school library should be roughly appropriate for the age of the students. So while I think this is important for e.g. primary school kids, older kids should be able to read a large part of literature.
I don't think parents or school boards are really making decisions here based on purely educational reasons. They are removing books they disagree with, and that is not a good thing.
I see your point, and yes in the id case and perhaps others, from the outside it seems wrong.
But many don’t give credit to how diverse a culture exists throughout America. Northeast vs southeast vs Midwest etc.
The internet is an equalizer, but geographically there’s still cultural context that I don’t think is easy to describe unless you’re in it, or have historical knowledge of the area.
If the board or parents agree this book is wrong, we shouldn’t be wanting to have a government force them to allow certain books. That’s not called for explicitly here, but it’s the logical next step. Some remediation that goes against what the board, and let’s assume most parents agree with the board, chose.
If the board is acting in mutiny, then it’s on the parents to vote/enact change. Otherwise the system they have is working as intended.
Criticisms against their system are justified, but this discussion goes beyond books. It’s really a cultural difference, whether you agree with the culture or not.
Children are not the property of their parents. I do see the attitude that parents should be able to fully control what content their children are exposed to as problematic. The school is full of education professionals, we're not in a random public space with who knows what kinds of materials. These are books that professionals already selected.
Those eduction professionals sure failed you if you can't connect the dots on what happens when their politics differs from yours and the shoe is on the other foot. Children are certainly not the property of woke teachers either. Very amusing of you to trot out this line of defense about a book with an extremely simply message that seems to have gone over your head.
> we're not in a random public space with who knows what kinds of materials.
That's exactly where we are, unfortunately. Banning books is bad but god help kids who are at the mercy of teachers and people like you. Or the Bible thumpers. Two peas in a pod.
As a devout muslim it is considered haram. So says my imam, I don't know myself, I didn't read. Are you an Islamaphobe?
You can raise your offspring on whatever books you wish but you cannot force anything on kids who are not yours. It is offensive to me.
Your intolerance of my diverse viewpoint is very problematic.
Perhaps we can agree to disagree and stick to teaching kids math and core subjects instead of imposing on each other otherwise one of us will have to switch schools.
I'm from Germany, if not being able to remove a book from the school library riles you up that much, you probably would hate it here.
Children are required to go to school, there is no home schooling possible. You also can't remove them from particular classes or content you find objectionable, even for religious reasons (in general, exceptions are rare as far as I understand). And I think it is very reasonable that kids have the right to an education and that the parents can't just remove stuff they disagree with.
Schooling was invented in Germany (Prussia) in order to churn out massive amounts of soldiers who would obey any order without questioning. It is no surprise that education continues to be very backwards in the country who invented the worst system.
> Ohio’s Department of Education appears to have closed an investigation without pressing charges against a couple that operates the Dissident Homeschool Telegram message channel with thousands of members.
> One founder, who said the group responded to “having a rough time finding Nazi-approved school material” to homeschool her children, posted photos of a cake she baked for Adolf Hitler’s birthday, Vice News and The Huffington Post reported, based on Anonymous Comrades Collective research.
Well at least here in the US, those "professionals" are failing hard at their jobs, with test scores falling year after year (beginning long before COVID). So it's understandable that parents have lost some faith in them.
The book in question here isn't hardcore pornography or spicier excerpts from 4chan. And this isn't happening at the elementary school level, these are teenagers.
The objective of banning The Handmaid's Tale from a high school isn't to let parents do their job. The objective is to fuel culture wars.
I'm just going to side step the ethics of withholding easy access to certain books, just focusing on the pragmatic and functional.
> However if a kid can get the book from online store with relative ease […]
They can't because they don't have the means: no money and no credit card. And they won't: a lot of children have very low internal motivation for reading so any barrier to entry will make them read less.
Then at this point it’s on the parents to either foster their interest, or to withhold it.
This specific book aside, parents should have the final say what their kids are exposed to. Yeah as they hit adolescent that becomes harder/more futile, but the core of it, in my eyes, is parenting.
> parents should have the final say what their kids are exposed to
What do we do when a religious fundamentalist objects to learning about evolution in biology class, or a neo-Nazi parent objects to teaching about slavery?
Straw man aside, that’s the cost of freedom. To think freedom has no price, that it’s a utopia, is a mistake as old as time.
Because when the “other” is in power, and uses the force that you’ve granted them, then it’s authoritarianism.
And let’s be honest, kids aren’t a blank slate. That’s been proved incorrect time and time again.
Yes such influences you mentioned are heinous, obviously. But humans aren’t robots, as has happened with many in religious groups, once the kid is exposed to the outside world their views typically change. And with the internet and technology, it’s harder than ever to withhold information, especially from adolescent youth.
This isn't true in the US thanks to the vast public library system, coupled with interlibrary loans. Any child can get access to any book for free. School libraries aren't required to carry every book.
> vs a school board saying it’s not appropriate in school libraries.
There's plenty of books I can think of that are not appropriate in elementary school libraries. I have read some of them, but I would not put them in a school library when there's plenty of better, uplifting, educational material available to choose from. Only so much shelf-space
Obviously not in the case you mentioned, but this discussion is more about cultural differences within the states vs a specific school board banning a book.
It’s further a discussion on what rights parents have to expose their children to what material. Especially if one’s opinion is that these books should be forcibly allowed in the school library (not saying that’s your opinion)
> In Pinellas County, that confluence of factors resulted in the removal of prize-winning author Toni Morrison’s first book, “The Bluest Eye,” from all high schools. The district acted after one parent complained about the book in one class at one high school.
> All graphic novels in the school library’s collection were recalled after parent Tim Reiland took issue with the school letting his teenage daughter borrow Blankets, an autobiographical coming-of-age story by Craig Thompson about questioning blind faith in a fundamentalist Christian household.
I still think this isn’t a failure of giving parents the right to what’s exposed to their children.
The points you mentioned, to me, are a case of the system not doing its job properly. A board not reviewing or representing the parents is not a problem with what parents have the right to show their children.
A simple waiver that parents sign, that details the more “edgy” (according to the local area/group) material to be available for check out for the kids seems to me to resolve much of this. Books won’t be banned, but parents have a say what their child can check out at the library.
>There’s a difference from banning a book in public libraries (or even Amazon) vs a school board saying it’s not appropriate in school libraries.
Exactly this. Whenever I read any of these articles with "book banning" on their titles it simply boils down to parents rightfully organizing and agreeing upon what should be appropriate reading material for their young children in school libraries and classrooms [1]. It's never about "book banning" because after all anyone can get the book from public libraries, bookshops, online retailers, etc. except from the school library in question.
[1]: I don't think it's the case for Atwood's book, however there's a documented common pattern about these "banned" books: Whenever concerned parents try to read them to their school boards, their mics are usually cut off because of the sexual and explicit of the material, which apparently adults cannot be subjected to yet young children should even without the parents' permission. Search for "parents read inappropriate books to school board" to see what I'm talking about.
> it should be on the parents to provide, or withhold, books from kids when they deem appropriate
It should be on the parents to withhold books from THEIR kids when they deem appropriate. Tell your kids not to read whatever you don't want them to read, but if you try telling MY kids that they can't read something, we're going to have words.
I agree, I think it’s a failure of the system in place that if a parent has gripes over XYZ books, then that shouldn’t prevent everyone from reading it.
The core of my argument is to keep the state out of the decision process on matters such as these.
> However if a kid can get the book from online store with relative ease, or lookup why it’s banned and find it’s benign, I don’t think it’ll have nearly the effect this article predicts.
That's a classic example of Overton Window at work.
The former I agree has the reaction of the Streisand effect (like Dr Seuss-gate)
However if a kid can get the book from online store with relative ease, or lookup why it’s banned and find it’s benign, I don’t think it’ll have nearly the effect this article predicts.
In a school setting, I’m not against the library within the school being more restricted - it should be on the parents to provide, or withhold, books from kids when they deem appropriate.
And if a board elects to have a book removed, then the process worked. Let the PTA or others voice concerns, or better yet, just get the book for your kid.
I’d rather have the school library too strict than too relaxed with selection.
Let the parents parent. If they want to take their kid to a public library, or get the books themselves, let that happen. This isn’t some mass societal book burning