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Missouri lawmakers move to strip library funding, retaliate for book ban lawsuit

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Re: Missouri lawmakers move to strip library funding, retaliate for book ban lawsuit

#101

Post by drewcoo »

prasadjoglekar wrote: post #42
izzydata wrote: post #18

If they are willing to go to such extremes to censor books how do they feel about the internet? The internet has a reach that is orders of magnitude greater than books, but I never hear about lawmakers attempting to shut down the internet or part of the internet. Is it just too decentralized to even attempt or is their pursuit of book censorship just for show to impress their followers?

It's not censoring books; rather a state choosing which books to publicly fund in school libraries. No one is banning parents from buying those books on their own dime. Schools are publicly funded by taxes; those taxes are apportioned by elected representatives. The legislature has the right to dictate what the money can and can't be used for. That's not censorship.

By the same argument, shutting down all the public schools isn't depriving children of education.

Because any parents could pay for private school on their own dime.

Re: Missouri lawmakers move to strip library funding, retaliate for book ban lawsuit

#102

Post by anigbrowl »

KevinEldon wrote: post #33
atoav wrote: post #8

As a european that frequently discusses political topics with people from the US, I recall times when conservatives over there were all about "small government" and "freedom of speech" and how they would literally fight for those rights (that's what the second amendment was written for in their eyes). Where are those people today? Why are they not more vocal? Or were these values always just a veneer for something el…

The state unanimously passed a law to exclude sexually explicit books from public school libraries. A reasonable thing to do. The library association and the ACLU decided they wanted to sue the state. The state, in turn, removed the relatively small amount of funds allocated for the libraries. FaFo. All of this is in the article.

Suing to dispute the constitutionality of a law is also a reasonable thing to do. Cutting funding prior to the adjudication of the legal dispute seems like a legislative attempt to pre-empt the judicial process.

'FaFo' is shorthand for 'Fuck around and find out', yes? I'm not sure this internet tough guy approach is going to persuade anyone.

Re: Missouri lawmakers move to strip library funding, retaliate for book ban lawsuit

#103

Post by yamtaddle »

remarkEon wrote: post #99
yamtaddle wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure—and, traditionally, local school boards have dealt with all that just fine . Which, given the fraction of funding that comes from local property taxes in most districts, seems appropriate to me. This is big government stepping in to override decisions of local governments that they disagree with.

You may not like it, but this is how democracy works.

Is there a point somewhere in this comment?

Re: Missouri lawmakers move to strip library funding, retaliate for book ban lawsuit

#104

Post by drewcoo »

remarkEon wrote: post #66
prasadjoglekar wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not censoring books; rather a state choosing which books to publicly fund in school libraries. No one is banning parents from buying those books on their own dime. Schools are publicly funded by taxes; those taxes are apportioned by elected representatives. The legislature has the right to dictate what the money can and can't be used for. That's not censorship.

What's been really jarring about this issue is that everyone is calling it a "book ban", when it demonstrably is not. It's removing certain (in some cases pornographic) material from school curricula and libraries. Maybe you can steelman an argument that goes something like "if they remove this from school curricula and libraries, they'll try to remove it from the [everywhere else] too". This is of course silly. Plus…

> calling it a "book ban", when it demonstrably is not. It's removing certain (in some cases pornographic) material from school curricula and libraries.

Removing certain books from all the libraries is what we call "banning" those books. That's literally what the term means.

> you can just go actually read the text of these laws

Here, kid, no Judy Bloom for you, but you can read the law that prohibits her book? That's just sick.

Re: Missouri lawmakers move to strip library funding, retaliate for book ban lawsuit

#105

Post by anigbrowl »

nostromo wrote: post #98
anigbrowl wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat off-topic, but the other day a school principal in Florida was forced out of a job because some parents were upset that their 6th-graders were exposed to an image of Michelangelo's David - in an art history class: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11894493/Tallahasse... There's an overlap between these sort of hyper-reactionary people and politically motivated street toughs, who are likely to keep esc…

That's a charter school though. They're largely free to shape the content however they like.

The point is about the increasing prevalence of reactionary and prudish attitudes, not institutional configuration.

Re: Missouri lawmakers move to strip library funding, retaliate for book ban lawsuit

#106

Post by Brian_K_White »

prasadjoglekar wrote: post #42
izzydata wrote: post #18

If they are willing to go to such extremes to censor books how do they feel about the internet? The internet has a reach that is orders of magnitude greater than books, but I never hear about lawmakers attempting to shut down the internet or part of the internet. Is it just too decentralized to even attempt or is their pursuit of book censorship just for show to impress their followers?

It's not censoring books; rather a state choosing which books to publicly fund in school libraries. No one is banning parents from buying those books on their own dime. Schools are publicly funded by taxes; those taxes are apportioned by elected representatives. The legislature has the right to dictate what the money can and can't be used for. That's not censorship.

It's discrimination.

It's the same as choosing to include one bible and pointedly not another.

I object to my taxes you mentioned being used in that manner. I pay for education not indoctrination and ignorance. A large, perhaps the largest function of education is to expose the mind to the variety of the world. Selectively masking off parts of it is literally creating ignorance not education.

Re: Missouri lawmakers move to strip library funding, retaliate for book ban lawsuit

#107

Post by thwayunion »

eastof wrote: post #16

Does this law apply for students of all ages? Surely "sexually explicit" materials are a requirement for sexual education right? What am I missing?

It applies to PEOPLE of all ages. The law is about public libraries, NOT public school libraries. 100.00% of FY 2022's allocation went to NON-school public libraries.

Re: Missouri lawmakers move to strip library funding, retaliate for book ban lawsuit

#108

Post by yamtaddle »

tablespoon wrote: post #94
barbazoo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some of the material that was available in school libraries shocked even me as a gay man. Here are two pages from a book (Gender Queer) that caused a bunch of this controversy: > (Caution: these links might be NSFW, but they are blurred) > https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/Screen... > https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/Screen... > If a parent wanted to give this book to their…

> I've read that book and it's not aimed at children. No sane educator or library person would offer that to a young child. It doesn't belong in a high school library either. I thought they were exaggerating when they said it that book was pornography, but holy shit it was literally true. What's next? A hentai section in the school library next to the manga?

Parents who don't like what their school libraries stock should lobby their school board, vote for school board members who share their views, and maybe even run for school board. There's a whole nice, approachable, local body to deal with all this, basically everywhere in the US. It's arguably one of the closest-to-the-people and easiest-for-constituents-to-influence governing bodies that exists in this country.

[EDIT] "Wait, so why's that not what the outlets and politicians who are complaining about this, are advising as the right way to approach this?" because the entire point of making this non-issue an issue in the first place was to boost state and national level candidates, not to do anything useful or appropriate—a state governor can't grandstand about "get mad, and go... um... vote in your school board elections!" in a way that'll be effective at building their national profile or driving broader GOTV for their side.

Re: Missouri lawmakers move to strip library funding, retaliate for book ban lawsuit

#109

Post by Overtonwindow »

jessaustin wrote: post #51
Overtonwindow wrote: post #28

Where should the line be drawn? As a parent of kids in elementary and middle school, I don't want them reading about anything sexually explicit. Maybe in high school but I feel something should be done to evaluate what reading materials are seen by children. We didn't do it with social media, we didn't do it with pornography, and we bear the results of that nonintervention. What is the best argument for allowing elem…

The line should be drawn wherever parents, teachers, and librarians choose to draw it. Politicians should not be involved. Top-down meddling has destroyed public education in USA, and this is just more of that. At some point we should stop making public schools worse.

Well.. to that I would say that parents HAVE drawn a line and teachers and people without children, perhaps such as yourself, are pushing back. Parents, IMO, should be the ones to draw the line. Not the teachers, not the state, and not third-parties that are fighting a political war.

As for top-down meddling, I agree with that. The Department of Education has been the worst thing for America's education system, not to mention half-baked federal policies on healthy eating.

The issue is that teachers and the administration are the government in most places. So if we are to have less meddling it would be to empower the parents to make decisions - to draw the line as you say - and force the schools and the teachers to follow that line.

Re: Missouri lawmakers move to strip library funding, retaliate for book ban lawsuit

#110

Post by thwayunion »

crackercrews wrote: post #77
jessaustin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The line should be drawn wherever parents, teachers, and librarians choose to draw it. Politicians should not be involved. Top-down meddling has destroyed public education in USA, and this is just more of that. At some point we should stop making public schools worse.

Aren't politicians involved whenever the will of the voters is being enacted? What if most parents in MO support what the politicians are doing? What if they called their representatives and asked them to take action against libraries? If you oppose top-down meddling in public education then I assume you support vouchers? That's about as bottom-up as things get.

> Aren't politicians involved whenever the will of the voters is being enacted? What if most parents in MO support what the politicians are doing? What if they called their representatives and asked them to take action against libraries?

Indeed. I think jessuastin probably meant something like nationalized identity-driven politics. It's a valid difference.

> If you oppose top-down meddling in public education then I assume you support vouchers? That's about as bottom-up as things get.

I like choice but not vouchers. There are basically two issues with vouchers.

The first is that they're usually implemented in a fashion that is simultaneously regressive (on income) and re-distributive (on geography). Ie, they're often implemented as pure grift.

The second, and more important, is that we already have experimented with a hybrid public/private system where some public funds flow to private options! The result is runaway spending and the market driving emphasis toward a bunch of bullshit cost disease stuff instead of actual learning outcomes. No matter how bad our public K12 system is, you will never convince me that our higher ed system is better, and that's what an American public/private hybrid system would, empirically, end up converging to.

I could get behind a voucher system that (1) gives each kid the same amount of cash and also (2) caps all tuition and fees for any school receiving even a dollar of voucher cash.

I'd also be okay with just not providing state funding for education at all, but it'd be a sort of terrible world for most families and I genuinely wonder how many people realize how bad things would get for most families...

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