61–70 of 99 posts
> it’s important to note that they are to the end of positive social change The end does not justify the means. Name me one single objectively bad political movement which internally thought of themselves as bad or negative. There isn't one. They all claim and for the largest part of their membership believe to serve the greater good. Therefore I find this argument of the author extremely weak. Surely they can come u…
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Hm, seems pretty similar to me. Especially when the article itself identifies only 1.6% of the books as having a 17+ rating. [edit] Anyone who believes in freedom of expression and the first amendment should recognize this as a negative step, and a clear thin-edge issue. These are ideological decisions made by partisans with the goal being to shape the corpus of thinking of youth. "Will someone think of the children"…
Hmmm...so it only counted 1.6% of the books as explicit because they had "publisher-provided" maturity ratings of 17+. I wonder how many books that had explicit material within them were not properly labeled as such by their publishers? This seems like a very subjective standard that would be very easy to manipulate.
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> It is just incredibly dishonest to pretend that you are upset at this for any reason other than that you want these particular books available to children, which is exactly as partisan as demanding their absence. That's not possible, as, and this is true, I didn't go through the list. I suggest that you may be assuming a lot about me.
You do not support the removal of these books. My claim is that: - Everybody supports the removal of certain books - Demanding the exclusion or demanding the inclusion are both partisan issues. Neither is a politically neutral stance. This suggests that this is not a free speech issue at all, but a political issue with two sides wanting/not wanting children to read particular books.
No.
One group of people don’t want any children reading certain books. The rest leaves the choice of reading the books in question up to the children (and/or their parents).
An important distinction.
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I do not believe there is any sort of “ring fence” between schools and politics. The entire point of public school boards and elections thereto is to enable voters to exercise the political control over the branch of government that is providing public educational service. If your argument indeed is that the public schools should be fully and wholly independently ran by nonelected bureaucrats entirely as they please,…
> point of public school boards and elections thereto is to enable voters to exercise the political control over the branch of government that is providing public education Fair enough. Perhaps the answer is school libraries are Constitutionally problematic–we can call them book bazaars and acknowledge that minors under state custody do not have the right to a library. Politicians removing books from libraries is a c…
Having the legal argument out of the way, I think that there is very little interest in political action directed to remove books from non-school public libraries. People who can get their books from there, can also just buy them on Amazon, and these certainly are not and will not be banned by any sort of government in the United States. Thus, it would be pointless and ineffectual to exercise political power here.
In any case, it is extremely hard for me to not be angry at activists, who, through language games, are trying to confuse people into supporting their goal, which is to force the people to buy and make easily available to children certain books that the people very much do not want to buy and make easily available to children.
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"Books banned in the US" has two correct readings (regarding banned books by governments): 1) "Books that were banned, somewhere within the US" 2) "Books that were banned, across the US" In this case, at the behest of state and municipal governments, there are books that fit into reading one.
This is an impractical delineation. If any unit of government is treating any book as contraband, everyone be worried. The actual levels are books being: 1) removed from classroom curriculum; 2) removed from a school library; 3) confiscated from students at school; 4) removed from a public library; and 5) confiscated from adults anywhere. One seems unproblematic in general. Five is universally alarming. Two is largel…
"Banned in the United States" does not mean the same thing as "Removed from Middle School Libraries"
Sadly, the word "ban" has been used all too inapropriatley lately. And this website doesn't seem to help as nowhere did I see exactly what they meant by banned, who banned them, or exactly what the ban entails.
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Hm, seems pretty similar to me. Especially when the article itself identifies only 1.6% of the books as having a 17+ rating. [edit] Anyone who believes in freedom of expression and the first amendment should recognize this as a negative step, and a clear thin-edge issue. These are ideological decisions made by partisans with the goal being to shape the corpus of thinking of youth. "Will someone think of the children"…
> Especially when the article itself identifies only 1.6% of the books as having a 17+ rating. You presume those ratings mean something. "Getting It: A Guide to Hot, Healthy Hookups and Shame-Free Sex. An empowering guide to casual sex and hooking up from sex educator and Girl Sex 101 author Allison Moon." I'm sure that's entirely age appropriate for my 13-year-old daughter to be reading from the high-school library.
Have you actually read this book? Or are you making assumptions based on the title?
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This is an impractical delineation. If any unit of government is treating any book as contraband, everyone be worried. The actual levels are books being: 1) removed from classroom curriculum; 2) removed from a school library; 3) confiscated from students at school; 4) removed from a public library; and 5) confiscated from adults anywhere. One seems unproblematic in general. Five is universally alarming. Two is largel…
I have no comment on the specific topic of this thread, but: I'm confused by your characterization of #1 as "unproblematic in general". Removing books from curriculums for religious or political reasons is a pretty high-profile form of book banning, historically, isn't it?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an impractical delineation. If any unit of government is treating any book as contraband, everyone be worried. The actual levels are books being: 1) removed from classroom curriculum; 2) removed from a school library; 3) confiscated from students at school; 4) removed from a public library; and 5) confiscated from adults anywhere. One seems unproblematic in general. Five is universally alarming. Two is largel…
I have no comment on the specific topic of this thread, but: I'm confused by your characterization of #1 as "unproblematic in general". Removing books from curriculums for religious or political reasons is a pretty high-profile form of book banning, historically, isn't it?
The context is "books banned by governments." There are areligious, apolitical and even legitimate reasons for school boards to remove books from classroom curriculums. In general, the action is not problematic. That doesn't preclude problematic instances.