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As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

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Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#81

Post by quadrifoliate »

hiram112 wrote: post #77
quadrifoliate wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Baloney. Yes, I'm sure we can find some 1 in a 1,000,000 exceptional case of some bright student from a marginalized community who just couldn't obtain some obscure reference book in their high school library because conservatives had "banned it" (i.e. chosen not to include it in their limited selection due to content concerns). However, I find it hard to believe that 99.9999% of students, who probably haven't even…

[flagged]

You are making a lot of extraordinary claims, with no sources to back them up.

My guess is that you work in software (like many on this site) and are making the Dunning-Kruger mistake of thinking that you know more than you actually do about teaching and libraries. Instead, I'd encourage you to imagine how you would feel if legislators started talking about banning "dangerous, anti-capitalist operating systems like Linux".

In any case, "I guess that..." is not a reasonable basis for legislation, which is why these legislators are correctly being criticized.

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#82

Post by klyrs »

azeirah wrote: post #25
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #22

[flagged]

As far as I know most libraries (school libraries too probably?) are open to book requests. Unless you're asking for something like mein kampf, I don't think the librarians will look at you weirdly when asking for _any_ book whatsoever.

I went to a public inner-city high school that some here would deride as an extreme-left institution in an extreme-left city, and we had Mein Kampf in the library. You had to request it, because previous copies had been defaced, but it was visible on a shelf behind the checkout counter.

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#83

Post by mcphage »

alfor wrote: post #57

[flagged]

> The problem we have is the destruction of the americans values by CRT and post modernist ideas.

The supporters of CRT are not the people doing the banning discussed in this article—it is the critics of CRT that are doing the banning.

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#84

Post by alfor »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #80
alfor wrote: post #57

[flagged]

You should ask yourself why it is that American academics seem to almost universally hold left wing freduo-marxist-post-modernist views. I love to bash on fashionable nonsense as much as the next HN reader, but it may actually have to do with there being something essential to the process of education that finds those who pursue large amounts of it to favor egalitarian social and economic politics. I look at the acad…

Creative, open people are heavily geared toward left thinking, it’s a question of personality.

People in new tech, in journalism, in art are thus far more left leaning. That is good, this is thoses that push the boundaries of what is possible, that explore and inquire. It also explain why all the news tech corporation are heavily left leaning.

But at some point I think it became too much and become self destructive.

On the other side conservative are more interested in traditions, in what did work for a long time. Our world is changing faster than ever, this put the conservative in disadvantage in the market.

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#85

Post by bequanna »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #15
bequanna wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have that backwards. Parents and the community should have the final say when deciding what is included in a curriculum, not (potentially activist) teachers and school boards.

> Parents and the community should have the final say ...not (potentially activist) teachers and school boards. Aren't school boards usually elected by the community? Also, generally, a lot of public school teaching is about encouraging a newer generation to think for themselves, and potentially be exposed to ideas that are not constrained by the parents and the community. Parents who want to micromanage what ideas t…

Let's get real for a second and be honest about the very real problem we are discussing:

Political activist teachers are pushing their agendas onto students. This has been quietly happening for some time, but has become harder for the teachers to hide as children started completing more instruction and schoolwork in the home.

These are not isolated incidents and the examples of this happening are everywhere in the US. In fact, many teachers have been caught openly bragging about trying to create "radicalized" students. This is precisely why we've seen a grassroots push by parents against teachers and admin.

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#86

Post by klyrs »

temp8964 wrote: post #62
Wistar wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those that espouse unrestricted access to knowledge.

This might be a valid idea for academic research, not for K-12 learning. It's not even worth arguing.

In this case, the state wants to decide what sexualities that children are allowed to be exposed to. Is that a can of worms that you really want opened? If the left demanded a ban on books that contain positive depictions of heterosexual romance (for example, A Wrinkle in Time would be banned because of the pornographic, dare I say pedophilic, kiss shared between boy and girl) would you be making the same argument?

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#87

Post by kspacewalk2 »

shlurpy wrote: post #24
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Books whose authors are no longer able to give a talk on college campuses without multiple threats of physical violence against them". Curated, of course.

So any LGBT authors and any femenists?

No, I don't think so.

If you meant to use those as examples, please tell me who are these LGBT and feminist authors who cannot freely give talks at American campuses these days?

Other than, you know, team TERF.

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#88

Post by dang »

temp8964 wrote: post #17

Stop confusing K-12 public school libraries with public libraries. K-12 public school libraries always have a small selection of books. Vast majority of books are not in K-12 public school libraries. There is no parallel between select books for K-12 public school libraries and banning books from libraries. If this is about you want to indoctrinate certain ideology into kids using the public school system, at least b…

Your comment was a significant step further into flamewar. Would you please not do that on HN? It's exactly what we're trying to avoid here, and we've already had to ask you about this multiple times.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29330726.

Re: As calls to ban books intensify, digital librarians offer perspective

#89

Post by dang »

hiram112 wrote: post #68

[flagged]

This comment was a noticeable step further into ideological flamewar, and broke other site guidelines as well. Would you please review them and not post like this to HN? We're trying to avoid this kind of thing here, because it destroys the intellectual curiosity that the site is supposed to be for.

Edit: we've also had to ask you about this multiple times in the past. If you'd please review the site guidelines and fix this going forward, we'd appreciate it.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29330726.

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