IMO, that’s not book banning, not even close: “Maus” is still available in the school library, and the district will continue to teach its middle school Holocaust unit with a different text. Some school districts are really sensitive to any amount of curse words, nudity or sex in middle school texts, regardless of context. I think it’s silly myself, but I accept that some communities have different sensibilities than mine. I recall reading an article a number of years ago about how the author of “The Martian” agreed to publish a school version of his novel without all the f-bombs because so many middle and high school science educators wrote to him saying they wanted to assign the text but couldn’t because of school policies.
For the record, my children read “Night” for their 8th grade Holocaust unit.
I met a classmate saying this (about dinosaur bones) when I was in elementary school. No one else at the lunch table agreed with her (so I knew even then that it wasn’t my upbringing that was different). I was under the impression she was a member of a particular religious group known to have specific beliefs not held by other Christians. Fast forward to when, as an adult, I became friends with members of this group…none had heard of the dinosaur bones thing. I still don’t quite understand which kinds of Christians hold this belief, apart from young earth literal Bible readers.
Re: banned books and Holocaust - so grateful older kid had a 7th grade curriculum with Maus AND Night AND Diary of Anne Frank, and an elementary school enrichment activity with Number the Stars. Curriculum changed before younger kid got there, but at home we had him read Maus so far, Night will be soon too. We do have deniers living here, some vocal, unknown number silently in agreement. Frustrating. I agree that Gen Xers like us have a shared experience that tends to have shown us both the futility and stupidity of banning books (like others on the thread, I remember books like Forever making the rounds irrespective of family beliefs…); however as mentioned upthread, we are not the voting majority across the country, and folks older and younger than us seem to have more extreme views on this.
Just came across this article in my google feed about teachers leaving the field. It didn’t surprise me. The comments were rather interesting to read. It’s no surprise to me that teachers are leaving if they have better options out there.
It’s continued my pondering of what I want to do when I grow up… but I don’t know that full time anywhere is it. I’ve grown fond of being south during February. (Even my teaching was part time, with full time constrained to first semester or up to Jan 31st in my latter years.)
The Russian ban was apparently due to the law that banned public display of Nazi insignia… there is a swastika on the cover of the book, so off the shelves it went. The book almost got banned in Germany for the same reason; the author was able to convince the authorities that it was not Nazi propaganda. He apparently felt very strongly about keeping the cover as he designed it. Here are the author’s thoughts about these bans.
Banning books is stupid. Parents who are upset about certain books being available in the local public library are welcome to not use the library.
Parents who are upset about their local public school’s curriculum are welcome to home school their children, pay for the kids to attend private school, or enroll their kids in a charter school.
We put our kids in a charter school system. It’s worked out much better for us than the local public school options.
Once upon a time, Mark Twain books were considered controversial and were banned. Critical thinking & analysis of literature is an important skill. Sometimes, learning actually does happen when one reads something that is different than what you are used to.
Back in the stone ages, the daughter of one of my coworkers was in the same elementary school class as my little kid. One day, this coworker burst into my cube with her eyes as big as saucers, “Are you aware that our daughters’ teacher is reading an anti-Christian book about witchcraft to the class? Horrible! I’m going to start a petition to get this nipped in the bud!” Guess what the book was all about? Needless to say, the petition did not get any traction.
Yes, I was eagerly scanning the list for such fare. Close, but no cigar with “systemic bias”. If it had been “systematic bias”, then good luck getting through chapter 8 of intermediate statistics in WI.
The most interesting word on the list from the standpoint of unintended consequences might be “woke”. Lately a catch-all staple of conservative media, I really don’t see how they could last five minutes without an uttereance, i.e. it’s become a term used mostly by anti-wokers.
I agree with what some have pointed out in this thread regarding nuance and detail. It’s important to move past the headlines regarding these matters. Characterizations from one camp or another often broad-brush what is actually being proposed (or objected to) in particular instances.
I’ve noticed that “intersectionality” is a current buzzword in academia. I’ve seen several papers with the word in the title, I think regarding mostly social issues. I have to admit, that I told my husband the word annoyed me because I hate jargon and buzzwords.
Re: the Maus controversy, Professor Balazs expresses this much better than I did, or ever could.
An excerpt:
“I’m a writer. I’m an English Professor. I’m a comic-book lover. I’m a Jew and a second-generation Holocaust survivor. I understand perfectly why Maus is great. It was important in my life. It helped me to understand my father, who was a lot like Spiegelman’s. That doesn’t mean I get to insist that every county in the country include the book in their eighth-grade Holocaust program. I don’t know the kids in McMinn County, but I doubt they’ll become Nazis because they didn’t get to read Maus until ninth grade. Nor will they become degenerates if they read it in seventh grade. But it’s not my call (or yours) unless you live in that county, and it’s certainly not antisemitic or book-burning to replace one Holocaust text with another. Even on International Holocaust Day. Even if it’s Maus .”
Intersectionality has been a widely accepted analytical framework since the 1980s. It’s not jargon. It’s simply the intersection of race, gender, sexual preference, etc. For example, black women experience discrimination differently than black men or white women.
“In recent years, intersectionality has been one of the fastest traveling concepts which has cut across geographical and academic borders, and has become transplanted in other intellectual environments. Currently it is claimed to provide a central paradigm in feminist theory (Geerts and Van der Tuin, 2013) and one of the most important contributions made to social theory by women’s studies (McCall, 2005). In any case, it has become a “buzzword” (Davis, 2011) and “intersectional studies” appears to be a burgeoning interdisciplinary research field in its own right (Cho et al., 2013). Moreover, its connection to postmodern imagination is obvious; “intersectionalization” is regarded as one of postmodernity’s constitutive dimensions (Susen, 2015: 220): in a postmodern world, social reality is taken to be intersectionally structured.
By now “intersectionality” has also pushed its way to research areas outside its feminist cradle, including areas that connect with the study of children, such as disability studies (e.g. Goodley, 2013), race studies (e.g. Bhopal and Preston, 2011), and human rights studies (e.g. Taefi, 2009). In social studies of childhood, it seems, the notion has not yet taken root.”
Found this in an academic paper. Like I mentioned, I’ve seen it used in other academic areas where it just means relationship or correlation. (I’m a forester). But I’m sure the original definition is what is offensive to conservatives.
Parents can control what THEIR children and ONLY THEIR children read. If parents don’t want to read their kids to read certain books, its up to them to keep on top of that. Not the teachers, the school, other parents, etc. The library should not stop having Harry Potter (or whatever novel) available to check out just because some parents don’t want their kids reading it. If parents don’t want their kids reading certain books, then they need to step up and tell their kids what they are and aren’t allowed to read. If their kid brings home a book they aren’t allowed to be reading, the parents can take it away and return it to the library, friend, etc… No need to get all riled up and ban stuff.
Needless to say, the petition did not get any traction.