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Books Censorship Education

Efforts To Ban Books Jumped an 'Unprecedented' Four-Fold In 2021 (npr.org) 142

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Book banning is not new -- in the U.S. alone the practice goes back to Puritan times, when Thomas Morton's book New English Caanan and others opposing this way of life were tossed from Massachusetts. But the American Library Association said Monday that this year there have been more challenges to books than they have seen since they started tracking it in 2000.

The ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom counted 729 challenges to library, school, and university materials in 2021. It's a significant jump: Last year the group noted 156 challenges -- and in 2019, there were 377. Although the 2020 number was impacted by the pandemic, which forced schools and libraries to shut down, the ALA said they don't usually get more than 500 book challenges in any given year. And sometimes, those challenges contain more than one book title. The number of individual books challenged in 2021 totaled 1,597.
In a press release, ALA President Patricia Wong said: "We support individual parents' choices concerning their child's reading and believe that parents should not have those choices dictated by others. Young people need to have access to a variety of books from which they can learn about different perspectives."

The organization is launching a nationwide initiative meant to empower readers to fight censorship.
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Efforts To Ban Books Jumped an 'Unprecedented' Four-Fold In 2021

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  • by mmell ( 832646 ) on Monday April 04, 2022 @08:53PM (#62417852)
    something about vigilance? Yeah, that.

    There are still boneheads arguing about The Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird. Come to think of it, there are still boneheads arguing about Creationism vs. Evolution (and renaming it Intelligent Design was the dumbest thing I ever heard).

    Just a warning - come for my copy of [REDACTED] and it's on. . .

    • by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Monday April 04, 2022 @09:02PM (#62417870)

      Too many Karens having kids? It's highly highly political though, it's all part of the mythical culture wars, no one trusts public schools anymore. So parents show up demand that their kids AND yours can't read certain books that are about minorities, no books with any hint of sex in them, no books with any hint of someone being gay. And that's without getting into the Harry Potter witchcraft training manuals scare. If they don't want their kids to read those books, then just tell the kids to not read those books! Sure, some of the kids will disobey, but that should be an issue between parent and child, not between parent and the school board.

      This is also a big increase of helicopter parenting - oversheltering the children, make sure they never see anything unusual or different, and no alternative viewpoints that might cause thought, not even in college. So a whole lot of people are going to be entering the real world with a huge shock when they found out that it doesn't work anything like the Hardy Boys (no Nancy Drew, they weren't allowed to read about that hussy).

      Parents need to relax, let the kids get some scraped knees, a few sniffles, and learn that people are different from each other.

      • by mmell ( 832646 )
        Hey, don't mind me - I just want my kids to end up smarter than their old man. Ain't gonna happen if some religious zealots keep insisting that certain ideas are verboten.

        Incidentally, my kids are all grown up. Now, I really want my grandkids to end up smarter than my kids.

      • ..and then these same parents give their kid a smartphone with unfiltered internet access and suddenly all their sheltering of little Timmy ends up being for naught.

        But let's be realistic, kids do a fine enough job corrupting each other. I still remember one of my classmates in 7th grade saying something along the lines of "Damn she's fine, I'm gonna stick it so far up her she'll have 10 babies."

        I feel really bad for anyone who has to teach middle schoolers.

      • Helicopter parenting is now 30yrs old. You can blame the media. No other organization is more responsible for creating a culture of constant fear than the media. Every child abduction case put under a magnifying lens. There were child abductions before the 90s, of course, but nothing like 24/7 coverage. Every 15min an interview with a disguised former child molester shoe how easy it is to snatch a child in under 10 min. If you dont visually lay eyes on your child every 10 min you are a bad parent. See how
      • If they don't want their kids to read those books, then just tell the kids to not read those books!

        You seem to be missing the coercion involved. If your child doesn't read the book, their grades suffer. Sometimes entire quarters are committed to absolute crap like The Catcher In The Rye where so much social evolution has happened that these books are no longer relevant. Don't get me wrong, I don't have any moral objection to that book, it's just poorly written and badly paced. It seems to be riding this reputation for being edgy, but what was edgy in 1945 is mundane today. "Hur Dur dey stars it with a fi

        • Most of these books are in libraries, and not part of a curriculum. They're optional. Sometimes a banned book is on a curriculum, like Huckleberry Finn, but then there's a teacher to guide through it (the racist parts and the anti-racist parts, the latter seems to have offended many in post-war South, it was too "edgy").

        • here I am Millennial, also nicknamed the "Columbine Generation" who watched the opioid crisis being born in our restrooms,

          It was born more in hospitals, but anyway

          who as early as my sophomore year was hearing about how kids I shared gym classes died in Iraq,

          And the military created the meth crisis. My dad could not stop bringing up how much he loved the speed they gave him in Korea.

      • Hogwarts had a forbidden section in the library, every school should have one - it would be a magnet. I might even set up one of those "little libraries" and fill it with all the childrens' books they are banning or waving at SCOTUS nominees.
      • Too many Karens having kids?

        In a way, yes. Idiocracy opens with this, but recall that 68% of the population is within the first standard deviation of intelligence. And then, moving toward extreme lack of intelligence, those people can - and do - still breed. So, not just "too many Karens," but too many stupid fucking people who fear things they don't understand - and they don't understand much - and are easily swayed by charismatic leaders who tell them what to hate.

      • Too many Karens having kids? It's highly highly political though, it's all part of the mythical culture wars, no one trusts public schools anymore. So parents show up demand that their kids AND yours can't read certain books that are about minorities, no books with any hint of sex in them, no books with any hint of someone being gay.

        I live one county from ground zero where this happened and I've heard of the books in question. They're porn. Graphic depictions of sexual intercourse. Apply all the woke labels you want, the books are pornography and have no place in an elementary school library. Anyone who feels otherwise needs their head examined.

      • Too many Karens having kids?

        It would stand to reason that the religious busybodies are the ones planning to have children, and also presumably more likely to choose not to abort the ones they didn't plan. They're being told that making babies is their purpose, and that God wants them to multiply.

        • "Planning" to have babies? I thought they were opposed to family planning. :-)

          This is not just anti-abortion, there is still avery strong anti-birth-control feeling out there, and it's not just catholics. Because birth control leads to promiscuity and sex, and removing birth control means that all those teenage girls and boys will decide to abstain instead. Legal for married couples for 57 years, legal for unmarried people for 50 years. And yet it's still controversial; Trump administration had a ruling

    • Dude, if the book banners ever actually read what's in the Bible, they'd want to ban it too [youtube.com].
      • Nobody reads the bible because the author is boring as hell. Thats why nobody can quote more than a few out-of-context passages. They dont have to worry about children reading it. The ones that actually read scriptures often get radicalized and strap on bomb vests.
    • But won't somebody please think of the children!

  • "California dictator Gov. Gavin Newsom is either blissfully unaware of left-wing attempts at banning books or knows and still decided to play the fool in a tweet he posted Wednesday where he tried to “own” conservatives by stating he was reading books that were supposedly banned by red state political leaders so he could see “what these states are so afraid of”:

    "But, “To Kill a Mockingbird” was on his supposed reading list. As it turns out, some school districts in Calif

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Darinbob ( 1142669 )

      Those books have been commonly banned since they were first published. By liberals AND conservatives. Surprised you only knew about this recently.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        Liberals don't like To Kill a Mockingbird because the black characters are shallow, one-dimensional stage props for their heroic white savior to act upon.

        It is a criticism of racism, but many see it as a very racist book for its depiction of blacks.

        I had to read it in school. I didn't care for it. If we want students to learn about racism, then teach about stuff that actually happened, like the Scottsboro Boys [wikipedia.org], rather than unrealistic fiction.

        • by e3m4n ( 947977 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @07:47AM (#62418656)
          Maybe at the time it was the right tool for the job? Nobody believes in star bellied sneetches, who by the way, are very one dimensional. But the story is still the right tool for the right age group to explain discrimination and segregation and it goes beyond racial versions of those practices. Racism, classism, sexism, all forms of discrimination.
      • So first everyone needs to thank me for actually reading that linked article so they don't have to and second the books won't banned they were removed from curriculum. That's not the same thing as being banned. The books were still available in the library however a parent complained because the books were being taught without proper context which to be honest if that's true is very much inappropriate thing to do. As a result of the complaint they suspend it the books from the curriculum. In all likelihood
      • Those books have been commonly banned since they were first published. By liberals AND conservatives. Surprised you only knew about this recently.

        Nothing in my post would have given any reasonable person a reason to believe that I "only knew about this recently".

    • If you click on the article, you can see the top ten most banned books. You can cherry pick a few here in there to smear whoever your bad guys are. But mostly the problem seems to be books indicating it might be ok to be gay. Pretty sure those are not banned in CA.
      • There is a fuzzy line here that's difficult to nail down. I have a very open mind and you'd be hard pressed to get me to speak out against a book just because the protagonist or accessory characters are LGBTQi+. That said, having read it, I do think it's reasonable to ask if the book Genderqueer (#1 on the list) should be in school libraries. The content is questionable for pre-teens and younger readers. Strap-on fucking is fun and all, but I don't want a parent to have to explain that to their 5th grader

        • by skam240 ( 789197 )

          Is there an issue with it being in libraries for kids as young as you say (5th grade which would be elementary school most places)? The few times I've heard of this book it's been in the context of high school bans which is just ridiculous. Pretty much every teenager by that point has seen far more graphic on the internet. I'd think the same for Jr. High really.

    • by talyesn ( 8047422 ) on Monday April 04, 2022 @09:18PM (#62417926)
      What are you on about? You link redstate (because of course you did, but we'll argue the merits anyway) and it talks about Newsome self-owning because "some California school districts" banned books. However, the article only highlights one single school district, Burbank, which doesn't seem to be districtS - plural. Additionally, these books weren't banned, but removed from required reading lists. They're still available to read within Burbank district schools. The same can't be always be said for Texas, Florida and a few other states', some with tacit or direct approval from those states' governors. I don't think anyone should be banning books - right or left, and curriculum restrictions should be reasonable and contextual. I don't think Mein Kampf should be required reading for the merits of the book itself, but possibly made available for optional reading for historical context as part of a larger lesson plan. Object to this shit in any form - stop limiting criticism to partisanship, and if you're going to argue the point, don't do so in disingenuous fashion.
      • What are you on about? You link redstate (because of course you did, but we'll argue the merits anyway)

        Thanks for doing that, these types are always dismissing citations because they come from a liberal outlet and this is exactly the kind of example we need to set, not because they will change but because we can point to comments like these and explain that until they meet this bar, they can stuff it.

    • by fermion ( 181285 )
      California is weird. It elected Reagan and Shwaneger. It elected Trump favorite Devin Nunes. It was built on laws that kept black people out and Asian people in servitude. It is hard to say, at a local level, who controls the school board.

      Reading does corrupt the fragile mind, but liberals donâ(TM)t tend to ban books. The Bible and Noahâ(TM)s ark promotes genocide but most liberals are ok with reading it. When I was in middle school my best friend gave me Little Pilgrims Progress and one of the

      • The fine article mentions removing books is opposed by most people in both major parties, and by independents.
        TFA links to these figures:

        (71%) oppose efforts to have books removed from their local public libraries, including a majority of Democrats (75%), independents (58%), and Republicans (70%).

        Removing books from libraries is opposed by EVERY "side".

        Each side also has their wack jobs. Liberal wack jobs, the same ones who got some Disney movies banned, want books banned for the same reasons. For example o

        • by skam240 ( 789197 )

          Wait, is that poll about public libraries as you state or school libraries? As I understand it a lot of the controversy right now is about banning books at school but those are not public libraries as they are not open to the general public.

    • So this "self-own" is that Newsome made a point you agreed with but failed to specifically mention that a small school district in California (beautiful Burbank, California) also took several books out of the curriculum. By all means make fun of Burbank, but if you think that teachers should have more freedom in choosing their reading, then you should be apeshit over the anti-"CRT" and gay laws, and that Texas librarian, and a bunch of other stuff that Newsome was trying to call attention to.
  • by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Monday April 04, 2022 @09:29PM (#62417958) Homepage

    As long as mankind has had government, people with power want to stop others from communicating ideas they disagree with. For centuries there was not even a theory that stopped them. Then a free press was invented and they had to come up with an idea.

    So they came up with corruption of the young. We must stop this evil thing from corrupting our youth!

    The thing is we know how to corrupt the youth, and it is not art. Not pictures, written words, movies, songs, comics, games, etc.

    You want to know what corrupt people, turning them to crime? Three things I know of, but even these are not 100%. Many people survive them without corruption. But some are susceptible. The three are: 1) Drugs. The percentage of poor soles addicted to drugs is higher than those not. 2) Cults. Whether they be religious or political (Q-Anon). 3) Extreme, sudden wealth. Sometimes it is the temptation of wealth, other times it is the sudden capability of doing whatever they desire.

    Those are the things we have seen corrupt people. Good people get involved with drugs, cults, or huge amounts of money and suddenly they turn evil.

    We have tried outlawing drugs, doesn't work very well. Same with cults. But the funny thing is, I have never see anyone attempt to outlaw being wealthy. Despite the many, many examples of wealth destroying people's lives.

    • by shilly ( 142940 )

      Exposure to violence and abuse in early childhood is a much more consistently corrupting influence than any of those things. If dad beats up the family, unsurprisingly it frequently fucks everyone in the family up. And there's a huge number of people out there who do this, the vast majority of whom are men.

      • Plenty of alcoholic moms blowing up the family unit too. Have a sister-in-law we havent spoken to in 20yrs. While she never beat the crap out of her husband, he enabled the rest of her horrible behaviors. Lots of affairs. Lots of mind control games using her kids as pawns, and victims. Her daughter became such a headcase it wasnt until she was 36 that she had the balls move out and get married. Always seeking her moms love and approval, which was always withheld for purposes of manipulation. Woman would eve
        • by shilly ( 142940 )

          "I believe your understanding of what breaks a family and ruins a child forever is limited to physical events."

          You believe wrongly. I used the phrase "violence and abuse" on purpose, as the latter is much broader. I gave a single example bc life is too short to give lots. Coercive control, gaslighting, etc -- all are horrific abuse, just as violent abuse is horrific.

          Kids growing into teenagers and beating up an abusive dad is largely a movie trope -- see, for example, Once Were Warriors. It's attractive as

      • You are correct. I should have said 4.
        Thanks.

    • by skam240 ( 789197 )

      As long as mankind has had government, people with power want to stop others from communicating ideas they disagree with. For centuries there was not even a theory that stopped them. Then a free press was invented and they had to come up with an idea.

      So they came up with corruption of the young. We must stop this evil thing from corrupting our youth!

      Ha, they've been using "corruption of the young" for a lot longer than there's been a printing press. It's the reason Socrates was given the death sentence for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Monday April 04, 2022 @09:31PM (#62417962)

    The same group who whines about their religion being "oppressed" and cancel culture is doing their best to oppress and cancel others [imgur.com].

    • by mmell ( 832646 )
      I'm an atheist, you insensitive clod. I've never whined about my religion being oppressed, and I'm tired of hearing you pretend you actually care about your made-up Gods. You only made them up so you could control what others think and do, so take your gods and go play with yourself - somewhere out of sight, nobody here wants to see that.
      • by mmell ( 832646 )
        Aw, bloody hell. Wish I'd read your post again before I hit send - my brain suffered a parse error. Wish I could 'delete' that one. My apologies.
    • by mmell ( 832646 )
      And repeating it up here. Wish I'd read your post again before I hit send - my brain suffered a parse error. Wish I could 'delete' that one. My apologies.
      • And repeating it up here. Wish I'd read your post again before I hit send - my brain suffered a parse error. Wish I could 'delete' that one. My apologies.

        Eh, don't worry about it. I've done similar things because I either misread what the person wrote or my brain decided to turn off. No biggy.

  • by AndyKron ( 937105 )
    Atheists don't ban books. Even evil, putrid, horrible death books like the Bible
  • They who burn books are just using them as practice. What they really want to burn and "purify" from "their" world...is you.
  • The word "ban" used to refer to the government making it illegal to own a book. There is still some material banned in the US (like child porn - and I have no objections to that ban). Other countries ban more (like Germany banning Nazi literature).

    Most of the "bans" being talked about now are things like libraries and schools removing works. All libraries have to pick and choose what material to carry. Its perfectly OK for words to change meaning (they do it all the time ) but people need to keep in mi
    • Most of the "bans" being talked about now are things like libraries and schools removing works. All libraries have to pick and choose what material to carry.

      False. These are republican lawmakers having books removed from schools by legal action, not just school librarians choosing to remove books.

  • Heroes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sconeu ( 64226 ) on Monday April 04, 2022 @11:08PM (#62418188) Homepage Journal

    Librarians are the heroes we need, but do not deserve. Fortunately, they don't give a damn about how deserving we aren't, and are still our heroes.

  • You can easily buy these books, that's not in question. Rather, what is the curriculum of taxpayer-funded schools? That's always an issue, and it's sleazy to frame it as censorship Clearly traditional religious education is out. But then why not too this progressive religion too? And they're quite open about their goal of reprogramming kids according to their dictates.

    Kids can't even do the three R's anymore. They need less doctrine, more fundamentals, logic, critical thinking, etc.

  • by rantrantrant ( 4753443 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @03:40AM (#62418416)
    Karl Popper, father of the modern scientific method, came up with another idea called the paradox of tolerance. Essentially, if we're tolerant of intolerance, we end up living in an intolerant society. There's a reason why many countries, including the USA, restrict speech to some degree - so that the small minority of assholes can't spoil it for the rest of us. They're the reason we can't have nice things. BTW, I hear e-readers burn particularly well. Can we suggest those to the fundamentalist extremists so they can burn more books at a time?
    • Karl Popper, father of the modern scientific method, came up with another idea called the paradox of tolerance. Essentially, if we're tolerant of intolerance, we end up living in an intolerant society.

      I much prefer Jefferson's formulation which gets to the heart of the problem.

      Intentionally formulating something as a paradox when such language is easily avoided is the only reason KP is referenced so often. Everyone gets to exploit the confusion to lend credence to their perspective.

      There's a reason why many countries, including the USA, restrict speech to some degree - so that the small minority of assholes can't spoil it for the rest of us.

      The USA basically does not restrict pure speech
      https://billofrightsinstitute.... [billofrigh...titute.org]

      What has been restricted was pursuit of objectives rather than simply communicating thoughts and ideas. Planning and executing a robbery by spea

      • So only hypothetical speech is protected? I wonder how much hypothetical speech gets exchanged between violent, extremist groups? And don't forget how many in the USA enthusiastically & practically embraced eugenics on the grounds of the circulating propaganda of the time. That was, until the Nazis eventually made it unpopular. The reality of "pure speech" is that it is, in & of itself, hypothetical. Propaganda is propaganda (Edward Bernays renamed it to PR to escape the Nazi association at the time
        • So only hypothetical speech is protected?

          I've never heard of the term "hypothetical speech" before. What does it mean and how is it different from the concept of pure speech?

          I don't think it is correct to say only x is protected. It is more accurate to say multiple things can be occurring at once not just speech even if one is only physically speaking.

          For example in my previous example of bank robbing speaking and conspiring to rob a bank are separate. You can communicate whatever opinions or ideas you want yet you are not allowed to do whatev

          • You'll have to define what you mean by "pure speech." We also need to ground such discussions in the realities of when, where, by whom & why speech is used. "Hypothetical" is already a well-established term & so immediately meaningful to most, i.e. talking about things that are not real, e.g. "If we were to rob this bank, we should get..." vs. "If we rob this bank, we'll need..." Can you see how speakers' intentions are encoded into the lexicogrammatical register configurations of language? Of cours
  • ...I would point to a rather unprecedented level of effort to bring sexuality (or any flavor) to very young children including exposing them to sexual behavior in school library books.

    I mean, look at the backlash against the Florida law banning the discussion of sexuality with very young children in schools. The law says NOTHING about homosexuality, just that 6 year olds are a little young to be discussing sexuality...but it's certainly being flogged in the media as a "don't say gay" homophobic legislation

  • Heaven forbid your kids have fresh take an unbiased perspective on a subject and become independent thinkers. This are the same parents who can't talk to their kids about sexuality and let the schools do it.

  • It would have been nice to have some actual statistics. It's a shame that such a shallow and deliberately vague article is even posted so slashdot.

    I mean, sure, the number of books challenged rose, but the article itself says that last year the number was unusually low, so the title is obvious clickbait. Then the article says that the number of books challenged was 1,597, but doesn't compare it to any previous year. We can't compare this to the number of books in a year when with 500 book challenges, which

  • We need to ban these books on climate change so that future generations can't blame us for causing it.

    • Once the biosphere has collapsed and the survivors living underground and eating mushrooms, and extracts of yeast grown on mushrooms, we can ban "critical climate theory" — any work which discusses the idea that the people who shat where we eat for the purpose of getting more shiny trinkets are responsible for the fall of man.

      • Good! The important thing is I don't want anyone spitting or dancing on my grave. I gotta think of my legacy, even if it's just a sham.

  • Define "book banning." The left defines book banning as not using a particular book they like in a curriculum. By this definition, a lot of old calculus books have been banned. No wonder book banning is on the rise.

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