53% More Book Banning Incidents In US Schools This Year 360
vikingpower writes "Isabel Allende's The House of The Spirits. Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man. What do these titles have in common? They are banned at a school in the U.S. Yes, in 2013. A project named The Kids' Right to Read Project (by the National Coalition Against Censorship ) investigated three times the average number of incidents, adding to an overall rise in cases for the entire year, according to KRRP coordinator Acacia O'Connor. To date, KRRP has confronted 49 incidents in 29 states this year, a 53% increase in activity from 2012. During the second half of 2013, the project battled 31 new incidents, compared to only 14 in the same period last year. 'It has been a sprint since the beginning of the school year,' O'Connor said. 'We would settle one issue and wake up the next morning to find out another book was on the chopping block. The NCAC also offers a Book Censorship Toolkit on its website."
The 21st Century is (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The 21st Century is (Score:5, Interesting)
Ellison's Invisible Man is banned? Dammit, I was forced to read that (very slow-paced book about racism) in high school. Hours of my life I'll never get back! Why couldn't you have banned it earlier? Whyyyy?
Actually, that one baffles me: unlike, say, Huck Finn, Invisible Man is primarily about racism: of course it depicts racism and racial stereotypes; illustrating just how messed up we were was the point of the story (the man was "invisible" in the sense that no one ever noticed he was a person, deserving basic consideration).
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Ellison's Invisible Man is banned? Dammit, I was forced to read that (very slow-paced book about racism) in high school. Hours of my life I'll never get back! Why couldn't you have banned it earlier? Whyyyy?
LMAO. I thought the same thing when reading the summary and was going to post exactly that. (I think my torture was freshman college.)
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Re:The 21st Century is (Score:5, Funny)
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Exactly the same for me. I was going to post that too. I remember suffering through that book and coming out the other end glad that I was done and wouldn't have to read it again. Same goes for several other books I was forced to read.
Even so, I'm glad to hear that these are isolated incidents of banned books, and that even the ones I may not like are not being banned in any sort of appreciable way. 49 cases across the entire nation is not exactly a huge deal, considering that's several orders of magnitude
Re:The 21st Century is (Score:5, Insightful)
Politics, probably. There's a lot of backlash against political correctness - some people would see reading such a book in schools as 'liberal indoctrination' intended to make white people feel guilty about being white.
Re:The 21st Century is (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd give you odds it's the reverse - that someone searched through an eBook library and banned every one with racial epithets regardless of context.
Re:The 21st Century is (Score:5, Informative)
Politics, probably. There's a lot of backlash against political correctness - some people would see reading such a book in schools as 'liberal indoctrination' intended to make white people feel guilty about being white.
I'd give you odds it's the reverse - that someone searched through an eBook library and banned every one with racial epithets regardless of context.
Usually, anymore, it is an organization that specializes in book or curriculum challenges. It will have a list of "objectionable" materials; downloadable complaints; challenges with page numbers and everything included; and all the press releases needed. The parent/teacher/administrator/pastor/insert authority figure does not even have to read the book.
Check out the Parents Action League's Book Alert Page (sorry, can't remember how to insert a link) for an example.
Re:The 21st Century is (Score:5, Insightful)
Gotta agree with sibling... most school districts are far more enamored with stomping out all hallmarks of what most of us refer to as the real world.
Can't have harsh terminology, can't have depicted violence... hell, they can't even stand to have some wayward little boy kissing a girl, or pointing a finger at a classmate while saying "bang".
With all the zero tolerance BS going around? I can almost assure you that the censorship isn't coming from some drooling caricature of the "Right Wing" (cue ominous music), but more a result of overly-anxious officials scouring the libraries to expunge anything that could remotely intrude on what they assert is the "best" way to teach a child.
Re:The 21st Century is (Score:5, Insightful)
With all the zero tolerance BS going around?
Zero tolerance = zero thinking. It's a way to remove the responsibility out of school administrators and pin it on some other government body, probably one with lawyers. It's a "Just following orders" for education.
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If you can come up from your fantasy of PC guvvmint censors, you will realize that these are "challenged" books. This means someone NOT in the local school district's governing body or staff (usually a parent or community member) demanded that the book be removed. And yes, this is almost ALWAYS from the "right wing."
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So let me get this straight. The way to deal with political correctness is more political correctness?
That's what always amazed me about the Huckleberry Finn bans. You had everyone from the KKK to Civil Rights types demanding its removal from school libraries. About the only thing you could say was that the White Supremacists got the point.
Re:The 21st Century is (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry. I don't actually believe there is a thing called "cultural Marxism". That's just another meaningless descriptor brought to you by the sick twisted minds that insist climatologists are communists and a functional useful government is impossible and no one of wealth owes the civilization in a damned thing.
Re:The 21st Century is (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sorry. I don't actually believe there is a thing called "cultural Marxism".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism [wikipedia.org]
Actually, it dates back to at least 1933, although I'm going to guess that given the context, the GP is probably referring to Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School and its influence in Britain during the 1960's during "The Cultural Revlution", which drove a lot of the adoption of the P.C. mindset in institutions of higher learning.
BTW: the adoption of the term and its application by conservatives pretty much owes itself to the William S. Lind book "Who stole our culture?", and is rarely used by conservative thinkers outside his clique.
Re:The 21st Century is (Score:4, Informative)
While I am a really tired of PC I do not think that is the reason.
Of course my school didn't ban books. It had a far better solution. In my Jr. High School they had a small book shelf that had books that required parents permission. One of the books on that shelf was Brave New World which I will never understand being restricted since it was anti drug and anti casual sex. It was not a problem for me since my parents gave me permission to read what ever.
In High School they put the books like Catch 22 and Slaughter House 5 in the "young adults room". You had to be in 11th or 12th grade to go in but for some reason it was never open. They where always using it for projects and such. Very effective way to not have the books cause a problem.
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While I am a really tired of PC I do not think that is the reason.
Of course my school didn't ban books. It had a far better solution. In my Jr. High School they had a small book shelf that had books that required parents permission. One of the books on that shelf was Brave New World which I will never understand being restricted since it was anti drug and anti casual sex. It was not a problem for me since my parents gave me permission to read what ever.
Uh... Brave New World is all about sex, drugs, and shallow relationships. One of the plot points centered around one of the characters mis-dialing her birth control device (her "Malthusian belt"), and any message to the contrary was only by way of negative examples. It was also about the consequence to a society which had effectively "banned God". Another plot point revolves around Shakespeare's works having gotten banned, and so anyone whose into banning books in the first place would probably have as m
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Brave New World ran into the problem of trying to write a dystopia which, upon further consideration, actually looks like a very nice world to live in. Sure, it may be a bit oppressive to some... but the standard of living is ridiculously luxurious, crime is all but unheard of, unemployment is barely even imaginable and overall the people are very happy there.
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I think such censorship is probably because of parents that think their special snowflakes shouldn't be exposed to such hateful material.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - banned because of the n-word, and changing it to slave made the book fine for reading. I find it very hard to believe a liberal agenda would be to deny well-known past history, especially when they repla
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Well, their version [conservapedia.com] of it, anyway.
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Re:The 21st Century is (Score:4, Insightful)
Why wouldn't it make us uncomfortable?
That teacher made no effort to make the distinction between the actions of people in the past, and the young white men in the room. That's a huge effin problem. Let's discuss racism, and stereotypes, and prejudice, but do it in a way that is not racist in of itself.
Do you think it was only white men that had slaves and were racist? Puhleeeze.
Black people can be the most racist people on the planet now. Look at genocide happening in Africa. Christians and Muslims in Syria. Racism, slavery, and those associated evils are not the exclusive domain of white men. Black people sold each other into slavery in Africa. People tend to forget that. Slaves were picked up at the coast, but it was not white men hunting them to bring them to port.
That's what is so damn offensive about those "libs", "teachers", whatever dealing with children. I just call them arrogant racist assholes.
I was passionate about history, but I would have been deeply hurt and offended if there was too much emphasis on white men being the problem, and not enough attention paid towards creating a distinction that the young white men in the room are not inherently evil.
It's fucking hurtful. It creates a divide. It perpetuates the problem.
I totally understand the thinking behind the book ban. The "white man" is unfairly demonized well after we are supposed to getting rid of this shit. Does anyone think it's a really good idea to create judgement and negative emotions in a young person solely based on the color of their skin?
Children should not suffer the sins of the parents. I am not my parents.
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"The "white man" is unfairly demonized"
No. It is, in fact, pretty fair.
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No, it's not.
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So the young white men that you have in class rooms, representing the opportunity for change, should just have to endure your racist offensive bullshit?
You're teaching them:
1) I'm white. I can't change that though.
2) Everybody hates me because of what I represent. I can't change their incorrect perceptions.
3) White people do evil shit. Doesn't matter that I don't have those negative feelings at all. I look white and have a penis, therefore I'm responsible for all the oppression and social inequality. I was
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What? Black slave owners? I don't believe it! Surely this is just another lie from the white devils! ...Oh, wait a minute... [wikipedia.org]
Re:The 21st Century is (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit.
When you are trying to teach something in a room with young people, and you bring up history in such a way that you label and isolate some young people in the room based on skin color, THAT NEEDS TO CHANGE
More racism does not cure racism.
For all of those that do feel oppressed, taking it out on young white men by telling them that they are evil and do evil things, is not a very smart way to move forward in society.
From those labels comes sadness & resentment. From that you get depression and anger. From that you get young people abused, taken advantage of, and then tattooed, shaved, and handed a neo-nazi jacket.
Talk about uncomfortable things all you want. For those children that is part of growing up and I would not want to shelter them. Just don't isolate a group of them and make them feel bad about something they have no power to change.
We can't change the past. We are not responsible for the entirety of the present. We can't change our skin color. Michael Jackson was a one-off.
Re:The 21st Century is (Score:4, Interesting)
You misunderstand like most other people here. It's not about covering up history. It's 100% about the delivery and the attitudes of those that would impart the information to our youth.
First, teach about how we made useless, baseless, and extremely harmful distinctions between people based on their skin color, religion, gender, etc. You don't need to single out white people to do it at all. We can reference a huge amount of history and disparate races and cultures. The Greeks, Romans, Celts, large parts of Africa, the Dutch slave trade, indentured servitude laws, religious persecution in Europe, the Inquisition, the Mongols, and yes, slavery in the US. Teach that slavery and racism are not the exclusive domain of white men, but very old practices that we no longer tolerate in evolved societies.
Secondly, emphasize that this is not how we do it today. It's 100% not acceptable behavior at all. All forms of racism, including gender related behavior. That they may notice some older people still doing it, but that they are not as mature, and yes, have fallen victim to old bad habits. Make it abundantly clear that the children in the room don't bear any of the responsibility and blame for what happened in the past, and they're our future. The best way to stamp out racism is to refuse to participate. Literally, stop thinking about it and it will stop.
Thirdly, be proactive in NOT making racial distinctions as much as possible. When you do reference it, be sure to reference it as something from the past. Anytime you speak about a contemporary person, don't mention race. Children don't need to know Obama is black and the first black President. Why? There should be no value whatsoever in the information, and to find value, means to find value in those racially supported distinctions. All they need to know is that he was/is President, and was a complete and utter fucking disappointment, which had nothing to do with his skin color. That's left up to history to judge though. I have my own opinions about that total pussy.
Fourthly, and this isn't hard, fill text books with examples of great people from all over the world and different cultures. When you show children that our greatest and most revered people came from so many different backgrounds, and look so different, it subtly reinforces the idea that skin color really doesn't matter. You and I know that it doesn't. We need to show them that great people come from all walks of life equally.
Fifth.... DON'T BRING THE DIRTY LAUNDRY AND NEGATIVE FILTH FROM YOUR OWN PAST AND LIFE EXPERIENCES INTO THE CLASSROOM TO INFECT AND TAINT THE YOUTH OF TOMORROW.
I'm sorry. I just can't fucking stand it. When I hear about some liberal piece of shit trash woman (yes, she is black) shit talking and going on and on about the "white man" in a classroom in 2013 with children in there it drives me insane. How dare she harm those young children and inflict her own bullshit on them.
I learned about the word nigger when I was almost a teenager, and it was the most confusing day of my life. I actually told the boy that it was okay. I was a nigger too, as I thought it meant something like nerd. I grew up not understanding anything about skin color, or racism. The more people wanted to teach me, the more I found them having resentment towards white men in the present and then, as ridiculous as it sounds, conflating it and associating it with me.
Then I learned about the complete logical fallacy that was Affirmative Action. Why I was being punished because of my skin color? Why does Greg get all of these things, not because of his accomplishments, but because of his skin color?
No. I refuse to participate in the rest of many people's delusions. I will teach kids about the logical fallacy that is racism and I will do it in such a way that I don't associate them with events of the past.
Racism does not cure racism.
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Reverse psychology? (Score:4, Insightful)
Best way to make people want something is to ban it.
Ban or Censor? (Score:2, Insightful)
Lots of books should be censored from our public schools for a variety of inappropriate content. More books are being published every year, so that list should grow. Kids can get any of those books via their parents if they want. As for the particular books on the list, well, each case must be discussed separately.
Re:Ban or Censor? (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is whether or not you agree with the people doing the banning.
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Troll! In History it's people in power under tyrannical rule that burn books and ban education. More recently in the US it's been special interests, mostly claiming to be working for equality. Special interest groups on both sides have tried to ban Tolkien's works because, you know, it's anti-Christian enough for those Christian's to ban yet Christian enough for special interests to ban because it's too similar to Christianity. Citation [world.edu] because Google can be difficult for trolls.
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Let's call a spade a spade. Only the Christians support this. Even they'd admit. Hell, they're proud of it.
...really? I was reading a large number of books as a kid in Catholic School that would qualify as censorship material today.
(...as a near-universal example, start with The Bible - specifically, Song of Solomon. [wikipedia.org])
Re:Ban or Censor? (Score:4, Insightful)
Kids can get any of those books via their parents if they want.
Yeah, that's privilege speaking.
The people who most rely on public institutions are the ones who are least able to replace them with their own money. Average middle-class kid and just get his mom to order the book on amazon. Average lower-class kid's mom is working 60 hours a week just to pay the rent and keep food on the table. She doesn't even have a computer to order from amazon and couldn't afford to if she did.
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"Privilege" is a hammer to beat down arguments without having to actually have an argument. It's the new "that's racist".
Used books stores are still around. Books passed hand-to-hand (a tradition for banned books) are still around. Poor as I was growing up, I could scrape together bus fare and a couple bucks for books every couple of weeks, which goes petty far in the deeply discounted section of half-price books. I also took the bus to the library regularly, but there was better stuff in the used book
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Since none of these books is banned from the public library,
Yes, I expected someone to bring up public libraries. Those tend to be few and far between in the neighborhoods where poor kids live. Given that mom's working 60 hours a week, she won't be taking junior to the library all that often either. Full disclosure: I have many librarians in the family.
Kids that are brought up in challenged environments have a wide number of factors that will limit their ability to succeed in life.
Yes, they all add up. Restricting their access to "subversive" knowledge doesn't help.
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Re:Ban or Censor? (Score:4, Informative)
If it was a money problem, public libraries would offer a convinient solution.
The true luxury that "privileged" kids have are parents who manage to get them intrested in reading.
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I happen to agree, and as long as its still available to parents and older children i'm not so sure either term applies.
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I don't know if by censor you mean make some redacted version of the work available or make the entire work unavailable.
If its the latter I am not sure I agree with you but many will. On the whole there is not bright line for what is vulgar, what is culture, and what is appropriate for a given age reader but people have been searching for one almost as long as people have been writing books and its a moving target. I would argue that parents, relatives, and nannies need to spend enough time with their chi
More people have died (Score:5, Informative)
More people have been persecuted, hounded, ruined, tortured, burned, murdered, and just exterminated en-masse because of a book called the Bible than any other document in human history including Mein Kampf and Das Capital put together.
Just sayin' .
Re:More people have died (Score:5, Informative)
This "Bible" book condones a hell of a lot of stuff:
It clearly should be banned.
and more it does not explicitely condamn (Score:3)
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Yeah just the opposite . . no one argues about Islamic fundamentalism because it's in no way controversial : we all agree it's barbaric. And? And you point is? Our legislature isn't filled with psychotic amoral predators like Michelle Bachman and Ted Cruz who espouse a Christian Dominionist theology and INTEND to destroy our government through any means at their disposal whatsoever , the government shutdown being just the LEAST of what it is they've said they want to do to this nation.
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Highest estimate I was able to find at all related to the Bible related deaths was 17 million in a quick search.
How about Das Capital and everything related to it? 100 million give or take.
The 100 million deaths related to Communism being attributed to Das Kapital is certainly at least as valid as counting the Crusades and the Inquisition as being a result of the Bible -- Nothing in the Bible can accurately be attributed as a direct cause of these 2 events. Just as in the case of Das Kapital was not the dir
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100 million American Indians dead between Cortez and the American Indian genocide. Plus, lower population then, so greater relative percentage. If you go by percentage of population, it's a total wipe out in favor of religion. .
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That's a terrible comparison. Most of the deaths (as many as 90% of the population in Central America and 95% in North America - staggering numbers) were inevitable as soon as anyone, for any reason crossed the ocean.
Your hated for religion seems an irrational compulsion - have you talked to anyone about it?
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Get real. Americans explicitly, under the "theory" of "Manifest Destiny", wiped out the American Indians by massacring them, slaughtering their buffalo etc etc etc.
This was again explicitly a religious doctrine- "It is Manifestly God's Destiny for us that we should extend our nation to the Pacific" So please.
If American Indians were "inevitably" going to die because white people stood foot upon their shores , then would have been no need for the Indian Wars or the US infecting blankets with
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The Bible doesn't cause all that stuff (though it depicts); it's just the fan clubs that are a problem. No Bible, and they'd rally around something else; _Dianetics_, maybe.
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More people have been persecuted, hounded, ruined, tortured, burned, murdered, and just exterminated en-masse because of a book called the Bible than any other document in human history including Mein Kampf and Das Capital put together.
Just sayin' .
As long as your meaning is, "They were persecuted for believing in Judaism or Christianity," or for owning a Torah or Bible, very possibly.
Beginnings of Christian Martyrdom [eyewitnesstohistory.com]
In their very deaths they were made the subjects of sport: for they were covered with the hides of wild beasts, and worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set fire to, and when the day waned, burned to serve for the evening lights. Nero offered his own garden players for the spectacle, and exhibited a Circensian game, indiscriminately mingling with the common people in the dress of a charioteer, or else standing in his chariot. For this cause a feeling of compassion arose towards the sufferers, though guilty and deserving of exemplary capital punishment, because they seemed not to be cut off for the public good, but were victims of the ferocity of one man."
WHEN EUROPEANS WERE SLAVES [osu.edu]
A new study suggests that a million or more European Christians were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780 – a far greater number than had ever been estimated before.
League of Militant Atheists [wikipedia.org]
North Korea Ranked No. 1 for Christian Persecution [cbn.com]
Persecuted and forgotten: Egypt's Christians [www.dw.de]
A Global Slaughter of Christians, but America’s Churches Stay Silent [thedailybeast.com]
Christian Persecution in China Despite Supposed Religious 'Freedom' [breitbart.com]
The Case Against the Nazis; How Hitler's Force [nytimes.com]
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Reliable citations, please.
Also, one can do anything he wants "in the name of" some document or philosophy, regardless of whether or not it's actually consistent with it. For example, if I hear that you're not a fan of dogs, and so I kick a puppy in your name, does that suddenly make you a monster?
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I'm not sure either of those things is true. People would have done 'kind'/'evil' things regardless of whether these fairy tail books were around or not, in all likelihood.
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I don't buy it. People will do for each other out of a natural inborn sense of decency. No religious exhortations needed. Christians didn't invent civilization, civil law, democracy , representative government, the concept of Rights or the concept of a shared, general welfare. These are the things that keep us from sliding back down in barbarism.
OTOH as is widely evident, nations founded on religious "values" are only too happy to slide back into barbarism. There is a direct, inverse relationship between ho
Re:More people have died (Score:5, Insightful)
Religions have cropped up in almost all societies. There is a reason for that, and its not "evil". It is because there was a need. Its an interesting exercise to think about that societal need. Much more interesting than just blindly casting fault on religions for many of our problems.
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Crazy straw man. The POINT is who are these Christian Evangelicals to be going after peaceable books like these when their OWN "holy book" has been used to justify mass murder repeatedly throughout history and has a body count that reaches into the stratosphere?
Hard to believe anyone in this thread is so stupid so as to miss the point I made.
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Fast forward to what we have today, and religion has a complex interweaving with our social structure. To assign just 'good' or 'bad' judgements to religious elements becomes fruitless and short sighted. The real question becomes...
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nations founded on religious "values" are only too happy to slide back into barbarism. There is a direct, inverse relationship between how religious a nation is and how equitable and egalitarian it is.
Your knowledge of history is sadly lacking. The truth in Western culture is that for about 1000 years, the Church and the State balanced on another well. There were vile, hateful people in both, but each acted as a check on the worst excesses of the other. The dual power structure really helped protect the common man (OTOH, he did pay taxes to both, and each family owed a son to each).
But evangelical Christians for instance, believe that it ultimately doesn't matter what you DO in this life, good or bad, because either your name was written in the Book of Life at the start of all time or it wasn't and if it was
You're knowledge of Christian sects is worse. "Evangelicals" are mostly about religion-as-popular-entertainment. You do
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Actually, it is probably literally true: all the tens of millions of people killed by Hitler and Stalin weren't killed by the books written by those dictators, they were killed by the dictators directly, or by their policies. If you only include deaths due to people directly influenced by those two books, but not deaths directly or indirectly *ordered* by those dictators, you have a much smaller number. Whereas if you go by the literal bible, the number of deaths Yahweh Himself directly ordered to occur, is
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Actually I'm going to have to throw the Koran in there to really seal it up, owing to the efficiency of 20th century killing machines. BUT even at that, it's merely because the American Indians and Mexican Aztecs who died from infectious diseases aren't normally counted as having been "killed" by Cortez and the Manifest Destiny Christians .
But this is wrong. Anne Frank died of typhus, not in the gas chambers but she is rightly counted as having been killed by Nazis anyway.
Face it - religious wars and the bo
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I think your list is highly selective. Assuming that this list [scaruffi.com] is approximately correct, Christianity and Islam fare pretty well, historically speaking.
As far as I can tell from that list, a lot more killing has happened for non-religious pretenses than for religions pretenses.
If you don't find fault with that list, then I suggest you lay awake in bed fo a while tonight and re-examine some of your beliefs.
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Come on, that list leaves out everything that happened before the 20th century !!! When did religion rule the roost for most of civilization and what percentage of the available people did wage war with and on?
Point is, the fundies going after House of Spirits (!!!!????) have no moral basis to start in after other people's literary works. In fact their DECLARING WAR on these peaceable books is just the latest manifestation of their bellicose, intolerant "kill everything that disagrees with us" mentalit
Information is dangerous (Score:3)
Words can hurt you, won't someone please think of the children!
These people would all go into a snit if they knew (Score:2)
Brave New World, Black Like Me, A Kiss Before Dying, 1984, Animal Farm, etc. Yes, a fairly subversive Catholic high school. Then of course during my years there we read the Greek Tragedies, one that stands out is Lysistrata, then of course The Hobbit, The Canterbury Tales, and Beowulf. Yes, read them.
Less than 50 incidents for the whole country? (Score:4)
Re:Less than 50 incidents for the whole country? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that only 49 of them (well, probably some of these are full districts, so the number of schools will be greater) are banning books should be celebrated.
The concern I would have here is that we have no way of knowing what fraction of all book bannings come to the attention of NCAC. Particularly if a ban is implemented by a single school, banning a book from the curriculum may only directly affect one or two classrooms' worth of children. Not all of those students (or even their parents) may necessarily be aware that a ban has been applied. In subsequent years, no one may have any inkling that the ban exists; the book will have silently disappeared from the curriculum. The syllabus doesn't usually include a list of the books that aren't being taught. So for those reasons, I suspect that the number given - 49 instances - represents a very significant under-reporting.
On the other hand, that same under-reporting gives me a (small) measure of comfort with respect to the other number in the summary: the purported 53% year-over-year increase in bannings. Without ready access to more data, it's entirely possible that the increase in cases is not due to an increase in bannings (undoubtedly a bad thing) but due to an increase in awareness regarding the NCAC and their Kids' Right to Read Project which would make these incidents more likely to be reported and challenged when they do occur (which would be a good thing).
Obligatory joke (Score:2)
People with loose morals often read books that have been banned. People with strict morals, by contrast, form censorship committees and study those books in a group setting.
Only in schools (Score:2)
If that continues to hold the course, then its not a huge deal. As long as parents who disagree with the content can still buy the books and let their children read them. 90% of the books in primary schools don't need to be there anyway, as they are 'fluff' and not directly related to the curriculum.
Public libraries should retain the titles however.
OTT headline? (Score:5, Informative)
No, they're investigated 53% more requests. The linked article says nothing about how many were actually banned.
And the majority of requests were from parents or library patrons, not school districts or state/local govts.
49 cases. Is that idiocy? Are these idiots? Sure. But good grief....49 cases out of how many million kids and parents?
Alternate non-OTT headline - "0.002% of parents in the US have requested a book be banned in their local school library."
You could find a greater percentage of people complaining about just about anything.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What about "The Turner Diaries"? (Score:2)
I hear that never even made it into the libraries in the first place.
That's a better form of censorship than letting it in, and then trying to ban it.
bad reportage/bad stats/just plain bad (Score:4, Insightful)
Yawn (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't like that? Then homeschool your kids and be responsible for their welfare yourself.
For what it's worth, I homeschool my own kids. I won't show slasher movies to a 3 year old. I expect an 18 year old to be prepared to be an adult. At some point in there a transformation has taken place; every child is different, but parents can and do mess it up by exposing their kids to junk when they're not ready for it. Such junk could be bad friends (learning to be racists/dishonest/etc.) or (yes, Slashdot) bad media for their age and emotional maturity.
What about seditious literature? (Score:2)
1984 is now confusing... (Score:2)
...libraries no longer know where to file it. After all, anyone reading it these days would assume it's a work of non-fiction.
The government assumed it was an official training manual...
Putting things In context. (Score:2)
In the 2002 Census of Governments, the United States Census Bureau enumerated the following numbers of school systems in the United States:
13,506 school district governments
178 state-dependent school systems
1,330 local-dependent school systems
1,196 education service agencies (agencies providing support services to public school systems)
School district [wikipedia.org]
In a statistical universe this size, "49 incidents" tells me nothing.
I need to know where these incidents took place.
I need to know if decisions were being made on the state or local level.
I need to know how these incidents were resolved --- and how that has changed over the years.
A breakdown by age group, title, author and subject is essential as well.
H.G. Wells wrote "The Invisible Man" (Score:2)
Ralph Ellison's book is "Invisible Man". It's hard to take seriously the literary lamentations of someone who biffs something as basic as the titles of the books being lamented.
Banned? Not so fast... (Score:3)
It appears that dropping a book from the curriculum now passes as being 'banned'?
So when the new Norton Anthology of American Literature is published, are we now saying that the previous version/edition was 'banned'? Of course not, but if a school district decides to drop, for example Huck Finn, BUT the district keeps the book in the school library, is it considered 'banned'? By this group, the answer is yes.
authors (Score:3)
None of the authors are white?
Re: (Score:2)
Depends on which "they" you mean. You could certainly argue that Kindle books are tracked by many more people, and likely by more nefarious ones.
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Unrelated my big fat white heinie.
Censorship is all about knowing what information people are consuming, and then to stop it. A local school board is a much much smaller threat than government surveillance and censorship.
Right now it's the school board, but the child can go to the library and get the book. It's physical. Kind of difficult to censor that. You would need book burnings.
It's not paranoia either. The FBI persecuted people based on their beliefs, the IRS has been used to quell political dissent,
School officials will likely confiscate it (Score:2)
Re:School officials will likely confiscate it (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because they are. Try keeping a class focused on their lesson when half of them have a phone hidden under the desk to check their facebook page.
Before the bell (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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"If the student wants to continue to fuck off and play around, then the failure will eventually catch up to them."
You overestimate teenagers. Even the smart ones are quite stupid, and few have gotten the hang of that 'delayed gratification' thing.
Re: (Score:2)
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Gun books don't kill people, people books kill people!