The '2021 Survey of North American Teens on the Holocaust and
Antisemitism' found that 1/3rd of 8th grade students surveyed "questioned whether the Holocaust was an exaggerated or fabricated event, or that they were not sure if it actually happened". About 40% of the students surveyed learned about the Holocaust via social media.
This is obvious weasel wording. It is good for students to question all things they're learning. I hope they do question it, as I hope they question the sections on manifest destiny and American exceptionalism as well. It doesn't mean that 1/3 of 8th graders are holocaust deniers.
EDIT: I read their PDF, this methodology is ridiculous. Their website has the bold claim that "42% of teens have witnessed an antisemitic event", but reading the actual document, that includes hearing about the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting on the news, which basically means that 42% of teens read the news. This isn't the kind of source you should be citing if you want to be taken seriously.
It is natural to certain extent, I did the same at that age. We have a lowpass filter that makes outstanding/outrageous facts (like H) difficult to believe. It takes a while to accept that we humans are actually capable of H, CP and other things.
Another instance of that misleading lowpass filter: "if that happened to group J, the J people must have been doing something to deserve it".
Per the linked[1] meeting minutes that it seems maybe three people in these comments read they don't really care about the book or it's message. They're quibbling about whether or not they can find an equivalent meaning book for teaching the same lessons that uses less foul language.
This is the most dry and mundane "book banning" I have ever heard of.
Furthermore, the minutes don't say anything about keeping it out of the school library which directly conflicts with what TFA alleges.
I feel you’re dramatically underselling it - the book has also (reportedly; edit may have not been) been banned from the school libraries.
But furthermore, the reasons given strike me as extremely silly - I can’t remember any even mildly titillating nudity in Maus - the only nudity I can recall are piles of stripped corpses. And the idea that the phrase “god damn” is somehow inappropriate when coming from the testimony of a survivor of mass slaughter strikes me as bizarre. This sort of moralistic kneejerking is dangerous - something superficially objectionable can be found in a great many works of key significance. The girl at the napalm bombing of Trang Bang village is full frontal nudity - should we erase that powerful image from anything our children might learn? Sometimes nudity and profanity are simply a matter of what happened, and exorcising them means teaching a watered down version of the truth.
Regardless, it's categorically different than trying to ban the book for its subject matter. They literally spend a couple pages of meeting minutes arguing about whether suitable replacements with less vulgarity can be found, clearly they take no issues with teaching the holocaust.
This is a bunch of self important educators banning a book over stuff that doesn't matter, not a bunch of ideologues banning a book because they don't like the message as one would think based on TFA and most of the comments in here.
Maus is an incredible book. Banning such a deeply engaging depiction of the holocaust because it contains the word "damn" is pearl-clutching to the point of self-parody. It is difficult to imagine another book that could hold the attention of 8th-graders anywhere close to as tightly as this one. I've seen someone read it cover to cover in the middle of a party because someone said "You should check out this book."
Maybe the board really is ignorant of it content and only exist to quibble. If they are actually motivated to keep their kids ignorant, there is no way in hell they are going to say so in public! Either way, they are doing their kids a huge disservice.
And, regardless of intentions, this is a poster-child example of dubious book-banning. You might as well re-write '1984' because you think kids can't handle mean characters. Or, similarly: https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/26/media/china-fight-club-ending...
A book (or movie, or album) can be incredible and still not be appropriate for some levels of maturity. The board didn't argue about the subject matter, quite the opposite. The concern was specific content in the book that violated board policies.
This is a very different story than most people here are making it out to be.
It is strange how free speech advocates seem to worry a lot more about “cancel culture” than the literal banning of books as part of the fight against “critical race theory” or some other fabricated boogeyman.
Christopher Rufo is not in any way a free speech advocate, and is the person behind all of the anti-CRT laws. He had an interesting exchange with Kemele Foster who predicted this exact outcome.
This isn't specifically about Rufo. It is about the people who have embraced him and how those are often the same people who yell "cancel culture" when a comedian's Netflix special is criticized.
They definitely aren’t the same people. The folks rallying around Rufo largely seem to be traditionalist conservatives, who are often open against free speech. They’re often the same people who support flag burning bans.
I can think of a few opportunists who have latched onto him and dabbled in the cane l culture backlash stuff in the past, but they’re opportunists so of course they’re also hypocrites.
Who do you mean specifically?
[edit] it seems some people disagree. I’d be happy to hear what people think I’m missing, maybe I have the wrong read on this.
The fight against CRT is now a mainstream conservative mission. These are the same people who have spent years advocating for free speech when it comes to tech companies but are fine censoring the schools. It is completely hypocritical.
The conservatives like Josh Hawley who are writing these bills haven’t been in office long, he was elected in 2019 and is a central anti crt figure. He has never been a free speech advocate.
I guess I’m just not sure which specific people you mean.
Certainly there exist conservatives who hate being censored but love playing censor, that’s nothing new. I’m not sure it’s even hypocritical, they just have values I find to be pretty awful.
Ted Cruz? Marco Rubio? Rand Paul? Greg Abbott? Ron DeSantis? Basically any Republican that has hopes of running for president has supported both these views.
> Ted Cruz? Marco Rubio? Rand Paul? Greg Abbott? Ron DeSantis
Of the people you’ve named below only Paul has any history of arguing for the freedom to say things he doesn’t personally like. The rest just complain when speech they like is curtailed, and they may use the phrase.
I can call a pizza salad, and sing its praises all day, but that doesn’t mean I like salad, or advocate for it.
You’re right that Paul is being hypocritical though.
All of them have extoled the importance of free speech when it comes to big tech and all of them have talked about the importance of keeping CRT out of schools. You are free to put them into different buckets depending on whether they lied about one issue or the other, but to me they are all just people lying about their motivations.
Having some dumb take about social media doesn’t make any of them free speech advocates. These are just some clowns who have used the phrase as a cudgel. My whole original point was that the anti-crt laws are backed by trad cons, not free speech advocates.
Most of these people glommed onto the issue after it was made popular with the base by folks like Hawley and Rufo. It’s important to make distinctions when talking about where ideas come from.
What does this book or it's banning have to do with critical race theory or any fight against it? As the link provided by srmarm lists, it was banned due to language and explicit illustration.
This has absolutely nothing to do with CRT. I assure you books have been banned far longer than CRT has been a trending topic.
Did you read the minutes of the meeting? The content that is against school board policy is enumerated and there is a request to replace the material with something that can teach equivalent lessons.
> I've got enough faith from the Director of Schools down to the newest hire in this building, that you can take that module and rewrite it and make it do the same thing. Our children need to know about the Holocaust, they need to understand that there are several pieces of history, Mr. Bennett, that shows depression or suppression of certain ethnicities. It's not acceptable today. We've got to accept people for who and what they are… But Rob, the wording in this book is in direct conflict of some of our policies… I move that we remove this book from the reading series and challenge our instructional staff to come with an alternative method of teaching the Holocaust.
Banning Maus is endorsed by the people behind the CRT moral panic[1]. It was made all the easier by their effort.
Believing that it’s more important to protect middle schoolers from mice that say "god damn" than it is to convey the horrors of the camps is white fragility politics in action. Infantilization to serve fascist ends.
Well that's what they've claimed, but with the ongoing spate of race-relaced book-banning, it's a moderately hard claim to believe. How many other books in their library do you think contain the phrase "God damn"?
1) I ask you to refrain from personal attacks if you want me to continue to engage.
2) I feel no moral compunction to read a twenty page supporting document to make a one-line comment about not trusting people's claims uncritically.
3) Having now read that document, my opinion hasn't changed. One person tries a couple of times to address the bigger picture about what problematic books are in the curriculum. In both cases he is almost immediately shut down by the rest of the committee who want to discuss this particular book.
In what way did I make a personal attack? You made a critique about their state of mind without reading the primary source. There's nothing racially motivated in the minutes or having to do with the boards decision.
I don't expect you or anyone else on HN to read the supporting text, but I do expect some level of empathy, assumption of good faith, and seeing past sensationalism. Instead I see a lot of cargo culting, demonizing, and propagation of incorrect information.
Having listened to an agonizing number of school board meetings, and having family that is involved in school administration, there are reasons to not let a topic expand past the original scope for the sake of the board, the parents, and everyone else involved.
On HN I flag several unhinged posts a day by people who are complaining that somebody got canceled somewhere, complaining that another post got flagged, asking to delete their HN account because a post got flagged, or how their feelings are badly hurt because somebody downvoted their comment. (Contrast that to five years ago when the most problematic people on HN had some indescribable problem that had something to do with gender and you had to be careful engaging with them because they always had to get the last word.)
The right has taken on "free speech" as a cause lately. Big Tech needs to be defunded because Twitter kicked out Trump, etc. It pushes a narrative that the left is against free speech and the right is for it, but as usual, both sides agree they are happy when their tribe wins.
As the article mentions, this is not an isolated incident in either Tennessee or nationally. Maybe this book would be banned at any other time. But it is hard to see this book banning as anything but one incident in a larger pattern of censorship in which CRT is the held up as the primary motivation. As the article says:
>Regardless of why this decision was made, we’re in a climate where a sustained attack is being made on our schools, our teachers, and the truth. The anti-Critical Race Theory furor ginned up by Republican think tanks for political gain morphed into an excuse for right wing folks to try to cancel diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and things they don’t agree with in general — and now Conservative book-banning is really having a moment.
Gotta ban that stuff. It may make kids feel guilty or sad.
Of course I explicitly remember listening to Limbaugh in the 90s or so as he made fun of the “liberal fad” of listening to kids feelings and “protecting them from harm” or having to deal with anything that might be hard or painful. Can’t punish Bobby it might hurt his self esteem.
Isn’t that where the term liberal snowflake came from? That they were so fragile they had to be coddled and couldn’t handle the real world?
And here we are now. What’s good for the goose, I guess.
The article is disingenuous to what happened. The book has contents that violate school board policy. Educators were asked to replace it without changing the purpose of the module.
>The book has contents that violate school board policy.
Well I guess the kids can't see the phrase "god damn" or see a drawing of a naked woman when they are learning about the industrialized murder of millions of people. Do you not see how crazy that is? These these kids aren't eight. They are teenagers. They are old enough to learn about these things. This policy is asinine.
The school has various religious books, including the Christian Bible, in the library and in some classrooms and I don't see them banning it for the same reasons.
The major religious books do contain descriptions, graphic, of violence and sexual acts as well as containing curse words. Now that I have provided that do you still feel what I said was a "straw man"?
This story has nothing to do with descriptions of violence or sexual acts. I'd like to know what you consider curse words, because, at least the Bible, contains literal curses, but not foul language like we consider it today.
The discussion at the meeting was literally about keeping the same lessons but using a source that didn't contain specific words and images that violated board policy. They weren't trying to censor violence or descriptions thereof.
> Now that I have provided that do you still feel what I said was a "straw man"?
I don't see any concrete examples provided, so yes, I still feel it's a straw man.
Ezekiel 23:20 is an example of what they would ban from others books.
>The discussion at the meeting was literally about keeping the same lessons but using a source that didn't contain specific words and images that violated board policy.
Some states and boards have used the exact same method to include language in lessons to say slaves in the South had it better before they got freed and that slavery wasn't always evil. It is a common tactic to downplay events from the past that make people uncomfortable but humanity has shown that we tend to repeat such events so teaching them is important.
>I don't see any concrete examples provided, so yes, I still feel it's a straw man.
You could have asked for examples and I would have provided them but I do find it interesting that you didn't provide examples in your own post, you did exactly what I did and posted your opinion. Holding others to a standard you do not follow yourself isn't a productive way to have a discussion.
There are no “curse words” in Ezekiel. I didn’t say there wasn’t anything lewd or violent in the Bible. The language, while descriptive, is not a literal illustration, as in the school board story.
The board specifically doesn’t want to change the lessons being taught, just the material chosen to teach it because it violates board policies.
Just because a work covers an important topic doesn’t mean it’s appropriate in all contexts, regardless of the quality of that work (e.g. I wouldn’t want my children watching Schindler’s List at their current age, but they should watch it when they are at the appropriate level of maturity).
> violence or sexual acts
> There are no “curse words” in Ezekiel
This will be my last response on this topic but, in the future please review what you have previously written as you appear to have misremembered what you wrote previously.
I stand by what I wrote. The story about the school district’s decision to replace a book has nothing to do with descriptions of violence or sexual acts. I remember what I wrote quite clearly. There is still no profanity (aka curse words) in Ezekiel.
Well, that depends. In this case it was a school board, so it's "representative government." In other cases, "cancelers" are going around or over the heads of their school board, which is much more like "direct democracy" which is simultaneously much-decried when it comes to defending the absurdity of the Senate or Electoral College's vote distribution.
Fancy-sounding principles about government don't matter in this debate. Look at the lack of right-wing outcry over the canceling of Colin Kaepernick. It's just about power, and doing whatever it takes to make sure the "right people" have it.
And people deciding which businesses they want to shop at is the free market. And businesses deciding which products they want to carry is freedom of association. And people ganging up on other people on Twitter is technically free speech and public debate.
If you don't think there's a problem with the government banning books from school curriculum for political reasons -- if you don't think that has anything to do with freedom of speech, then I don't see how you have a free speech problem with anything at all. None of the cancel culture that people complain about is illegal or unconstitutional. That doesn't mean it can't be harmful to free expression, but in contrast, "representation with taxation" can actually be unconstitutional if the "representation" people ask for is suppression of political speech.
It is not my job to tell people whether or not they should be concerned with cancel culture. But anyone who is concerned about cancel culture and not concerned with educational book bans, or laws that restrict what topics teachers can talk to students about, or restrictions on conversations about sexual orientations/identities at school or with medical professionals, or any of the other speech laws being floated by Republican governments right now -- that person clearly is not interested in free speech itself, they just have an agenda and are using free speech as a convenient narrative tool in pursuit of that agenda.
People can be legitimately concerned about cancel culture as a free speech issue, but I'm not going to take anyone seriously who says that cancel culture is real and actual government censorship isn't.
>If you don't think there's a problem with the government banning books from school curriculum for political reasons
It's not banned for political reasons, at least from my reading of it. It's banned for the language and the illustrations of nudity. Nobody is asking for the Holocaust to not be taught in schools, so I fail to see where there is a political bend to this.
Do I think they're being up-tight and prudish? Yes, probably (but I haven't seen the book itself). Do I think it's politically motivated? No. The author of the article even defers that they don't know the motivation: "Regardless of why this decision was made..."
> So can we take it, as far as it needs to go, because I don’t know that it is going to end with one book. I think the process needs to include a bigger plan to holistically redact things that we don’t want in there. We hope we have good employees, like minded culture, centric folks that fit with McMinn County, that they’re going to make the right discretionary decisions to redact that literature in an appropriate way for the age related presentation.
It is very hard for me not to read this as political censorship in nature.
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And second, given the teachers were planning to inform parents and censor the nudity/profanity, it is hard for me not to read this as an objection over students being taught about any subject that borders sex or sexual content. I think the "inappropriate" objection takes on a different tone when people are saying that it's inappropriate to teach literature even after the swear words have been whited out -- at that point we're talking about subject-matter, not profanity.
I view that as both unrealistic in general (I wonder if parents have the same objections to mature topics in To Kill a Mockingbird or Shakespeare), but I also view it as explicitly political. It is a political statement to say that sex as a topic should not ever be mentioned in middleschool.
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But last but not least, even if this were only a discussion about profanity (which I don't think is the case), government censorship of profanity in schools is still a heck of a lot closer to a 1st Amendment violation on the sliding scale of censorship than people ganging up on each other on Twitter is.
I still don't really accept that someone could legitimately find the first to be irrelevant to free speech conversations, but the second to be critically important.
From the minutes you posted, I can see how one could interpret it as being politically motivated, especially the words about "bigger plan to holistically redact." However, I think there is an alternate explanation, from the last sentence: "in an appropriate way for the age related presentation." To me, that reads like they are concerned mostly about the age-appropriateness of the content, which is not necessarily politically motivated. For example, if they were being anti-gay, they wouldn't say "this pro-gay content is bad for 8th graders but ok for 10th graders."
You and I have different views on sexual content being political or not, and that's fine. I can see both sides, but I just don't think it is inherently political.
Wrt 1st Amendment violations, teachers are government employees representing the local government. Saying teachers can't teach something in school as a representative of the government is different than restricting a student's speech.
> For example, if they were being anti-gay, they wouldn't say "this pro-gay content is bad for 8th graders but ok for 10th graders."
Eh... there is a lot of history of LGBTQ+ censorship that should be taken into account when making a statement like this. "It's fine for adults but we need to protect the young from it," is historically a very common phrase that has popped up in discussions about sex education and sexual orientation being expressed in schools.
I also want to kind of align the conversation with the specifics of what people objected to in this book. We're talking about 8 swear words and a single cartoon picture of a naked mouse -- all of which were censored from the book. So at this point we are talking about a topic, not specific instances of profanity. We're talking about a view that 8th graders are not mature enough to know that nakedness exists or that sometimes people swear.
I just don't understand how that could be seen as a non-political view. There's a difference between someone saying that 8th graders shouldn't be exposed to the words "bitch" or "damn", and someone saying that 8th graders shouldn't be taught that anyone in any context might use those words.
From the minutes again:
> I understand that on TV and maybe at home these kids hear worse, but we are talking about things that if a student went down the hallway and said this, our disciplinary policy says they can be disciplined, and rightfully so. And we are teaching this and going against policy?
Is the objection that someone in a book did something that was against school policy? Because that seems really political in nature to me as an objection.
----
> Saying teachers can't teach something in school as a representative of the government is different than restricting a student's speech.
100% agreed. I don't like what the school is doing here, but I doubt in this case it's a 1st Amendment violation.
However, it's still very clearly closer to a 1st Amendment violation than anything happening on Twitter. Government restrictions on school curriculum can be ruled unconstitutional. Of course not all restrictions are unconstitutional, but it is within the realm of things we would talk about. How kids get taught and what topics teachers can bring up to them is a huge battleground in the fight over the government's ability to define what students are and aren't allowed to learn.
The problem is that most people claiming they're free speech advocates are nothing of the sort. Their goal is compelled publication of their opinions, not free speech. They've just made the observation that they can work up a good mob when they claim it's about free speech. It's much harder to get that sort of self-righteous mob when they admit their real complaint is that some community won't let them come in and yell through a megaphone until everyone else goes deaf.
Who has proposed compelled publication, and what form would that policy take? Perhaps they wish for the FCC to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine (lasted from 1949-1987)?
I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but there have been _widespread_ proposals that would require social media sites to carry speech that they object to.
These proposals were so widespread in some GOP circles that they actually became state law in 2 states (Florida and Texas) before being struck down as being a blatantly unconstitutional violation of the first amendment for being compelled speech. Note that in both contexts "struck down" does not refer to a final ruling, but rather an injunction that will remain in place until the final disposition of the case.
And the interpretation of the law as "compelling speech" is not just mine alone. The federal judge that issued the preliminary injunction in Florida described it this way:
> The legislation compels providers to host speech that violates their standards—speech they otherwise would not host—and forbids providers from speaking as they otherwise would.
As a free speech advocate, I'm opposed to this ridiculous banning* from a school library (Correction: curriculum. It remains available in the library, I believe) (even if it is for puritanical, not anti-semitic, reasons, as the minutes claim).
> their real complaint is that some community won't let them come in
The "community" is usually a giant multinational corporation like Google, Twitter, Facebook, or Amazon. I'm sure you can find some "free speech advocates" that complain when a neighborhood association denies them a protest permit, or an admin on a small forum bans them, but that's not exactly steel-manning their cause, is it?
*While schools have a legitimate right to decide which books they'll stock in their libraries, this book is both already in their library, and important enough, that the shorthand of calling it a "ban" seems appropriate. They do claim they'll replace it with a book providing equivalent lessons, but that doesn't mean that this book isn't getting banned, just that (taking them at their word) their motives aren't anti-semitic.
This is interesting when it comes to education.
We have a few holdout Christian conservatives and they are sending their kids to schools where they are brainwashed in a way that they are completely culture shocked and traumatized. And now Muslims want their own schools too.
Freedom looks simple on paper but remember that we live in a society where everyone has to get along. And screwing with people's childhood sets them back for life. You can never get it back.
It is only strange if you assume their love of free speech is sincere. If you look at it as a cynical strategy, it makes perfect sense.
A very good test of peoples' sincerity in this territory is to first see how well what they claim of others applies to the speaker themselves. You will frequently find that their accusations serve equally well as admissions of guilt.
This argument goes both ways. Most people who are frothing at the mouth about this are either indifferent or happy about Big Tech's rampant censorship.
"Big tech," consisting of private companies, banning people and content creators from publishing misleading, harmful, calls-to-violence, racist or otherwise untrue information on their platforms
A county School board choosing to reduce the accessibility of a piece of literature that may have been used to educate children about the history of the Holocaust
If the latter is a government run or funded school, I'd say this is wrong. If it is a private school, then I would say it is just stupid, and poor kids for having such ignorant adults in charge of their education.
Which free speech advocates? I like free speech and I'd be horrified if this happened in Australia, although in this case it's in the US far away from me and about as relevant as the list of books the Taliban ban.
Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological battle. It's too repetitive to be interesting (at least in HN's sense of the word), and usually turns nasty.
Would we not all be better served by abolishing school libraries and replacing them with regional community libraries with select textbooks and such reserved for school kids?
If I’m in a high school, I can only have my high school’s books. If I’m an adult, those books are now dead to me. If the books are instead in a public library, many more can enjoy them (and the funding is better distributed as well).
I certainly remember being in high school and simply going to my public library any time I wanted a book because the selection was infinitely better.
Was wondering about the same thing. I grew up in Germany where school libraries weren't a big thing. My kids went to school here but always went to the public library.
Probably a much bigger issue in rural areas where the school is maybe the only place where any kind book can be accessed by kids.
When I was in high school, the school library was a few minutes away and I could go there easily during the school day. The town library was a lot harder to get to. Your experience may differ —- but people have lots of different experiences; blanket laws affect all of them, and should be made with the appropriate degree of caution.
You say that but if my school library doesn’t have a book and some other school’s library does, I don’t have access to that book ever in my life.
If the libraries were consolidated into a regional library, everyone in the region gets access to a super library for life. Furthermore, the library would be high quality as a result of many schools funding it.
It's almost like two sides can play that game. Who started the game anyway?
I remember some statues being toppled last year by very progressive minded people. Maybe you know destroying art wasn't the progressive thing to do after all.
These weren't removed by elected officials. But by an angry mob from one side. You're overlooking that little important bit.
"Relative" is trying to apply modern values to historical figures. A standard most of your previous presidents would fail. Might as well remove their statues too.
If someone went around smashing depictions of the devil to rid the world of evil, you would think they're kind of nuts.
Are we going to tear out pages in books these same people were mentioned in, to erase any positive memory of them.
I don't see how that would be different.
I feel like publicly owned statues serve a very different purpose than school library books. The former are usually forms of veneration, the others are for education.
> It's almost like two sides can play that game. Who started the game anyway?
The book banners started centuries ago. the origins of the word "Bowdlerized" are about cutting unsuitable language from Gibbon's 'decline and fall of the roman empire' [0] Thats 1820s.
"Lambs Tales from Shakespeare" was an earlier instance. They cut all the good bits, to make it suitable for kids. [1]
> I remember some statues being toppled last year by very progressive minded people. Maybe you know destroying art wasn't the progressive thing to do after all.
There really isn't linkage. One is about teaching materials and how to expose young minds to written ideas and expression. The other is about memorialising the past and how its treated. Personally?? I think context panels on the statues to explain why we no longer think they deserve memorialising is better, but thats just my take.
This is a repeat of what happened to Dungeons and Dragons books in the 80's and 90's but this time they are coming for actually important books. I say this as a person who plays D&D.
It depends on which modules. Children definitely need to be protected from the power creep of some splatbooks. Plus they teach drow think they should be in charge of other races and that’s obviously critical race theory.
Thank your for sharing. As a non-American, it always amuses me how the concept of free speech and [1] exists in the same mind. Lol "Son of a Bleep"
[1] "When we see something on television that is a direct quote from an actor or a president,something where it has that inappropriate language, they will blur it out or white out parts of it or they will bleep it"
But think of the children! What would an 8th grader do if they read the world... "bitch" or "god damn"! Anarchy would then ensue!
I'm quite shocked there are adults uncomfortable with reading those types of words enough to decide 8th graders would also be. In a book about the Holocaust, where that's going to be among the last things noticed..
I read this book as required reading in an AP Literature course, back when I was in high school (in ATL, if anyone is curious). I remember being absolutely blown away by the it - I forgot everything else we read in that course, but this one stuck with me. The last scene, where the narrator's dad confuses him for his other son, who died, is a punch to the gut. Real shame to see this book censored, students are missing out.
I feel like the title should be changed to emphasize that it has been banned from schools, not banned per se. Reading the meeting comments, it seems like most of their objections are with the profanity and nudity in the book. That opens up a very separate sphere of discussions from your standard free speech/cancel culture debates - what topics should kids or teenagers be exposed to?
The linked notes go into this in a lot more detail, but this debate is in regards to an 8th grade class; the teachers had plans to address/censor the profanity and they go into some detail about what those plans were and why they thought it was proper to use this subject matter. I find those arguments compelling:
> We understand some of this language is objectionable. When we think about the author’s intent, I
could argue that his intent was to make our jaws drop. Oh my goodness, think about what happened
and what it would have been like to have lived during that time period and that shock. So, the author
chose to use those words, we understand they are objectionable, we understand our community and
our families and that’s not something that we see is needed to be spelled out in our book, so we felt it
was appropriate to white that out.
> What we have done in anticipation of any of those concerns, we prepared a parent letter to go home to
inform them of this topic we are about to study. We went ahead and took the step to censor that
explicit content and we went ahead and made sure that all of our books are stamped “property of MCS”
so that if one does come up for some reason, hey look at these words we are teaching in school, no,
that’s not one of our books.
----
I would flip the question on you. When do you think it is appropriate for kids to learn that bad or explicit things exist? When is it important for students to be able to engage with sexual content or profanity in a mature way? Should that be something that happens under guidance, or should we pretend it doesn't exist until they hit college?
8th grade is not too early for kids to engage with disturbing material in a system where they are warned in advance what they are going to encounter and if additional safeguards are being taken to make that material less offensive to them.
Additionally, I would push back on the notion that this is just about censoring specific profanities. The book being taught is a censored version of the book, and the criticism is about censoring at broader levels:
> Steven Brady- We implemented that, we chose to do redactions.
> Rob Shamblin- So can we take it, as far as it needs to go, because I don’t know that it is going to end
with one book. I think the process needs to include a bigger plan to holistically redact things that we
don’t want in there. We hope we have good employees, like minded culture, centric folks that fit with
McMinn County, that they’re going to make the right discretionary decisions to redact that literature in
an appropriate way for the age related presentation.
> Steven Brady- After discussing with Mr. Parkison, we felt that was best for our community like you were
saying.
> Rob Shamblin- My question goes further, can we redact at a larger level than what I saw there. Why do
we have to leave some of that, why can’t we gray all of it?
I don't think the above conversation is about profanity when people are hoping that we have "like minded culture, centric folks" to make these decisions; when they're saying that even a discussion that sex exists is too much for 8th graders to be exposed to. Because it's not too much, you should be teaching kids at that age that sex exists. My feeling is that there isn't really a magical age where teenagers suddenly become mature enough to talk about sex, what happens is that they become mature over time if they are gradually introduced to these topics in structured environments, in safe spaces with parents/teachers, with people who are guiding them through that process in a deliberative way.
And if that never happens, then there is a huge swath of culture that we just can't teach about in schools, which I think would be very harmful to ban.
On one hand, we can debate whether or not kids should be exposed to actual representations of nudity or profanities. But on the other hand, if we're already censoring that content, and giving students the opportunity to ...
Let’s also be clear: it’s almost 100% certain that the county’s 8th graders use words much worse than "god damn" in their every day life out of sight of their parents, and have probably seen far more nudity than whatever is in Maus.
The board and parents are complete numbskulls and outraged right-wing patsies.
Looking at the meeting minutes, one of the board members named Mike Cochran is pretty upset with the comic book. He says its too graphic and inappropriate. There's swearing and the comic goes in great detail about the father of the main character losing his virginity and the mother cutting herself. There's naked depictions. His justification is that he's not concerned about the Holocaust stuff, he thinks the book is inappropriate for 7th-8th graders because of its graphic vulgar depictions.
Then he goes on about an unrelated poem that uses the word ecstasy, and is upset that there's a question that children have to answer about what ecstasy is. He thinks its something to do with children being indoctrinated into vulgarity, sexuality, and inappropriateness.
...lol.
I hate to break HN etiquette but this isn't so much about Holocaust denialism but really dumb people having really dumb hot takes.
It boggles my mind that the depiction of nudity and sexual 'vulgarity' is somehow a greater cause for concern than the depiction of mass murder and dead bodies. Literal piles of corpses are okay but a titty isn't for Mr. Cochran.
Classic "American culture" (of the old-school variety) straight from the middle of Tennessee, where in the same document they also choose to disclose they only want "like-minded folks" involved in the process.
I think you nailed it on the head, they are desperate to shelter their children until they turn 18 and head off to college. I hope they don't let their kids near an Internet-connected computer or smartphone, otherwise it's all for show- oh, wait.. doesn't pretty much every kid get a phone in middle school or sooner these days?
The board members are so antiquated and dusty, it's triggering my asthma even from thousands of miles away.
Seriously though, it is sad that how the US public education system curriculum is now basically 100% controlled by the government. When the locals don't like the rules, they find a way around them. Then the rest of us rule-followers suffer through this standardized nonsense.
Teachers in the USA nowadays don't get to decide much about the classes they teach, which certainly kills the unique magic I felt some teachers added to their classes and made for awesome experiences growing up. Sad.
When we say it's being "banned", what is that meant to mean? The way I read this, there is a school board that doesn't want to use a particular book when teaching a course. That seems a long way from "banning the book". It doesn't mean the book won't be available for sale, or for loan from a library, or that the book would be confiscated from kids that happened to be in possession of it.
Although I happen to think that the reasons the school board used to arrive at its decision are dubious (I think eighth graders probably know and use worse language than the stuff they're handwringing over), if they can find something that works as effectively for the purposes of the curriculum then it all seems rather overblown.
> The McMinn County School board’s ten members voted to axe Maus from curricula and school libraries, citing its use of the phrase “God Damn” and its drawings of “naked pictures,” though those are cartoon mice.
They did ban it from the library.
The dubious reasons for the ban are actually really important; if that’s ok they will find dubious reasons to ban other books which make them feel uncomfortable as well. The concern seems justified to me.
What's the difference between banning and curating? A school library doesn't contain all books, so setting some criteria for age appropriateness always happens. You can argue whether "god damn" should cross the line, or the n-word, or hard core porn. Calling it banning stifles useful discussion on what standards are appropriate.
It is a school board; oversight is their job. Librarians should have leeway, but they don't have unlimited power. If a librarian was putting anti-vax books in the science section of the library, it is the duty of the principal, the superintendent, and ultimately the school board to intervene.
The minutes of the meeting do not indicate anything about a library ban; that seems to be a novelty introduced by the article itself rather than being a piece of reporting.
In fact, those minutes indicate that the exact same book is being used in a freshman high school curriculum in the same county, which rather casts doubt on the assertion.
I should also be clear that, when I say I find the reasoning dubious, I do not mean to suggest that it is not based on a genuinely-held belief. I simply mean I think they're being unrealistic about what kids know/say.
I’m not sure I agree with that action, though I’ve never heard of it, but your question appears to conflate holocaust education with uncritical deployment of racial slurs. That seems very bad.
If racist language in a book about racism is "uncritical deployment", couldn't female nudity in a graphic novel about the holocaust also be "uncritical deployment"?
This has nothing to do with ideology, the story or the meaning of the book. It's just a bunch of educators and parents quibbling over how much swearing in a book for 8th graders is too much, the message that sends, etc, etc. If anything the in depth quibbling and discussion of potential replacement books makes these people look more competent because it's clear that they're considering it from many angles.
I disagree with them and think they care way to much about something that doesn't matter but the point here is that the article's description and most of the comments around here seem far less than honest when compared to the minutes.
This is a bunch of self important educators banning a book over stuff that doesn't matter, not a bunch of ideologues banning a book because they don't like the message.
This "ban" is removal of the book from required curriculum for 8th graders rather than from the library system, which is what traditionally referred to as a "book ban". Not that I agree with this particular decision, but school boards must be able to make decisions for what is appropriate in their district. It should be just as easy to add a book to the curriculum as to remove it without summoning undue unwelcome outside attention that something sinister is going on.
I looked briefly through rather lengthy minutes [1] of the meeting. Objections seem to come down to usage of words like "bitch" and phrases like "god damn" that students would get in trouble for using in the hallways according to existing school rules. The participants seemed quite queazy about saying the objectionable words themselves and instead either referred by their abbreviations or spelling them out by letter.
One part of the discussion that was also interesting was they considered censoring the book with whiteout for the offending words and one naked drawing but decided against it. They thought they need to get permission from the author because of copyright laws. I believe these kind of redactions are considered fair use for education under copyright laws.
It's very important to reserve the use of "banned" for actual bans, this kind of misuse is apparently very common when something like this happens.
That having been said, the people debating the issue seem to be grossly intellectually unqualified to be deciding anything regarding the education of others, which should be very concerning.
> the people debating the issue seem to be grossly intellectually unqualified to be deciding anything regarding the education of others
I'd say they have the one qualification that actually matters here: they were elected specifically for this purpose by the residents of the school district.
Consider that these people are also likely eligible for jury duty, which could very well mean that they would be considered qualified to literally condemn someone to death. Thought of in that light, removing a book from the local school's curriculum seems downright inconsequential.
Maus, and works like it, are powerful because they show the history of the holocaust through the eyes of those who survived it. This recollection will include the way the corpses were piled naked, or the verbal abuse they suffered. The intention of this board may not have been to water down or remove history, but this sort of knee-jerk reaction to anything objectionable will do just that by removing some of the most visceral works. The photo of “napalm girl” at the burning of Trang Bang village is deeply moving, and historically important - yet it includes full frontal nudity. Any attempt to “correct” something like this - whether it be with black bars, a blur, or with a photoshopped on shirt - would cheapen the impact of the image and dilute reality. Any attempt to censor Maus would be the same - a cheapening of the recollection of a survivor of a horrific event. Regardless of intention, exorcising or modifying works like these for superficial reasons despite their value will result in a watering down of history, simply because the real history is often crude or objectionable.
I don't know if it's possible to traumatize people by showing them pictures, but it seems like it would be, so it may be wise to delay some things for, say, college or highschool.
As evidence, I present this photograph, captioned: "A Congolese man looking at the severed hand and foot of his five-year-old daughter who was killed, and allegedly cannibalized, by the members of Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company militia."
They didn’t ban a book. They decided to have it not be a part of the eighth grade curriculum. This isn’t an issue of free speech unless you feel that not showing Schindler’s List in third grade classrooms is also an issue of free speech. These people making the decision don’t seem the most informed, but let’s not turn this into something it isn’t. School boards are well within their rights to decide that material isn’t age appropriate.
Also known as anti-meritocracy? When you hire people because of who they are rather than what they can do, you will slowly destroy competence, and quite understandably, a lot of people should be furious about that.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 205 ms ] threadhttps://www.liberation75.org/survey
EDIT: I read their PDF, this methodology is ridiculous. Their website has the bold claim that "42% of teens have witnessed an antisemitic event", but reading the actual document, that includes hearing about the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting on the news, which basically means that 42% of teens read the news. This isn't the kind of source you should be citing if you want to be taken seriously.
Another instance of that misleading lowpass filter: "if that happened to group J, the J people must have been doing something to deserve it".
It's such a shocking and ironic story that I almost wonder if someone planted the idea intentionally to shine a light on the stupid of these people.
We really must push back against this nonsense.
This is the most dry and mundane "book banning" I have ever heard of.
Furthermore, the minutes don't say anything about keeping it out of the school library which directly conflicts with what TFA alleges.
[1] https://core-docs.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/asset/uploaded_...
But furthermore, the reasons given strike me as extremely silly - I can’t remember any even mildly titillating nudity in Maus - the only nudity I can recall are piles of stripped corpses. And the idea that the phrase “god damn” is somehow inappropriate when coming from the testimony of a survivor of mass slaughter strikes me as bizarre. This sort of moralistic kneejerking is dangerous - something superficially objectionable can be found in a great many works of key significance. The girl at the napalm bombing of Trang Bang village is full frontal nudity - should we erase that powerful image from anything our children might learn? Sometimes nudity and profanity are simply a matter of what happened, and exorcising them means teaching a watered down version of the truth.
This is a bunch of self important educators banning a book over stuff that doesn't matter, not a bunch of ideologues banning a book because they don't like the message as one would think based on TFA and most of the comments in here.
Maybe the board really is ignorant of it content and only exist to quibble. If they are actually motivated to keep their kids ignorant, there is no way in hell they are going to say so in public! Either way, they are doing their kids a huge disservice.
And, regardless of intentions, this is a poster-child example of dubious book-banning. You might as well re-write '1984' because you think kids can't handle mean characters. Or, similarly: https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/26/media/china-fight-club-ending...
This is a very different story than most people here are making it out to be.
https://www.tmz.com/2022/01/26/chuck-palahniuk-not-mad-china...
I can think of a few opportunists who have latched onto him and dabbled in the cane l culture backlash stuff in the past, but they’re opportunists so of course they’re also hypocrites.
Who do you mean specifically?
[edit] it seems some people disagree. I’d be happy to hear what people think I’m missing, maybe I have the wrong read on this.
The fight against CRT is now a mainstream conservative mission. These are the same people who have spent years advocating for free speech when it comes to tech companies but are fine censoring the schools. It is completely hypocritical.
I guess I’m just not sure which specific people you mean.
Certainly there exist conservatives who hate being censored but love playing censor, that’s nothing new. I’m not sure it’s even hypocritical, they just have values I find to be pretty awful.
Of the people you’ve named below only Paul has any history of arguing for the freedom to say things he doesn’t personally like. The rest just complain when speech they like is curtailed, and they may use the phrase.
I can call a pizza salad, and sing its praises all day, but that doesn’t mean I like salad, or advocate for it.
You’re right that Paul is being hypocritical though.
Most of these people glommed onto the issue after it was made popular with the base by folks like Hawley and Rufo. It’s important to make distinctions when talking about where ideas come from.
Did you read the minutes of the meeting? The content that is against school board policy is enumerated and there is a request to replace the material with something that can teach equivalent lessons.
> I've got enough faith from the Director of Schools down to the newest hire in this building, that you can take that module and rewrite it and make it do the same thing. Our children need to know about the Holocaust, they need to understand that there are several pieces of history, Mr. Bennett, that shows depression or suppression of certain ethnicities. It's not acceptable today. We've got to accept people for who and what they are… But Rob, the wording in this book is in direct conflict of some of our policies… I move that we remove this book from the reading series and challenge our instructional staff to come with an alternative method of teaching the Holocaust.
Believing that it’s more important to protect middle schoolers from mice that say "god damn" than it is to convey the horrors of the camps is white fragility politics in action. Infantilization to serve fascist ends.
1. https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1486732376369631234?s=2...
Did you read the minutes or are you assuming these are just dumb, racist, country-bumpkins? They literally address exactly this point.
From the minutes (regarding removing this book):
> My bigger concern is that this is probably the tip of the iceberg of what is out there.
1) I ask you to refrain from personal attacks if you want me to continue to engage.
2) I feel no moral compunction to read a twenty page supporting document to make a one-line comment about not trusting people's claims uncritically.
3) Having now read that document, my opinion hasn't changed. One person tries a couple of times to address the bigger picture about what problematic books are in the curriculum. In both cases he is almost immediately shut down by the rest of the committee who want to discuss this particular book.
I don't expect you or anyone else on HN to read the supporting text, but I do expect some level of empathy, assumption of good faith, and seeing past sensationalism. Instead I see a lot of cargo culting, demonizing, and propagation of incorrect information.
Having listened to an agonizing number of school board meetings, and having family that is involved in school administration, there are reasons to not let a topic expand past the original scope for the sake of the board, the parents, and everyone else involved.
The right has taken on "free speech" as a cause lately. Big Tech needs to be defunded because Twitter kicked out Trump, etc. It pushes a narrative that the left is against free speech and the right is for it, but as usual, both sides agree they are happy when their tribe wins.
>Regardless of why this decision was made, we’re in a climate where a sustained attack is being made on our schools, our teachers, and the truth. The anti-Critical Race Theory furor ginned up by Republican think tanks for political gain morphed into an excuse for right wing folks to try to cancel diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and things they don’t agree with in general — and now Conservative book-banning is really having a moment.
Of course I explicitly remember listening to Limbaugh in the 90s or so as he made fun of the “liberal fad” of listening to kids feelings and “protecting them from harm” or having to deal with anything that might be hard or painful. Can’t punish Bobby it might hurt his self esteem.
Isn’t that where the term liberal snowflake came from? That they were so fragile they had to be coddled and couldn’t handle the real world?
And here we are now. What’s good for the goose, I guess.
Well I guess the kids can't see the phrase "god damn" or see a drawing of a naked woman when they are learning about the industrialized murder of millions of people. Do you not see how crazy that is? These these kids aren't eight. They are teenagers. They are old enough to learn about these things. This policy is asinine.
The discussion at the meeting was literally about keeping the same lessons but using a source that didn't contain specific words and images that violated board policy. They weren't trying to censor violence or descriptions thereof.
> Now that I have provided that do you still feel what I said was a "straw man"?
I don't see any concrete examples provided, so yes, I still feel it's a straw man.
>The discussion at the meeting was literally about keeping the same lessons but using a source that didn't contain specific words and images that violated board policy.
Some states and boards have used the exact same method to include language in lessons to say slaves in the South had it better before they got freed and that slavery wasn't always evil. It is a common tactic to downplay events from the past that make people uncomfortable but humanity has shown that we tend to repeat such events so teaching them is important.
>I don't see any concrete examples provided, so yes, I still feel it's a straw man.
You could have asked for examples and I would have provided them but I do find it interesting that you didn't provide examples in your own post, you did exactly what I did and posted your opinion. Holding others to a standard you do not follow yourself isn't a productive way to have a discussion.
I hope you have a pleasant reset of your day.
The board specifically doesn’t want to change the lessons being taught, just the material chosen to teach it because it violates board policies.
Just because a work covers an important topic doesn’t mean it’s appropriate in all contexts, regardless of the quality of that work (e.g. I wouldn’t want my children watching Schindler’s List at their current age, but they should watch it when they are at the appropriate level of maturity).
This will be my last response on this topic but, in the future please review what you have previously written as you appear to have misremembered what you wrote previously.
Sources: Zinn; Loewen
Fancy-sounding principles about government don't matter in this debate. Look at the lack of right-wing outcry over the canceling of Colin Kaepernick. It's just about power, and doing whatever it takes to make sure the "right people" have it.
If you don't think there's a problem with the government banning books from school curriculum for political reasons -- if you don't think that has anything to do with freedom of speech, then I don't see how you have a free speech problem with anything at all. None of the cancel culture that people complain about is illegal or unconstitutional. That doesn't mean it can't be harmful to free expression, but in contrast, "representation with taxation" can actually be unconstitutional if the "representation" people ask for is suppression of political speech.
It is not my job to tell people whether or not they should be concerned with cancel culture. But anyone who is concerned about cancel culture and not concerned with educational book bans, or laws that restrict what topics teachers can talk to students about, or restrictions on conversations about sexual orientations/identities at school or with medical professionals, or any of the other speech laws being floated by Republican governments right now -- that person clearly is not interested in free speech itself, they just have an agenda and are using free speech as a convenient narrative tool in pursuit of that agenda.
People can be legitimately concerned about cancel culture as a free speech issue, but I'm not going to take anyone seriously who says that cancel culture is real and actual government censorship isn't.
It's not banned for political reasons, at least from my reading of it. It's banned for the language and the illustrations of nudity. Nobody is asking for the Holocaust to not be taught in schools, so I fail to see where there is a political bend to this.
Do I think they're being up-tight and prudish? Yes, probably (but I haven't seen the book itself). Do I think it's politically motivated? No. The author of the article even defers that they don't know the motivation: "Regardless of why this decision was made..."
> So can we take it, as far as it needs to go, because I don’t know that it is going to end with one book. I think the process needs to include a bigger plan to holistically redact things that we don’t want in there. We hope we have good employees, like minded culture, centric folks that fit with McMinn County, that they’re going to make the right discretionary decisions to redact that literature in an appropriate way for the age related presentation.
It is very hard for me not to read this as political censorship in nature.
----
And second, given the teachers were planning to inform parents and censor the nudity/profanity, it is hard for me not to read this as an objection over students being taught about any subject that borders sex or sexual content. I think the "inappropriate" objection takes on a different tone when people are saying that it's inappropriate to teach literature even after the swear words have been whited out -- at that point we're talking about subject-matter, not profanity.
I view that as both unrealistic in general (I wonder if parents have the same objections to mature topics in To Kill a Mockingbird or Shakespeare), but I also view it as explicitly political. It is a political statement to say that sex as a topic should not ever be mentioned in middleschool.
----
But last but not least, even if this were only a discussion about profanity (which I don't think is the case), government censorship of profanity in schools is still a heck of a lot closer to a 1st Amendment violation on the sliding scale of censorship than people ganging up on each other on Twitter is.
I still don't really accept that someone could legitimately find the first to be irrelevant to free speech conversations, but the second to be critically important.
You and I have different views on sexual content being political or not, and that's fine. I can see both sides, but I just don't think it is inherently political.
Wrt 1st Amendment violations, teachers are government employees representing the local government. Saying teachers can't teach something in school as a representative of the government is different than restricting a student's speech.
Eh... there is a lot of history of LGBTQ+ censorship that should be taken into account when making a statement like this. "It's fine for adults but we need to protect the young from it," is historically a very common phrase that has popped up in discussions about sex education and sexual orientation being expressed in schools.
I also want to kind of align the conversation with the specifics of what people objected to in this book. We're talking about 8 swear words and a single cartoon picture of a naked mouse -- all of which were censored from the book. So at this point we are talking about a topic, not specific instances of profanity. We're talking about a view that 8th graders are not mature enough to know that nakedness exists or that sometimes people swear.
I just don't understand how that could be seen as a non-political view. There's a difference between someone saying that 8th graders shouldn't be exposed to the words "bitch" or "damn", and someone saying that 8th graders shouldn't be taught that anyone in any context might use those words.
From the minutes again:
> I understand that on TV and maybe at home these kids hear worse, but we are talking about things that if a student went down the hallway and said this, our disciplinary policy says they can be disciplined, and rightfully so. And we are teaching this and going against policy?
Is the objection that someone in a book did something that was against school policy? Because that seems really political in nature to me as an objection.
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> Saying teachers can't teach something in school as a representative of the government is different than restricting a student's speech.
100% agreed. I don't like what the school is doing here, but I doubt in this case it's a 1st Amendment violation.
However, it's still very clearly closer to a 1st Amendment violation than anything happening on Twitter. Government restrictions on school curriculum can be ruled unconstitutional. Of course not all restrictions are unconstitutional, but it is within the realm of things we would talk about. How kids get taught and what topics teachers can bring up to them is a huge battleground in the fight over the government's ability to define what students are and aren't allowed to learn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
These proposals were so widespread in some GOP circles that they actually became state law in 2 states (Florida and Texas) before being struck down as being a blatantly unconstitutional violation of the first amendment for being compelled speech. Note that in both contexts "struck down" does not refer to a final ruling, but rather an injunction that will remain in place until the final disposition of the case.
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/12/01/texas-social-media-l...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/30/florida...
And the interpretation of the law as "compelling speech" is not just mine alone. The federal judge that issued the preliminary injunction in Florida described it this way:
> The legislation compels providers to host speech that violates their standards—speech they otherwise would not host—and forbids providers from speaking as they otherwise would.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flnd.37...
Every single person who says YouTube isn't allowed to remove videos is advocating compelled publication.
Every single person who says Facebook isn't allowed to remove anti-vax misinformation is demanding compelled publication.
The list goes on and on. And there are a whole lot of them who claim to be doing it because they're free speech advocates.
> their real complaint is that some community won't let them come in
The "community" is usually a giant multinational corporation like Google, Twitter, Facebook, or Amazon. I'm sure you can find some "free speech advocates" that complain when a neighborhood association denies them a protest permit, or an admin on a small forum bans them, but that's not exactly steel-manning their cause, is it?
*While schools have a legitimate right to decide which books they'll stock in their libraries, this book is both already in their library, and important enough, that the shorthand of calling it a "ban" seems appropriate. They do claim they'll replace it with a book providing equivalent lessons, but that doesn't mean that this book isn't getting banned, just that (taking them at their word) their motives aren't anti-semitic.
Freedom looks simple on paper but remember that we live in a society where everyone has to get along. And screwing with people's childhood sets them back for life. You can never get it back.
A very good test of peoples' sincerity in this territory is to first see how well what they claim of others applies to the speaker themselves. You will frequently find that their accusations serve equally well as admissions of guilt.
"Big tech," consisting of private companies, banning people and content creators from publishing misleading, harmful, calls-to-violence, racist or otherwise untrue information on their platforms
A county School board choosing to reduce the accessibility of a piece of literature that may have been used to educate children about the history of the Holocaust
If the latter is a government run or funded school, I'd say this is wrong. If it is a private school, then I would say it is just stupid, and poor kids for having such ignorant adults in charge of their education.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If I’m in a high school, I can only have my high school’s books. If I’m an adult, those books are now dead to me. If the books are instead in a public library, many more can enjoy them (and the funding is better distributed as well).
I certainly remember being in high school and simply going to my public library any time I wanted a book because the selection was infinitely better.
Probably a much bigger issue in rural areas where the school is maybe the only place where any kind book can be accessed by kids.
What? You can still go to the public library.
> If I’m an adult, those books are now dead to me.
You will likely find those same books in the public library.
If the libraries were consolidated into a regional library, everyone in the region gets access to a super library for life. Furthermore, the library would be high quality as a result of many schools funding it.
I remember some statues being toppled last year by very progressive minded people. Maybe you know destroying art wasn't the progressive thing to do after all.
At least to me, the values of those in favor of keeping southern memorials and banning Maus seem pretty odious.
It is relativism to equate taking down the statues and banning this book, unfortunately.
Are we going to tear out pages in books these same people were mentioned in, to erase any positive memory of them. I don't see how that would be different.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/08...
The book banners started centuries ago. the origins of the word "Bowdlerized" are about cutting unsuitable language from Gibbon's 'decline and fall of the roman empire' [0] Thats 1820s.
"Lambs Tales from Shakespeare" was an earlier instance. They cut all the good bits, to make it suitable for kids. [1]
> I remember some statues being toppled last year by very progressive minded people. Maybe you know destroying art wasn't the progressive thing to do after all.
There really isn't linkage. One is about teaching materials and how to expose young minds to written ideas and expression. The other is about memorialising the past and how its treated. Personally?? I think context panels on the statues to explain why we no longer think they deserve memorialising is better, but thats just my take.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_from_Shakespeare
It certainly didn't start last year.
I remember conservatives being grumpy about Dogma and The Simpsons decades ago, and that's hardly the start either. Hell, Socrates got "canceled".
[1] "When we see something on television that is a direct quote from an actor or a president,something where it has that inappropriate language, they will blur it out or white out parts of it or they will bleep it"
I'm quite shocked there are adults uncomfortable with reading those types of words enough to decide 8th graders would also be. In a book about the Holocaust, where that's going to be among the last things noticed..
> We understand some of this language is objectionable. When we think about the author’s intent, I could argue that his intent was to make our jaws drop. Oh my goodness, think about what happened and what it would have been like to have lived during that time period and that shock. So, the author chose to use those words, we understand they are objectionable, we understand our community and our families and that’s not something that we see is needed to be spelled out in our book, so we felt it was appropriate to white that out.
> What we have done in anticipation of any of those concerns, we prepared a parent letter to go home to inform them of this topic we are about to study. We went ahead and took the step to censor that explicit content and we went ahead and made sure that all of our books are stamped “property of MCS” so that if one does come up for some reason, hey look at these words we are teaching in school, no, that’s not one of our books.
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I would flip the question on you. When do you think it is appropriate for kids to learn that bad or explicit things exist? When is it important for students to be able to engage with sexual content or profanity in a mature way? Should that be something that happens under guidance, or should we pretend it doesn't exist until they hit college?
8th grade is not too early for kids to engage with disturbing material in a system where they are warned in advance what they are going to encounter and if additional safeguards are being taken to make that material less offensive to them.
Additionally, I would push back on the notion that this is just about censoring specific profanities. The book being taught is a censored version of the book, and the criticism is about censoring at broader levels:
> Steven Brady- We implemented that, we chose to do redactions.
> Rob Shamblin- So can we take it, as far as it needs to go, because I don’t know that it is going to end with one book. I think the process needs to include a bigger plan to holistically redact things that we don’t want in there. We hope we have good employees, like minded culture, centric folks that fit with McMinn County, that they’re going to make the right discretionary decisions to redact that literature in an appropriate way for the age related presentation.
> Steven Brady- After discussing with Mr. Parkison, we felt that was best for our community like you were saying.
> Rob Shamblin- My question goes further, can we redact at a larger level than what I saw there. Why do we have to leave some of that, why can’t we gray all of it?
I don't think the above conversation is about profanity when people are hoping that we have "like minded culture, centric folks" to make these decisions; when they're saying that even a discussion that sex exists is too much for 8th graders to be exposed to. Because it's not too much, you should be teaching kids at that age that sex exists. My feeling is that there isn't really a magical age where teenagers suddenly become mature enough to talk about sex, what happens is that they become mature over time if they are gradually introduced to these topics in structured environments, in safe spaces with parents/teachers, with people who are guiding them through that process in a deliberative way.
And if that never happens, then there is a huge swath of culture that we just can't teach about in schools, which I think would be very harmful to ban.
On one hand, we can debate whether or not kids should be exposed to actual representations of nudity or profanities. But on the other hand, if we're already censoring that content, and giving students the opportunity to ...
The board and parents are complete numbskulls and outraged right-wing patsies.
Then he goes on about an unrelated poem that uses the word ecstasy, and is upset that there's a question that children have to answer about what ecstasy is. He thinks its something to do with children being indoctrinated into vulgarity, sexuality, and inappropriateness.
...lol.
I hate to break HN etiquette but this isn't so much about Holocaust denialism but really dumb people having really dumb hot takes.
It boggles my mind that the depiction of nudity and sexual 'vulgarity' is somehow a greater cause for concern than the depiction of mass murder and dead bodies. Literal piles of corpses are okay but a titty isn't for Mr. Cochran.
I think you nailed it on the head, they are desperate to shelter their children until they turn 18 and head off to college. I hope they don't let their kids near an Internet-connected computer or smartphone, otherwise it's all for show- oh, wait.. doesn't pretty much every kid get a phone in middle school or sooner these days?
The board members are so antiquated and dusty, it's triggering my asthma even from thousands of miles away.
Seriously though, it is sad that how the US public education system curriculum is now basically 100% controlled by the government. When the locals don't like the rules, they find a way around them. Then the rest of us rule-followers suffer through this standardized nonsense.
Teachers in the USA nowadays don't get to decide much about the classes they teach, which certainly kills the unique magic I felt some teachers added to their classes and made for awesome experiences growing up. Sad.
> So, my problem is, it looks like the entire curriculum is developed to normalize sexuality, normalize nudity and normalize vulgar language
Although I happen to think that the reasons the school board used to arrive at its decision are dubious (I think eighth graders probably know and use worse language than the stuff they're handwringing over), if they can find something that works as effectively for the purposes of the curriculum then it all seems rather overblown.
They did ban it from the library.
The dubious reasons for the ban are actually really important; if that’s ok they will find dubious reasons to ban other books which make them feel uncomfortable as well. The concern seems justified to me.
When it's a legislative decision, and not the librarian's / teacher's.
In fact, those minutes indicate that the exact same book is being used in a freshman high school curriculum in the same county, which rather casts doubt on the assertion.
I should also be clear that, when I say I find the reasoning dubious, I do not mean to suggest that it is not based on a genuinely-held belief. I simply mean I think they're being unrealistic about what kids know/say.
https://core-docs.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/asset/uploaded_...
This has nothing to do with ideology, the story or the meaning of the book. It's just a bunch of educators and parents quibbling over how much swearing in a book for 8th graders is too much, the message that sends, etc, etc. If anything the in depth quibbling and discussion of potential replacement books makes these people look more competent because it's clear that they're considering it from many angles.
I disagree with them and think they care way to much about something that doesn't matter but the point here is that the article's description and most of the comments around here seem far less than honest when compared to the minutes.
This is a bunch of self important educators banning a book over stuff that doesn't matter, not a bunch of ideologues banning a book because they don't like the message.
I looked briefly through rather lengthy minutes [1] of the meeting. Objections seem to come down to usage of words like "bitch" and phrases like "god damn" that students would get in trouble for using in the hallways according to existing school rules. The participants seemed quite queazy about saying the objectionable words themselves and instead either referred by their abbreviations or spelling them out by letter.
One part of the discussion that was also interesting was they considered censoring the book with whiteout for the offending words and one naked drawing but decided against it. They thought they need to get permission from the author because of copyright laws. I believe these kind of redactions are considered fair use for education under copyright laws.
[1] https://core-docs.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/asset/uploaded_...
That having been said, the people debating the issue seem to be grossly intellectually unqualified to be deciding anything regarding the education of others, which should be very concerning.
I'd say they have the one qualification that actually matters here: they were elected specifically for this purpose by the residents of the school district.
Consider that these people are also likely eligible for jury duty, which could very well mean that they would be considered qualified to literally condemn someone to death. Thought of in that light, removing a book from the local school's curriculum seems downright inconsequential.
As evidence, I present this photograph, captioned: "A Congolese man looking at the severed hand and foot of his five-year-old daughter who was killed, and allegedly cannibalized, by the members of Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company militia."
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/father-hand-belgian-congo-1...
Also known as anti-meritocracy? When you hire people because of who they are rather than what they can do, you will slowly destroy competence, and quite understandably, a lot of people should be furious about that.