Texas school district agrees to remove ‘Anne Frank’s Diary,’ ‘Maus’ and 670 other books after right-wing group’s complaint
Texas school district agrees to remove ‘Anne Frank’s Diary,’ ‘Maus’ and 670 other books after right-wing group’s complaint
The district in the Rio Grande Valley immediately agreed with activists who said the books were “filthy and evil.”
Conservative activists, led by a local pastor and outspoken Israel advocate, pushed the district, Mission CISD, to excise books mostly about gender, sexuality and race. Their demands represented an extreme version of a nationwide culture war over books that has played out in recent years — and ensnared a number of books with Jewish themes.
In Mission, the long list of books on the chopping block includes a recent illustrated adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary; both volumes of Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust graphic memoir “Maus”; “The Fixer,” Bernard Malamud’s novel about a historical instance of antisemitic blood libel; and “Kasher in the Rye,” a ribald memoir by Jewish comedian Moshe Kasher.
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I just can't understand how someone could think that banking books is a good idea.
edit: sorry banning not banking
Like a library?
sorry I meant banning not banking
So you think that all books should be available to all kids in public schools?
We have these people who go to college and get specialized degrees so that they can do things and work in school libraries and figure out what books are appropriate for the school.
You might have heard of them. They're called librarians.
Deciding what books do and don't belong in a library is literally part of their job. I know, because I'm married to one. She used to work in a school library, now she works in a public library. It was a Catholic school (she's an atheist, they didn't discriminate) and they trusted her to figure out which books were appropriate for their kids because of her degree. What does that tell you about librarians?
It tells me that they are obviously evil because they don't blindly support a white Christian authoritarian regime.
/s
The funny thing is that I know for a fact that there are Trump supporters who work in the library where my wife works (one is a cis woman with a mustache who must be mistaken for trans regularly, which surprised me), and they also don't approve of this shit. I mean yeah, they're total hypocrites, but they still don't support these book bans.
It isn't about them being available. Its about discussing the content and the deeper meaning. I would be totally fine with reading Adolf Hitlers - Mein Kampf in School, as long as the content gets discussed and why what he wrote wasn't good.
Nothing is going to be discusses it would just be sitting on the shelf and available. So I think we should all agree that censorship of books in public schools makes sense. I personally am fine with siding on the side of being more cautious and having kids less able to get books people think are not acceptable, and catching books that probably should be available in schools.
If kids are only exposed to kid friendly stuff, then they will never learn anything and stay kids long into adulthood.
I guess so, but if kids are exposed to adult things their mind is not ready for it will harm them.
They already deal with the fact that someone can just go in and shoot them the middle the middle of class. Those books are nothing compared to that
Two different discussions.
Not really. Kids have active shooter drills, but you get your panties in a bunch because they might read Anne Frank?
You don't really care about kids, you are just an hypocrite.
Prove they are trying to remove Anne Frank from the libraries, it might be true, but I think that sounds like propaganda.
And yes they are two different things. The big problem here is that people like you dont realize how to stop school shootings, and even if you did, you are unwilling to take the actual steps to do so.
The article states first that a Texas district banned Anne Frank's diary. Don't play dumb.
Every fucking other countries don't have mass shootings pretty much everyday. Only in the US. In Australia, when they banned gun ownership after a mass shooting in 1996, the shootings dropped drastically.
The school shootings are a multi-faceted problem which requires many changes, one of which is the gun culture.
There is a toddler every two weeks that shoot someone in the USA, how are guns not the problem?
You know where this doesn't happen? Everywhere else in the world.
Ban guns for pretty much anything that is not hunting. Fund social services to provide quality mental health treatments to anyone that needs it. That should get you started in the right direction.
You do realise that there's a version of Mien Kampf that's four times as long because there's several experts annotating and debunking Hitler's ideas right there on the page.
Thats fine, what would be so bad if a signficant part of the population dont think its appropriate so its not provided to kids at a public school?
History is uncomfortable. Revising it to tell lovely stories is all well and good for building a national identity.
However, sugar-coating, ignoring, or even flat-out erasing parts of history benefits no one. People started writing events down accurately because the orators of old never intended paint an accurate picture of the past. And therefore lessons learnt from the failures of humanity (lost causes, preventable catastrophies, perspectives of people on the wrong side, genocides, etc.) were also lost.
History should be uncomfortable, so we can collectively learn and have a chance to do better the next time.
You are believing the propaganda not what the real critique is.
I literally said the opposite. How did you come to that conclusion?
You didnt say the opposite, you repeated the propaganda that is an attack on people that want to censor books. The books that are getting censored are not due to them being about history or learning.
the propaganda that is an attack on people that want to sensor books.
How is this propaganda?
Also you are completely incorrect. Those books are ABSOLUTELY are about history and learning.
Anne Frank's Dairy is a first hand historical account of life an oppressed and genocided group under facism. Maus is another recollection of first-hand historical accounts of a polish Jew being interviewed by his son but shown visually in a cartoon graphic novel to make the context more visually palatable for a younger audience without avoiding the horrific events of history.
What next? Are you going to claim the Horrible History books are neither educational or historical as well?
What would be so bad with...
...checks notes...
...informing young people about the most horrible decisions made throughout history, why they were flawed, and how not to repeat the same mistakes today?
Hmm....
Just take a look at the world around you. That's a fucking start...
That is not what is happening...
No, history never repeats itself! Just like that old expression says, "Those who forget history are doomed to a life of happiness and prosperity."
I agree, but that is not what these book removals are about
A significant part of the population doesn't think it's appropriate for a picture book about two male penguins that adopt a chick to be in a public school.
In fact, a significant part of the population doesn't think white kids and black kids should go to the same school. And have found ways to do things about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segregation_academy
Why should we cater to these significant parts of the population?
You're a fucking troglodyte.
Censoring books due to reasons like "these books provide a point of view I'm not comfortable exposing my kids too" is usually a bad reason to censor books.
Problem I see is its all a pendulum on these issues where the reaction swings wildly back and forth the more energy were putting into it rather than having it settle the fuck down.
For instance these books being removed aren't produced in spite of this issue. But for sure if we dig into censorship topic then pro censorship groups start bringing out books to be edgy cunts and prove a point.
Every issue has edge cases and we live in a time where people are so willing to be right they will make every edge case the center of an issue. Like in order to keep Maus on shelves we will now need to have a copy of Bomb making 101 or a book were one of these people wrote FUCK a million times just so they can get anti censorship people to say "hey that isn't cool guys" but also the problem is I often find people are so militant in our beliefs that we have a hard time saying "that isn't cool" when faced with something not cool but also that grinds against our moral beliefs
What you are saying makes sense, I just dont see an issue if XX% of people dont want a book to be in PUBLIC schools, then I am okay with restricting it unless there is some kind of cultural significance, and within reason. I am probably okay with Maus from what I have heard, but I dont see it as an issue to take it off the shelf if people feel strongly and there is some level of logic.
Do you realize how many books are in a literary? The odds they will chance on one particular book are really small. And ig they do it's far from the worst thing that can happen to them in a school
We had like everything, from childrens books to engineering stuff. It's filed differently so your fragile mind won't need to see "adult" books if you don't want to I guess.
Books discussing about the horrors of the Holocaust is "adult", I guess.
Lmao
My fragile mind doesnt want minors to see things they shouldnt see till later. That should be a pretty obvious thing that everyone wants for children...
Get rid of anything that mentions rape, prostitution, genocide, or god forbid SODOMY?
Out goes the bible then. No one under 18 should read it.
Incest. Don't forget incest.
Unironically yes.
The difference between the Bible and other more modern books is that the Bible is the most influential book in western civilization. If you want to have a censored on that removed those exact passages then that seems like a reasonable compromise.
Fuck that, the wretched thing doesn't deserve special treatment. There is nothing about the contents of the bible that are worth granting exception for. You want to ban adult themes? I can think of nothing more deserving of such a ban than the oldest book to incorporate rape, divinely ordained murder (all over the place), instructions on how to perform an abortion, incest, and the severly mixed message of "god loves everyone, unless you don't worship them, then you get tortured forever".
Like it or not the Bible is the most influence book in western history, so yes it gets special treatment. But again, if you want to make a censored version for kids that takes out those parts, it seems like a reasonable compromise.
Fun fact: the events in Anne Frank's diary and Maus actually happened. They are far more valuable than the Goat Herder's Guide to the Galaxy.
The book that was objected to what not Anne Franks diary...
Nah, you're just some Christofascist. The correct and moral thing to do is ban you, from society.
I guess so if that includes not showing sexual things to kids.
What you're not getting is that it being that influential is a bad thing and that it's time to pull it from its podium. It's just a religious text and if you're censoring any religious texts, you should censor all of them.
Just like all christians do, they just want to pick the ones that fit their agenda and ignore the rest.
What "the rest" are we ignoring?
How about selling your daughter to slavery. why aren't christians doing that?
I didn't know, all the passages they don't like talking about. Do you know about 2 Kings 2 23-24? I'll tell you, even in context it makes God look like a psychopath. God literally sends a bear into a village to maul 42 children to death because they made fun of a delicate man's bald head. That's not even twisting the story.
I like how this argument assumes schools are just regularly stocking school libraries with your Literotica history.
I didnt say they were. If its not happening very often why are you guys so against books being removed?
If it's not happening often, why are you hellbent on banning books? They are edge case, but your ilk act like every school library is chuck full of inappropriate books.
I am hellbent on protecting children from adults that will do them harm. If its only edge cases then why are you hellbent on putting rules in place to remove questionable books?
Because the rules are in place and curated by professionals. What I don't want is every semi-educated group of extremists to have the ability to whine enough that they get important books banned.
Ah yes, "professionals". After covid you guys should have learned how experts are not so expert. I dont want children to see books with sexual content in them, does that make me an extremist?
It's quite clear one group of people only want morons dictating what people can do, as opposed to those who listen and trust experts (who have often spent their entire life's acquirung knowledge in their area of speciality).
After all, who wants a doctor with 20yrs experience operating on their spleen, when Harry the butcher could do it.
This is called a motte-and-bailey. We were discussing a group trying to ban books about the Holocaust, and the larger concept about groups of parents being able to ban anything by whining about it enough. You put forward a different argument you think is bullet proof about banning sexual content with the implication that this argument defends the much weaker argument about banning Holocaust books or whatever books the mob may choose.
Just pointing that out. It's a common fallacy and one that feels right, it isn't necessarily done intentionally.
The freakout about sexual content is fabricated and designed to play to emotions. School libraries already ban sexual content. There's no smut or erotica at them. The small handful of books that people wanted to ban were either educational or were similar to many books that were not targeted by those parent groups and the sexual situations were not the focus of the book. The main similarity was that they were about LGBT sexualities.
You'll protect children right until it affects your wallet. It's not about children, it's about control. Always has been.
So remove them entirely? It's not like the kids are going read one by chance and if they are seeking them then they are ready
the world is hard and kids need to be taught about us in a controlled environment like a school.
I’ve worked in school libraries.
The funny thing is that kids will only read things that are of interest to them, and if they’re interested in it, they’re old enough to read it. If they borrow it because they like the cover or all their friends have apparently read it or some such reason, you can be assured it’ll be returned after they get through the first page.
I understand, but there are literally millions of books, why do we have to have the few books with sexual material that a significant portion of parents object to?
I doesn’t sound like it’s parents objecting to these books.
All books ever!!! The Necromomicon! Solomon's Demonology! THE ANARCHIST'S NOTEBOOK!! PEPPA PIG GOES TO HELL!! !
No gods, no masters, no borders, no censors.
Which books do you believe shouldn't be provided in a classroom setting?
No copouts. I don't think anyone expects a bunch of 3rd graders to have a discussion on 50 Shades of Grey.
I think the opinion as to what shouldnt be in public schools is reasonable, and I am cool if we are overly restrictive if there is a reason that is good and is supported by enough people.
You didn't answer my question. Let's try a different one. Once again without copping out: Give us a couple good reasons for why a book should be restricted in education.
Books should be restricted from education if a significant portion of the adults dont think its appropriate for children. This could include any variety of reasons they dont think its appropriate.
Will each book be voted on individually? How does that work in your head? I doubt that people read minimally an excerpt of each book to decide and ban them.
Probably do it on a complaint basis. Each school district could have a diverse board and they could look at the books that people dont like and if X out of Y think it should be removed, then remove it. Does that work for you?
So Librarians have a bias, but not a board of old crusty people in a school district?
You are trying to fix a non-problem because some old christo-fascists cunts get their feelings hurt when they get told they are christo-fascists.
Yes exactly everyone will have biases, and we need to compromise and let all voices to be heard. So if the right wants to remove most things sexual, great; if the left wants to remove anything with the n word in it, great. Its better to be over censorious than under censorious in public buildings.
I sure hope you go see your quack doctor when you are sick then, because modern medecine have bias.
Librarians are trained personnel explicitly for deciding what books are acceptable. The old Crusty Fuckfaces that want to ban anything and everything can become librarians themselves and decide for their school if they so wish.
But until then, they can read their bible and shut the fuck up.
If you want to go back to the dark ages, do so in the comfort of your own home and leave the society alone with your backwards beliefs.
I don't suppose you've heard what's happened with the trans bathroom tip line in Texas? Cause I got bad news for you...
Yes
Only if these books are inscribed on the side of a Glock
Yes, so 4 year olds can read mein kampf
If you put that book in a kindergarten library, I can guarantee none of the kids will read it.
The only two reasons not to have it are 1) budget and 2) space. Use the room and money for books the kids will read.