Banned Books Celebration

[Hal_Crawford]

Vol, I think you have touched on why you don't see that much book banning in the more conservative states, the schools and librarians practice "sensitivity" in ordering so the potentially "objectionable" books are not there in the first place. I suspect if this soft or preemptive book banning were tracked the map would be much more crowded.

 

On one level it may be just common sense. At the extreme it can leave a gaping hole in the education of the students and/or perpetuate biases by providing only one point of view.

 

Hal

[baschram645]

451

[vol_scouter]

Hal,

 

You may be right about the reasons conservative areas ban fewer books. It also be that those people are more concerned about banning books than the left likes to think and that folks on the left are not as tolerant of opposing thought as they like to believe.

As to the school libraries, it is a difficult problem. I would not expect an elementary school, especially in a predominately Jewish community, to have a section of books written by holocaust deniers though I would expect to find some books in a major university library. The same thing with overtly sexual or violent material. With the internet and online book stores, children have more access than ever before to different points of view. What one group finds OK for children may be controversial for another but that goes both ways. In a democracy, there is no correct point of view on most issues so an absolute set of values can be determined for many things. In the absence of those absolutes, it is better for children not to have those controversial books ordered in the first place. It is appropriate that they are available in a public library or in major university libraries as well as from online sources.

[skeptic]

It seems to me that often simply the title will set someone off. And today, some books that do not get challenged might very well not pass muster in earlier years, and simply because of the title. An example of an extremely popular book in the lower grades in this area is the book EVERYBODY POOPS, or something to that effect. When I was that age, it likely would not have passed the test, even though it is pretty innocuous in reality. And today, if the title had Poops replaced with another over used common word in usage today, the book would not be allowed.

 

And, I would surmise that it is very likely a large percentage of the books banned or that bring complaints have not been actually read by those bringing them up.

[vol_scouter]

skeptic,

 

I believe that you are probably correct. A few years ago, Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" was banned because of an offensive word which was the common term for black people. I read the book as a fourth grader and later in college both times for fun. It helped me to realize how blacks were mistreated in this country. The folks trying to ban the book (with some success I might add) wanted to ban it because they claimed that it was racist.

[Hal_Crawford]

Vol:

You mention holocaust deniers. There are two ways to deny the holocaust, one is to actively say that it didn't happen. Folks that do that here are usually written off as wackjobs (in Iran they are called president). The other way is to not teach it or have books about it in the school library. I fear that is more common.

 

A few years ago I was talking to a fourteen year old from somewhere in the midwest. The lad was on an annual visit to the grandparents. Each year he had visited a couple of the museums on the mall and he asked me if I could recommend something he hadn't seen. I mentioned the Holocaust Museum. He asked me what the Holocaust was. I explained, thinking that he probably had heard of it but didn't recognize the name. No, he had no idea that had ever happened. Did he know about WWII? Yes they had studied that in history class but nothing about concentration camps or genocide. The boy did not strike me as a dummy or someone who would have slept through that particular aspect of the Third Reich. He had not been taught. Like I said earlier, a gaping hole in his education.

 

Maybe his school system got around to it later, maybe not. Maybe they thought it was too intense for middle school. Maybe there were a lot of German-Americans in his community who didn't want to think or talk about how their cousins could have done such a thing. I don't know. I know that by fourteen I had seen documentaries about the Holocaust in school, on TV and even at a troop meeting. I was fifteen before I learned that my dad had helped liberate one of the camps.

 

I would bet that there were no books by holocaust deniers in this boy's school. To deny it would first require that it be acknowledged.

 

Hal

 

 

[Nike]

Hal,

 

The 14 year old who'd never heard of the Holocaust in school is a victim of the prettying up/dumbing down of history: don't teach anything too controversial, too violent, too disturbing, offensive, upsetting, etc.

 

(Sigh)

[Hal_Crawford]

Nike:

Amen to that. But I think maybe this has been going on for a long time.

 

I grew up in Virginia (except when we were stationed overseas) in the 1960s and the schools taught US and Virginia history in 5th, 7th and 11th grades. For some reason the first two courses stopped at 1865. I thought that the teachers were just disorganized but later came to think that in Virginia they just didn't want to discuss what happened next.

 

In 11th grade we got the rest of the story.

 

Hal

[skeptic]

Yep, the schools generally do not seem to do a very good job with history. A large percentage of current middle schoolers do not seem to even really know about Viet Nam, much less anything prior. I sub, and because they almost always want to know how old I am, I tell them I was born during WWII. Less than half of most classes either do not know the approximate dates, or even what it really was. It led to quite a discussion once when we were reading one of the Scholastic Reader magazines, and the main article had to do with an upcoming anniversary of "D Day". What is really to bad is that we were unable to give it the attention their questions deserved, as I had to stick to the lesson plan. I did leave a note for the teacher about their interest, but since it was near year end, it is unlikely much came of it.

 

On the same note, that I was born during WWII. If I tell them 1944, most seem unable to determine my age, even in 7th and 8th grade.

 

Deep breath.

[Hal_Crawford]

Skeptic:

I knew I was OLD when my my son was taking history in 11th grade. They covered the Vietnam war at the end of the 3rd quarter. I took the same history course during the Vietnam war and now that war was only 3/4 of the way through US history. Arrrgh!

 

Oh well, at least they got past the civil war.

 

Hal

[packsaddle]

Hal, be careful what you say about Iran's president, you need to be prepared to duck a shoe or something.

Anyway, check out a documentary film called, "Paperclips". It is a wonderful story of a rural Tennessee school history class and their incredible experience investigating the holocaust. It is a wonderful story and it shows that at least some schools teach it and teach it well.

[Hal_Crawford]

I've seen it and agree it is a great story and a great documentary.

 

 

Hal

[evmori]

Ya know, I can't think of one book that should be banned! Why do we need to ban books? Just because we don't like them?

[packsaddle]

Ed, I'm certainly not going to be able to give you a fair answer to your question because I agree with you.

But where we all seem to be in agreement about books, I wonder if we would still agree if the subject was videos or the cinema, or political protest or public nudity?

The Supreme Court is having to rethink the whole First Amendment because of its ruling on McCain-Feingold and those limits to campaign speech by businesses. It ruled to limit speech and now it is wrestling with the logical outcome with regard to other forms of speech.

 

If you start from speech that nearly everyone finds repugnant and without any redeeming value, it is easy to work backwards from that position to one in which the same exclusionary language applies to a book. Also perhaps we don't see books as such threats anymore because we don't use them as much as we once did - at least in comparison to the internet and television.

[evmori]

Well, I'm not for nudity or foul language but I don't have to read those books. That is my decision. And I don't like people making personal decisions like that for me.