This is splitting hairs: removing books from school libraries is a de facto ban on those books. Neither the article nor law implies that "book ban" in this context means anything other than "school book ban."
So by your definition, does a school library with 13k books ban 99,99% of all books?
[1]
A ban implies to me the book cannot be sold at all which is hardly splitting hairs.
And did you find it just as egregious when Huckleberry Finn was banned in new york and california schools and public libraries for using the "n" word?
No. Not stocking a book because it's physically impossible to stock all books in the world is not the same as banning it.
The ALA's statement[1] is clear, and IMO common-sense: proscribing or removing content for doctrinal reasons is the problem.
We're not talking about curation, and it is bizarre mental gymnastics to propose they are remotely similar.
EDIT. BTW even curation-excluded books are accepted by libraries. Libraries operate in networks, and they exchange / send overflow books to each other all the time.
Every American that I know (including myself) understands the phrase "book ban" to refer widely, if not exclusively, to school libraries in the context of American politics. It's been nearly 70 years since we've had otherwise politically notable book bans[1].
> And did you find it just as egregious when Huckleberry Finn was banned in new york and california schools and public libraries for using the "n" word?
Yes.
[1]: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/banned-books-wee...
That's just not true. "Banned book" has meant "book banned from schools and libraries" for a very long time. This is the meaning used by the American Library Association.
https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbook...
It is, for the time being and for most practical purposes, impossible to ban a book from being published in the USA. Other countries have bigger problems but that is not what people discuss in American politics.
>And did you find it just as egregious when Huckleberry Finn was banned in new york and california schools and public libraries for using the "n" word?
This is a very feeble gotcha.
The concrete "book bans" I've heard about have been that Maus is no longer required reading in 8th grade, or that explicit sex pictures are banned from middle school libraries. Neither seem terrible to me.
What are the most egregious bans I might actually be upset by?
That being said: I, for one, think that 8th graders should have Maus accessible to them; it's a difficult book substantively and in terms of presentation, but I don't think reading it is going to "damage" any 8th grader. "Required" is besides the point.
Seriously: what's the point of this comment? There will always be a worse example; what matters is that there's a shared meaning in this context.
You are the first.
Book bans are bans on books, at a national or state/local government level.
Bans on books within a school have been a thing for a relatively long time where I am. Usually managed by the local school council for various different reasons.
I'm aware that there are ample other ways to (and entities that) ban books. Their severity is not meaningfully diminished by this conversation, and introducing them is a distraction.
Are you implying these books are so unpopular that a good chunk of their influence and profitability is very much dependent on left-wing public school librarians subsidizing them by making sure they are included in the catalogues?
We should remember that a school library has limited space, so a decision is being made about what to include no matter what.
If you think ideology/doctrine doesn't already play a role in these decisions, I invite you to check if the library of your local high school has a physical copy of say "When Harry Became Sally", "The Bell Curve", or even "The Blank Slate".
In principle, my libertarian side would have agreed with you that imposing these choices in a centralized way is not a good idea. But those principles are only meaningful in a classical liberal context. Not when scourges of affirmative action, indoctrination, ideological subsidies [1] and pseudo-liberal bureaucratic processes are used to impose ludicrous ideas upon us.
[1]: For examples of that, see https://dc.claremont.org/federal-progressive-subsidy-databas...
If a school decided to ban Twinkies from their lunch menu I wouldn’t say we have a food ban crisis that the state of Illinois would need to legislate. A parent could still buy Twinkies at home and enjoy them as often as they wanted.
usually means
1. is usually exclusive 2. if not exclusive, then is the case in the majority of cases
The proposed case that "Book Bans" refer almost exclusively to school libraries is obviously false if you just take a look at a dictionary. It is evidently not "widely known to mean X" if common definitions do not explicitly state that.
All definitions state that it is an act of banning a book. But do not explicitly state that it is exclusive to some arbitrary bureaucratic level.
Either way, it is strange to just decide that a "Book Ban" must refer almost exclusively to a school.
And yes, this is semantics.
No; please don't editorialize. It's obvious that the goal of these bans is to ensure that children and young adults who otherwise wouldn't have access to these books continue to not have access.
> I invite you to check if the library of your local high school has a physical copy of say "When Harry Became Sally", "The Bell Curve", or even "The Blank Slate"
It has two of the three[1][2]. You need to reevaluate your assumptions here.
(And note: I grew up in a district where students simultaneously have access to one of the largest public library systems in the world, by default. I'm positive I could find all three additionally in that system.)
[1]: https://search.follettsoftware.com/metasearch/ui/113378/sear...
[2]: https://search.follettsoftware.com/metasearch/ui/113378/sear...
My point was that when Maus stopped being part of required reading in one school district, that was reported as a "book ban", which is very misleading.
So now I'm suspicious of other reported "book bans" until I've heard the details.
I agree that the main goal is to reduce the access of children and young adults to these book, compared to the status quo. I don't think anyone is disputing that, one of the common rationales given being that these books are "inappropriate" for them.
However, framing this as a de facto book ban is definitely "editorializing".
> It has two of the three[1][2]. You need to reevaluate your assumptions here.
Touché. That isn't the typical high school though. It seems like a very good one, with competitive merit-based admission, and eight Nobel Prize-winning alumni. [1] Even then, you can see the biases of the high school librarians if you take a look at the collections page [2]: "LGBTQIA+", "BIPOC Reading List", "Grade 1: Inclusion contributes to a community’s diversity", "Indigenous Math & Science Collection", "Diverse Voices", etc.
Do you disagree that these are topics favored by left-wingers? Do they have collections promoting "Nuclear Energy", "Classics", "Freedom", "Family Values", "Meritocracy", or even "Personal Responsibility"?
> I grew up in a district where students simultaneously have access to one of the largest public library systems.
Good for them. I very much support that. Although there are significant biases in the procurement process for the public libraries, I assume their situation is probably much better than public school libraries.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bronx_High_School...
[2] https://collections.follettsoftware.com/collections/public
That's a lie. Or shall I say "gas lighting at best and a false flag at worst"?
"The Lithuanian press ban (Lithuanian: spaudos draudimas) was a ban on all Lithuanian language publications printed in the Latin alphabet in force from 1865 to 1904 within the Russian Empire, which controlled Lithuania proper at the time. Lithuanian-language publications that used Cyrillic were allowed and even encouraged." [0]
I don't know what else you'd call the use of state authority to restrict access to books, without painful euphemisms.
And note: the use of "book ban" to describe partisan curtailments of reading materials is not itself partisan[1]. You can find similar uses of the phrase in any partisan or non-partisan news source.
> Do you disagree that these are topics favored by left-wingers? Do they have collections promoting "Nuclear Energy", "Classics", "Freedom", "Family Values", "Meritocracy", or even "Personal Responsibility"?
There was a classics topic in our library. I think it would behoove you to think one step beyond this and observe that topical selections in libraries reflect three pressures:
1. What the audience (i.e., students in this case) actually wants to read;
2. What the librarian thinks will induce reading among the audience;
3. The librarian's own biases.
You're focusing on (3), when the reality is that (1) and (2) matter more. Asking high schoolers to get excited about a library section on "personal responsibility" or "meritocracy" sounds like a bad joke.
[1]: https://www.foxnews.com/us/library-book-bans-united-states-s...
The only reason they need collections like "LGBTQIA+" and "Diverse Voices" in the first place is because literally the rest of the collection will already be filled with "Classics", "Freedom", and "Family Values". Those are considered the default in society, there is no need to explicitly highlight them when you will already come across them without even trying.
First of all, this isn't just about state authority. Parental authority also plays a role. In many cases, removing books from circulation happens due to complaints by parents. This is just some form of parental/public input on what taxpayer money is being spent on, and what kind of books are appropriate for children.
Also, in our current situation, state authority is very often used in ways I would consider inappropriate. For example, in a lot of cases, affirmative action is not only allowed, but required by law. So, there aren't really many good reasons to strictly stick to classical liberal principles.
> And note: the use of "book ban" to describe partisan curtailments of reading materials is not itself partisan[1].
Fox News generally sucks beyond measure. Here's National Review's take (though it is a bit different than mine): https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/04/book-curation-is-not-...
> Asking high schoolers to get excited about a library section on "personal responsibility" or "meritocracy" sounds like a bad joke.
Maybe, but probably there are ways to hype up and sensationalize everything. Besides, I could come up with a lot of "exciting" topics which also probably wouldn't be emphasized: "Victims of Communism", "The Green Revolution in India", "Lysenkoism", etc.
Although you didn't say it explicitly, I assume we both can agree that the librarian's own biases do have a significant effect, and what the typical direction of those biases are. You may think this is a good thing, but that's besides the point.
Also, your (2) is also very much subject to personal biases.
If public schools are purposely preventing books that would otherwise be present from being included in their libraries, how is that anything other than a book ban? A ban doesn't have to be across an entire legal jurisdiction to be a ban; if someone got wasted and tried to start a fight at a bar and then was never allowed back in again, you'd still say they were "banned" even if they were able to go to other bars in the city.
Parental opinions don't make a book ban into not-a-book-ban. They make it into a book ban fueled by parents. Road to hell, good intentions, etc.
The other point is bizarre: two wrongs don't make a right. Political revanchism because you don't like the other things your government does is not socially healthy (arguably, substantially less healthy than any of the topics that are being banned).
Children and teenagers aren't stupid: what you're proposing is replacing subjects that they're interested in with ones that you're interested in, with your interest being an ideological one. I think it's worth taking a step back and considering whether you'd be a worse librarian than the ones that we have; the ones at hand can at least offer the sound justification that increasingly large numbers of students feel comfortable self-identifying as LGBTQ.
Actually I think I would have less problems if the only people who can go to school policy discussions and make these requests are parents whose children are literally in that school system right now. I have repeatedly witnessed people who don’t have children in that school system show up to these things and debate about this. It’s very stupid.
It's not bizarre. It's not just about moral principles, but also practical realities.
> Children and teenagers aren't stupid
TBH, I kinda think they are, and I'm not exempting my teenage self. They are definitely impulsive, impressionable, and prone to fads and groupthink.
Have you heard of the book "Lord of the Flies"? Interestingly, this particular book has also been subject to what you would call a ban, at least in one case in because it's "racist". [1]
> Children and teenagers aren't stupid: what you're proposing is replacing subjects that they're interested in with ones that you're interested in, with your interest being an ideological one.
I don't think any of the topics I came up with are more ideological than the ones I mentioned from the library collections. However, probably what you count as ideological is itself influenced by the ideological glasses one's wearing.
> I think it's worth taking a step back and considering whether you'd be a worse librarian than the ones that we have; the ones at hand can at least offer the sound justification that increasingly large numbers of students feel comfortable self-identifying as LGBTQ.
Me personally? Maybe, but I could make suggestions which are definitely an improvement, but I don't think enough high school librarians would consider doing it. An example would be not purchasing any books by Ibram X. Kendi.
No, it isn't. There are millions of books that aren't in school libraries. Are they all de facto banned?
Confidently declaring something doesn't make it true. A library deciding not to carry a book is not a book ban.
Never having a book, having it but having it be removed for non-content-related reasons, having it removed for content-related reasons, having the content removal decision come from librarians, or parents, or politicians, the public record of comments about why something is removed, all of these things are obviously important. Flattening it to "yeah lots of books aren't in libraries" is a _bit_ reductive!
Good things are good, bad things are bad. Sometimes it's hard to write laws that work around this, but at the very least moral judgements can be made, with space for nuance.
Or "The Turner Diaries" or "The Camp of the Saints" if you want some more extreme examples.
There’s a big difference between saying “we don’t think Tropic of Cancer is appropriate for high school kids so we’re going to remove it” and “Tropic of Cancer is banned in our schools”.
The “book bans” happening are mostly the former and while I do think they’re mostly stupid, they’re nowhere near what you’d think is happening from headlines. Very little actual banning is occurring.
There’s surely a more accurate term than banning or curation here.
Additionally, I searched “fox news book bans” and “nbc book bans” and these were the first links that came up.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/choice-lies-parent-texas-dad-supp...
> Maia Kobabe’s book "Gender Queer" became one of the most banned books in the country in 2022. The book has been at the center of the debate over what books should be banned in schools.
https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/map-book-bans-rise-rcn...
> School districts in 26 states have banned more than 1,000 books in the past nine months
Additionally, the Wikipedia article “ 2021–2022 book banning in the United States” discusses various cases of books being withdrawn from school libraries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021%E2%80%932022_book_banning...
No, it isn't. You're trivialising actual book bans by referring to public education literature selection as a "ban".
Lots of books aren't in the school library; doesn't mean that they're banned - you can still buy them and read them to your kids, take them out of public libraries, read them on the internet ... all without any legal or unofficial consequences.
To make my point stronger: I would call it a book ban, if English language books were illegal to write in the Latin alphabet, and only allowed in the Cyrillic alphabet. This would be consistent with the situation of Lithuanian language book ban (except it would not replace kindergarten and lower grades with Russian grammar schools).
Calling it a lie seems at the very least ignorant of the actual situation, or worse, willful twisting of history. If the former, I invite you to read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_book_smugglers to find out on which day they are celebrated!
You can see it for yourself.
https://archive.org/details/gender-queer-a-memoir-by-maia-ko...
This is apparently what it would be censorship to keep out of gradeschool libraries. If you're ok with the book, then I guess there's not much more to talk about. If you're now not ok with the book, then I guess this is the first time you actually saw inside of it.
We're told that there is a difference between doctrine and curation, and maybe in some theoretical world this is true. But in the world we actually live in, doctrine's already being pushed... they're just pretending that they're "merely curating". And they're demanding that the other side not be allowed any oversight on that curation. When they curate, good, when anyone else does it, well... they're the "bad guys".
Personally, I could not care less. If you want this book in schools, it does not affect me. But you should know what book it is we're talking about. Take a look, click the link.
Obviously they pick some books and not others for some reasons. If you like their reasons you call it curation, if you don’t like their reasons you call it banning.
Randomly selecting books for rotation would bias by sheer publication volume. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my local library to be 40% Atkins Diet by volume, regardless of how positive I might feel about it.
This is not a "gotcha" or loophole of some type. Words have meanings[1]. If your argument relies on changing the meaning of a common word in the dictionary, it's your argument that is wrong, not the damn dictionary!
I mean, where are you going with this?
Are you seriously advocating that school libraries and librarians have free reign to determine which books to hold? Because that's how you get Intelligent Design introduced into schools. It's how you perpetuate stereotypes and bigotry.[2].
We don't want individuals exclusively responsible for determining what ideas may or may not be available to people. By having the ruling authority perform the determination, it becomes a collective determination by the taxpayers.
If the taxpayers are unhappy, they express their unhappiness with their vote.
I want to know, after reading your many emotionally charged arguments for why this must be called a "ban", exactly why you feel that the decision on literature suitability be made by selected individuals, and not by a voted-in government.
[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ban
[2] I've been atheist for decades, and I argued multiple times against allowing individuals within schools to determine what goes into the minds of children, because I've seen multiple times that the only end-result of allowing this is that the more passionate (engaged? Ideologues? Insane?) people tend to move into those positions that allow them to propagate their ideology.
Maybe you wouldn't, but be honest with yourself - how many parents want their school to hold and keep pornographic material?
If you want to show your kids sexually graphic images, then sure, fine, have at it. You're complaining that you can't show these images to other people's kids, and you're complaining that those parents are a problem?
And moreso, you can't see it from someone else's perspective who might have a problem with this?
Do you have children?
It doesn’t matter whether I or anyone else has a problem with it. What matters is whether adolescents have a right to read it, which they do. I exercised that right as a student, and I would like other students to be able to do the same.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie%27s_Choice_(novel)
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_According_to_Garp
Click it. See for yourself.
> What matters is whether adolescents have a right to read it, w
They don't have any such right, best that I can understand the legal framework of the western world.
For instance, they don't have the right to have sex with adults. Anyone who claimed that they were being denied such a right, well... do we really need to spell out how those claimants would be treated?
Minors are permitted by responsible adults to read age-appropriate books. We don't say that refusing to put The Anarchist Cookbook up in 4th grade libraries is censorship. At least non-lunatics don't. There are books that they will be allowed to read once legal adults, but that reading earlier might have adverse developmental effects. It's generally agreed that actual pornography is one such category.
I do think it's important to think about the fact that school libraries are where kids tend to access a lot of books (there are of course city libraries, but those places are also being targeted). At least my experience was around that. And many libraries will have a request system, so if a kid is like "I want to read this", then libraries are able to often put in a purchase order, and then make that available for other students.
At least based on my own school experiences, I do think that teachers of a certain ... authoritarian bent would be more than happy to make up a stink of books brought in that would be "banned" from the library if a copy circulating were brought to their attention. Power structures in schools are like that. But that's just conjecture.
I think the general point of the "book ban" terminology is that librarians and schools generally had leeway to bring in more or less anything to the library, and that autonomy is being stripped away for very dark reasons. This is the age of the internet, but from my own childhood, if my school and city library suddenly decided to not provide certain kinds of book, I would just not have access to that at all.
All that to say that you're right on the word in some sense, but it feels fitting to me.
It's now in the public domain, so one could even set up a little publishing company and publish it oneself.
And it's an incredibly awful book, measured to all the 'fame' it holds in certain circles.
I think there is a reason to point this out. Twisting language to drive, in this case a political point, is called propaganda. Calling it a ban implies something more severe than what is happening. Which is content regulation.
For me it was a playboy at 13, for my friends probably the same, but I'm sure the internet bring the age lower,and pack more actions.
When I think about your link of a graphic novel and the first playboy I read, I'm pretty sure any parent would prefer the graphic novel where a poorly done 2 image strip depicts a fellation, and the text besides is... Less than erotic let's say.
And btw: i read 'when I was 5 I killed myself' from Buten at around the same age (maybe 14), as well as flowers for algernon and 1984, I don't think they are age-appropriate books, but they are worth reading when adolescent, because you experience them harder, and formative.
Buten in particular wrote hard books.
Restrictions come in many forms. It used to be marriage is special, then WC symbols are sacred, now we're back to think-of-the-children and their precious little minds. And one particular form is that some books are now banned from school libraries.
I wholeheartedly support the demand for more correct wording, but unfortunately it doesn't really matter.
'Banning all books on Lithuanian language' and 'banning books in Lithuanian language written in Latin alphabet and encouraging transition to books in Lithuanian language written in Cyrillic alphabet' are different things.
Former would have had a goal of discontinuing written Lithuanian language and the latter had a goal of switching Lithuanian language from Latin to Cyrillic alphabet.
Misrepresenting the latter as the former is a lie.
Maybe. Maybe the "reactionary attempt" would have been non-existent if the advocates weren't using sexually graphic material, as linked in the thread above.
Do you also think that teaching of sex ed should include videos from pornhub?
I did. Please don’t call people liars.
It’s a graphic novel depicting a sex act, albeit not particularly erotically.
The entire point of my other comments was that I checked out other books in high school, books that are widely considered excellent and have been for decades, that contained far more explicit “inappropriate” content. The only things different here are the facts that it’s (1) drawn, and (2) concerns LGBTQ identity.
> They don't have any such right, best that I can understand the legal framework of the western world.
We live under a negative legal scheme, not a positive one. I’m not aware of any law that says that children cannot read what they’d like to read, either federal or state.
Obscenity in the US has a distinct legal test[1], one that you and I both understand this book (and Sophie’s Choice) would pass easily. It also doesn’t mention children anywhere.
Finally: nobody in this thread wants children to be hurt, or to be exposed to things that will hurt them. But books, especially ones that are presented and explainable within an educational context, do not hurt children. If anything, adults tend to hurt themselves and others more based on books than children do.
Removing these books from school libraries is done with the understanding that the students won't otherwise be able to access them, i.e. they can't get to a bookstore or public library without their parent and their parent will also refuse to keep it at home. That is a de facto ban.
Now: you might happen to think that it's good that these books can't be accessed, which is something that can (and is) being discussed. But I don't think it's worth mincing words over what's happening, especially given that it's a standard (and non-partisan) use of the phrase "book ban" in the US.
We're also not talking about pornography. None of the material here fails the Miller test.
Nobody is talking about pornography; not everything that contains sex or violence is pornographic in nature (much less obscene).
But regardless you are only reinforcing the point that it was a real ban. The fact that they were banned and the books they didn’t want banned were encouraged really only continues to make my case.
In general it seems completely okay to include the discussion of porn in sex ed, and thus to show actual porn in sex ed.
It might make sense show it separately to boys and girls, mostly because boys are behind in development (on average), so the discussion of it should be different, but also because of the expected questions, etc.
There are many reasons to have no copies of a book, with the simplest being that nobody has requested it yet. Framing that as “banning” is ridiculous, since it falsely implies a doctrinal intent where only ignorance or concern for stated demands exists.
What you said is not curation, it's just managing the stock. Having 57 copies or 56 copies does not substantially alter availavbility. If somebody removed all copies of Atkins books, because "nobody needs them anymore" - then yes, this would be a doctrinal decision. Admittedly, since diets (for some reason) aren't part of culture wars (yet?), not a very controversial or scandalous one, but if some Atkins die-hards occupied a political position, or, in the contrary, Atkins were declared racist for some reason, it could become one.
> There are many reasons to have no copies of a book, with the simplest being that nobody has requested it yet
But how I can "request" a book that isn't in the library? Most libraries I've used do not have this function, not at least any that I could locate as a regular patron. On the contrary, I am reasonably sure most of the books featured on my local library's home page, aren't there because some patron came to them and asked for this specific book, which previously wasn't part of the collection and wouldn't be unless specifically requested (in fact, again, I know no way of doing this). Looking at their published collection developing policy I see (among others):
Provide a diverse and inclusive collection that contains content by and about a wide array of people and cultures
Consider the appropriateness to scope of the collection as it is developed
Content created by and representative of marginalized and underrepresented groups
Attention of critics, reviewers, awards and public
Suitability for intended audience
Literary or stylistic quality
Tell me these are non-doctrinal criteria. Of course they are - one's high quality suitable inclusive book is another's offensive bigoted trash. Again, it's about who has the power to make such decisions. Of course, the librarians, seeing themselves as The Experts (TM) would claim exclusive right to make such decisions on behalf of people paying for their library. But are they entitled to that, absent any control and supervision?
Right now Kazakhstan is transitioning from Cyrillic to Latin alphabet. This year children will be taught only Latin letters and they won't be able to read the texts in Kazakh language written in Cyrillic in the last 80 years.
Do you consider this a problem?
The people complaining about banning are being either intentionally alarmist (if they understand what’s going on) or knee-jerk reactionary. It’s the exact same as when the religious people are mad the state mandates we teach evolution.
School districts and states have to select what kids learn, since we have finite time and resources to reach them, in the same way that libraries have to choose which books occupy finite shelf space.
I don’t agree with a lot of the decisions, but people are acting like it’s some right wing fascism every time they remove Henry Miller a library.