Conservative activists, led by a local pastor and outspoken Israel advocate, pushed the district, Mission CISD, to excise books mostly about gender, sexuality and race. Their demands represented an extreme version of a nationwide culture war over books that has played out in recent years — and ensnared a number of books with Jewish themes.
In Mission, the long list of books on the chopping block includes a recent illustrated adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary; both volumes of Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust graphic memoir “Maus”; “The Fixer,” Bernard Malamud’s novel about a historical instance of antisemitic blood libel; and “Kasher in the Rye,” a ribald memoir by Jewish comedian Moshe Kasher.
It isn’t about them being available. Its about discussing the content and the deeper meaning. I would be totally fine with reading Adolf Hitlers - Mein Kampf in School, as long as the content gets discussed and why what he wrote wasn’t good.
Nothing is going to be discusses it would just be sitting on the shelf and available. So I think we should all agree that censorship of books in public schools makes sense. I personally am fine with siding on the side of being more cautious and having kids less able to get books people think are not acceptable, and catching books that probably should be available in schools.
If kids are only exposed to kid friendly stuff, then they will never learn anything and stay kids long into adulthood.
I guess so, but if kids are exposed to adult things their mind is not ready for it will harm them.
They already deal with the fact that someone can just go in and shoot them the middle the middle of class. Those books are nothing compared to that
Two different discussions.
Not really. Kids have active shooter drills, but you get your panties in a bunch because they might read Anne Frank?
You don’t really care about kids, you are just an hypocrite.
Prove they are trying to remove Anne Frank from the libraries, it might be true, but I think that sounds like propaganda.
And yes they are two different things. The big problem here is that people like you dont realize how to stop school shootings, and even if you did, you are unwilling to take the actual steps to do so.
Do you even read the titles before you come here saying dumb shit?
Yeah obviously you have problems distinguishing truth from propaganda, we’re all aware.
The article states first that a Texas district banned Anne Frank’s diary. Don’t play dumb.
Every fucking other countries don’t have mass shootings pretty much everyday. Only in the US. In Australia, when they banned gun ownership after a mass shooting in 1996, the shootings dropped drastically.
The school shootings are a multi-faceted problem which requires many changes, one of which is the gun culture.
There is a toddler every two weeks that shoot someone in the USA, how are guns not the problem?
You know where this doesn’t happen? Everywhere else in the world.
Ban guns for pretty much anything that is not hunting. Fund social services to provide quality mental health treatments to anyone that needs it. That should get you started in the right direction.
Literally the article.
You do realise that there’s a version of Mien Kampf that’s four times as long because there’s several experts annotating and debunking Hitler’s ideas right there on the page.
Thats fine, what would be so bad if a signficant part of the population dont think its appropriate so its not provided to kids at a public school?
A significant part of the population doesn’t think it’s appropriate for a picture book about two male penguins that adopt a chick to be in a public school.
In fact, a significant part of the population doesn’t think white kids and black kids should go to the same school. And have found ways to do things about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segregation_academy
Why should we cater to these significant parts of the population?
History is uncomfortable. Revising it to tell lovely stories is all well and good for building a national identity.
However, sugar-coating, ignoring, or even flat-out erasing parts of history benefits no one. People started writing events down accurately because the orators of old never intended paint an accurate picture of the past. And therefore lessons learnt from the failures of humanity (lost causes, preventable catastrophies, perspectives of people on the wrong side, genocides, etc.) were also lost.
History should be uncomfortable, so we can collectively learn and have a chance to do better the next time.
You are believing the propaganda not what the real critique is.
I literally said the opposite. How did you come to that conclusion?
You didnt say the opposite, you repeated the propaganda that is an attack on people that want to censor books. The books that are getting censored are not due to them being about history or learning.
How is this propaganda?
Also you are completely incorrect. Those books are ABSOLUTELY are about history and learning.
Anne Frank’s Dairy is a first hand historical account of life an oppressed and genocided group under facism. Maus is another recollection of first-hand historical accounts of a polish Jew being interviewed by his son but shown visually in a cartoon graphic novel to make the context more visually palatable for a younger audience without avoiding the horrific events of history.
What next? Are you going to claim the Horrible History books are neither educational or historical as well?
What would be so bad with…
…checks notes…
…informing young people about the most horrible decisions made throughout history, why they were flawed, and how not to repeat the same mistakes today?
Hmm…
Just take a look at the world around you. That’s a fucking start…
That is not what is happening…
No, history never repeats itself! Just like that old expression says, “Those who forget history are doomed to a life of happiness and prosperity.”
I agree, but that is not what these book removals are about
You’re a fucking troglodyte.
Censoring books due to reasons like “these books provide a point of view I’m not comfortable exposing my kids too” is usually a bad reason to censor books.
Problem I see is its all a pendulum on these issues where the reaction swings wildly back and forth the more energy were putting into it rather than having it settle the fuck down.
For instance these books being removed aren’t produced in spite of this issue. But for sure if we dig into censorship topic then pro censorship groups start bringing out books to be edgy cunts and prove a point.
Every issue has edge cases and we live in a time where people are so willing to be right they will make every edge case the center of an issue. Like in order to keep Maus on shelves we will now need to have a copy of Bomb making 101 or a book were one of these people wrote FUCK a million times just so they can get anti censorship people to say “hey that isn’t cool guys” but also the problem is I often find people are so militant in our beliefs that we have a hard time saying “that isn’t cool” when faced with something not cool but also that grinds against our moral beliefs
What you are saying makes sense, I just dont see an issue if XX% of people dont want a book to be in PUBLIC schools, then I am okay with restricting it unless there is some kind of cultural significance, and within reason. I am probably okay with Maus from what I have heard, but I dont see it as an issue to take it off the shelf if people feel strongly and there is some level of logic.
Do you realize how many books are in a literary? The odds they will chance on one particular book are really small. And ig they do it’s far from the worst thing that can happen to them in a school