Banning books in schools (3 Viewers)

Users who are viewing this thread

    Optimus Prime

    Well-known member
    Joined
    Sep 28, 2019
    Messages
    9,561
    Reaction score
    11,560
    Age
    47
    Location
    Washington DC Metro
    Offline
    Excellent article I thought deserved its own thread
    =========================

    On the surface, it would appear that book censors and censored authors like myself can agree on one thing: Books are powerful.

    Particularly books for children and teens.

    Why else would people like me spend so much time and energy writing them?

    Why else would censors spend so much time and energy trying to keep them out of kids’ hands?

    In a country where the average adult is reading fewer and fewer books, it’s a surprise to find Americans arguing so much about them.

    In this election year, parents and politicians — so many politicians — are jumping into the fray to say how powerful books can be.

    Granted, politicians often make what I do sound like witchcraft, but I take this as a compliment.

    I’ll admit, one of my first thoughts about the current wildfire of attempted censorship was: How quaint.

    Conservatives seemed to be dusting off their playbook from 1958, when the only way our stories could get to kids was through schools and libraries.

    While both are still crucial sanctuaries for readers, they’re hardly the only options. Plenty of booksellers supply titles that are taken off school shelves.

    And words can be very widely shared free of charge on social media and the rest of the internet. If you take my book off a shelf, you keep it away from that shelf, but you hardly keep it away from readers.

    As censorship wars have raged in so many communities, damaging the lives of countless teachers, librarians, parents and children, it’s begun to feel less and less quaint.

    This is not your father’s book censorship…..

    Here’s something I never thought I’d be nostalgic for: sincere censors. When my first novel, “Boy Meets Boy,” was published in 2003, it was immediately the subject of many challenges, some of which kept the book from ever getting on a shelf in the first place.

    At the time, a challenge usually meant one parent trying to get a book pulled from a school or a library, going through a formal process.

    I often reminded myself to try to find some sympathy for these parents; yes, they were wrong, and their desire to control what other people in the community got to read was wrong — but more often than not, the challenge was coming from fear of a changing world, a genuine (if incorrect) belief that being gay would lead kids straight to ruination and hell, and/or the misbegotten notion that if all the books that challenged the (homophobic, racist) status quo went away, then the status quo would remain intact.

    It was, in some ways, as personal to them as it was to those of us on the other side of the challenge.

    And nine times out of 10, the book would remain on the shelf.

    It’s not like that now. What I’ve come to believe, as I’ve talked to authors and librarians and teachers, is that attacks are less and less about the actual books.

    We’re being used as targets in a much larger proxy war.

    The goal of that war isn’t just to curtail intellectual freedom but to eviscerate the public education system in this country.

    Censors are scorching the earth, without care for how many kids get burned.

    Racism and homophobia are still very much present, but it’s also a power grab, a money grab. The goal for many is a for-profit, more authoritarian and much less diverse culture, one in which truth is whatever you’re told it is, your identity is determined by its acceptability and the past is a lie that the future is forced to emulate.

    The politicians who holler and post and draw up their lists of “harmful” books aren’t actually scared of our books.

    They are using our books to scare people.

     
    Last edited:
    FB_IMG_1688768147583.jpg
     
    Someone wanna tell him or nah?

    Okay it wasn't recommended by the NEA. So what? It was still in schools

    Gender Queer" has been removed from school districts in several states, including Pennsylvania and Texas, but author Maia Kobabe has maintained that the explicit drawings and scenes were necessary in order to convey how "gender identity can impact every facet of life." However, some SRVUSD parents disagree.
     
    so, you were not agreeing with the tweet implying that the book is in the library available/required for kids to read?
    It has been in libraries and schools. Is it still there? I'm not sure. Yang didnt say anything about that. It is the most complained about book in this subject area. Do you think that's appropriate book for kids in school?
     
    IRMO, S.C. (AP) — Author Ta-Nehisi Coates sat silently through a school board meeting in South Carolina to support a high school teacher told to stop using his book on growing up Black in America in her advanced English class.

    Mary Wood has taught the lesson before, but after a few of her Chapin High School students wrote a school board member in February that the unit made them feel “uncomfortable” and “ashamed to be Caucasian" the books were taken up and the assignment ended.

    Coates wrote his 2015 book “Between the World and Me” as a letter to his teenage son on his perceptions of the feelings and circumstances of being Black in America and how racism and violence based on skin color are part of American society.

    Wood asked her Advanced Placement English students to read the book and watch two videos on systemic racism she used to introduce it, then identify the themes of the works and discuss their thoughts, including whether they disagree with Coates' view,

    Records from the Lexington-Richland 5 school district indicate officials were worried the assignment could run afoul of a rule in the South Carolina budget banning schools from using state money to teach that anyone is consciously or unconsciously racist simply by their race and preventing lessons from making anyone feel discomfort, guilt or anguish based on their race.

    Republicans have used the well-publicized provision to threaten other school districts in the state and one student who complained about the lesson wrote they were “pretty sure a teacher talking about systemic racism is illegal in South Carolina.”

    Coates sat next to Wood during Monday's Lexington-Richland 5 school district meeting in Irmo in suburban Columbia. Neither spoke publicly, according to media reports.

    The student complaints on Wood's lesson were sent directly to a school board member instead of to the teacher, Lexington-Richland 5 Superintendent Akil Ross said.

    “Nine times out of ten that’s where the issue is resolved," Ross said at the Monday school board meeting...........

     
    IRMO, S.C. (AP) — Author Ta-Nehisi Coates sat silently through a school board meeting in South Carolina to support a high school teacher told to stop using his book on growing up Black in America in her advanced English class.

    Mary Wood has taught the lesson before, but after a few of her Chapin High School students wrote a school board member in February that the unit made them feel “uncomfortable” and “ashamed to be Caucasian" the books were taken up and the assignment ended.

    Coates wrote his 2015 book “Between the World and Me” as a letter to his teenage son on his perceptions of the feelings and circumstances of being Black in America and how racism and violence based on skin color are part of American society.

    Wood asked her Advanced Placement English students to read the book and watch two videos on systemic racism she used to introduce it, then identify the themes of the works and discuss their thoughts, including whether they disagree with Coates' view,

    Records from the Lexington-Richland 5 school district indicate officials were worried the assignment could run afoul of a rule in the South Carolina budget banning schools from using state money to teach that anyone is consciously or unconsciously racist simply by their race and preventing lessons from making anyone feel discomfort, guilt or anguish based on their race.

    Republicans have used the well-publicized provision to threaten other school districts in the state and one student who complained about the lesson wrote they were “pretty sure a teacher talking about systemic racism is illegal in South Carolina.”

    Coates sat next to Wood during Monday's Lexington-Richland 5 school district meeting in Irmo in suburban Columbia. Neither spoke publicly, according to media reports.

    The student complaints on Wood's lesson were sent directly to a school board member instead of to the teacher, Lexington-Richland 5 Superintendent Akil Ross said.

    “Nine times out of ten that’s where the issue is resolved," Ross said at the Monday school board meeting...........


    Right wing snowflake parents breading right wing snowflake kids.
     
    It has been in libraries and schools. Is it still there? I'm not sure. Yang didnt say anything about that. It is the most complained about book in this subject area. Do you think that's appropriate book for kids in school?
    In high school, i don't see it as such a big deal, especially when the ones who make a big deal of this probably allow their kids to play stuff like GTA and have cellphones with access to the internet. Is there proof this has been in libraires with young kids? You want to look anyone in their eyes and with a straight face and say when kids are in high school they haven't seen waaay more things than this via the internet? I have a 14 year old son and a 19 year old daughter. i would not go Karen if my son or daughter read this book. But thats me, I'm not one to pretend to shield my kids eyes when it comes to public perception..
     
    It has been in libraries and schools. Is it still there? I'm not sure. Yang didnt say anything about that. It is the most complained about book in this subject area. Do you think that's appropriate book for kids in school?
    Oh, so you’ve pivoted from schools and are now wanting to censor libraries as well?
     
    It has been in libraries and schools. Is it still there? I'm not sure. Yang didnt say anything about that. It is the most complained about book in this subject area. Do you think that's appropriate book for kids in school?
    What gives any of us the right to tell any parent what books their children should or should not have access to?
     

    Create an account or login to comment

    You must be a member in order to leave a comment

    Create account

    Create an account on our community. It's easy!

    Log in

    Already have an account? Log in here.

    Advertisement

    General News Feed

    Fact Checkers News Feed

    Sponsored

    Back
    Top Bottom