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Comment by lr4444lr | Hacker News Reader

The books being on the school library or on classroom shelves connotes that the educational custodians of our children, who have literal and legal responsibility for their safety and well being on multiple levels, have approved them. Not so much to promote every idea they contain, but at least that they express things in a way that is psychologically appropriate for kids at their level of development.

What kinds of ideas cross this line of appropriateness you or I may disagree on, but the point is that it exists in a school setting, which the article seems to pretty much miss altogether.

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From the Texas legislator's proposed list of banned books, I fail to see why books such as "Bioethics Beyond the Headlines" or "V for Vendetta" should be banned. Indeed, it does concern me that much of the novels are fictional works portraying the LGBT experience. I can't imagine how alienating it must be to students of that group.

As an aside, I find it amusing that Shakespeare is never banned on the grounds of sexual content. Perhaps people don't pay attention in English class?

|Perhaps people don't pay attention in English class?|

Funny enough, I always assumed this same thing of the people who were trying to get Mark Twain books banned for the misuse of language =)

People who don't read books are always the ones who are the most afraid of the ideas contained within them, I suppose.

Mark Twain shall definitely be banned. We don't need satire in school. And no books with racism. We have enough of the later.

Some parts of Shakespeare are so wordy that the sexual aspect isn't obvious enough to notice without advanced literary education, but there certainly used to be sanitized versions for school students that omitted more explicit passages on booze, lechery and so on.

Most are couched in the slang of Shakespeare's time, an effective filter. How many high schoolers get the Nurse's ribald joke about the very young Juliet learning to "fall backwards" once she had grown older? I didn't, not at all sure our teacher got the meaning either, or if she did, then chose not to explain it ... Check out the Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet to see it played well.

Setting: Catholic high school, late 80s. Freshman English class.

We were reading out loud in class the prologue for Romeo and Juliet... and the teacher would occasionally pause the reading to explain the text.

A more full account of the events is in https://everything2.com/user/m_turner/writeups/Shakespearean... which I wrote when it was closer to the present and more fresh in my mind.

So yes, at least one class of Generation X high school students got every joke in Romeo and Juliet.

Miss P. was a rare sort of scholar indeed to be found at the 9th grade level.

> ... wrote when it was closer to the present and more fresh in my mind.

The thought came to me -- being now at an age a few years greater than yours -- that my own collection of memories on similar events has been fading, and those from youth of course being irreplaceable.

Solution: Write them down, only those I'd want to savor again in years ahead. In the form of notes, at least. The act of writing slowly -- over the course of nearly a year now -- puts a light on others in the dusty attic.

Next step is to work up the more amusing and less private of them into anecdotes, for sharing with trusted friends.

Everything2 is an interesting (to me) entry in the Web 2.0 landscape and early crowdsourcing. The original implementation of it was in '98 - and its still around. It doesn't quite have the same rate of growth of content as it did back when I was writing - but its still there. Some of the people on there later went on to become professional writers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything2

> According to E2's "Site Trajectory", traffic has dropped from 9976 new write-ups created in the month of August 2000, down to 93 new write-ups in February 2017.

https://everything2.com/node/superdoc/Site+Trajectory and https://everything2.com/node/superdoc/Site+Trajectory+2

(It looks like its down to a small core of people)

The key is to record it somewhere. Be it Storycorps ( https://www.npr.org/series/4516989/storycorps ) or a second brain ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29188418 ). Spin up a Wordpress blog and write there (aside, one of my projects is digging through the files from a hard drive of a laptop a bit ago where I wrote using Apple's blogging / web hosting software.

Writing without care of who (if anyone) reads it - for the sheer sake of writing - feels like a dying art form at times.

To be clear, we’re talking about books that have graphic images of sex. They wouldn’t be appropriate even if they involved straight sex. Don’t use LGBT acceptance to promote sexualization of minors.

This is an easy excuse but one I find hard to believe as being at all legitimate. Out of all the things that lead to promoting sexualization of minors I highly doubt that anyone is going to look back on their chidlhood and blame a book. I also can't help but wonder if I was somehow super sexualized as a high schooler or not. Comments like this and people talking about banning books for high schoolers makes me wonder if somehow I'm the freak. Everyone I knew when I was that age had graphic (misconception filled) images of sex already, actual pornography was pretty easy to access. I almost wish I had instead gotten this from a book, maybe there would've been less damaging misconceptions.

That said, I've been trying to find an example of a book in the "book ban" discussion that contains problematic graphic sex content. I've tried looking and so far everything has turned up pretty empty.

Blue state “book ban”: https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/school-system...

Nobody thinks the book causes that sexualization. The point is that it’s an implicit sanction from parental and teacher authority.

I fail to see the "graphic sex" in the aforementioned works, or others listed like "The Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine." I'll take your word that there are books on the list with "graphic sex," but it's insulting to assume children cannot comprehend such topics.

Not long ago, I was 13. At that age, I read books like Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle, and A Clockwork Orange. The very fact I now have to type that I knew that sex was a natural part of life perhaps speaks to the deterioration of our educational standards. Regardless, even I understood then that the sexual perversion of those works weren't their raison d'étre. I'm grateful I had an English teacher who guided me in that respect. Likewise, I earnestly hope others have similar instructors, who don't define a work by its depictions of acts of reality, however sordid they may be.

I, for one, was too busy hanging my bugle in it's invisible baldric during high school English. Or making the beast with two backs.

Oh, wait.

We want the kids to use their freedom and free will, and to think for themselves - even or especially when it challenges the adults - and to learn how to do that. It's an essential skill to a democracy (and a free market), and to teach them freedom for all by giving them freedom, instead of teaching them that people should be sheparded. There are limits to what we want middle schoolers exposed to, but I think my approach is different than what you describe.

> We want the kids to use their freedom and free will, and to think for themselves

Says who? The cultures who focus on “freedom” for kids are literally being replaced by the ones that socialize their kids to do what they’re supposed to do.

What 'cultures' are you talking about? By far the most successful in human history have been modern democratic cultures which, very broadly speaking, focus on freedom.

But regardless, the kids should grow into free adults. It's self-evident, as Jefferson said and as much of the world has held to be true for centuries now (again to great success). Are you volunteering to give up your freedom? Then I'll take you up on that and say you may not post such comments (in case anyone is confused, I'm not actually telling the parent what to do).

> What 'cultures' are you talking about? By far the most successful in human history have been modern democratic cultures which, very broadly speaking, focus on freedom.

Not for kids, which is what we’re talking about here. Read Roald Dahl’s books about British education. That’s the culture that built the greatest empire in history.

“Freedom” for kids, as opposed to rigid socialization, is a mid-20th century detour. And the cultures that practice it, mainly north Americans and Europeans, are either in decline or are being replaced from the inside by immigrants from cultures that don’t.

>> Read Roald Dahl’s books about British education.

Could you please recommend a specific book for those of us who are interested?

His autobiography is great. Boy.

> That’s the culture that built the greatest empire in history.

Which created the 3rd world via colonialism. For reference the Mughal empire that generated 25% of the worlds GDP, or any of the great Chinese empires definitely didn't involve colonialism, famines and death and the creation of the poorest colonial economies in the world to demonstrate their greatness.

> Which created the 3rd world via colonialism. For reference the Mughal empire that generated 25% of the worlds GDP

C’mon, you know why people formulate this point like that, and not like, “Mughal empire GDP decreased 50% after colonialism.”

Between 1000 AD and 1600 AD, British GDP per capita doubled. During that time, Indian GDP per capita increased only 20%. Before European contact, India, China, etc., were stuck at pre-industrial revolution levels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(P...

By the time the Brits got there, Indian GDP per capita was only half as much as Britain’s. The odds that India would have entered an industrial revolution around that same time after centuries of being stuck in the same place is low.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(P...

Your own links show Mughal GDP per capita at 700$+ in 1600, china at 800$+, a level that wasn't approached by UK until late 1800s and most of Europe until 1900s.

Britain started dominating India in the 1700s and got almost complete domination by 1819 by finishing off the last Indian hold out - the maratha kingdom.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Anglo-Maratha_War

India's economic decline coincides with colonialism and does not precede it, the opposite of what you suggest.

If you are going to disagree with virtually every economist that colonialism destroyed the economies of virtually every colony while siphoning off a lot of wealth to Europe, you will have to do better than post links that contradict your own statements.

By any dimension of comparison the Mughal and contemporaneous Chinese empires were superior to any colonial empires that followed - be it economic output, lack of hunger and famine, or colonial deindustrialization. The British empire was one of the largest setbacks to World GDP ever, as demonstrated by the information you yourself posted.

> Your own links show Mughal GDP per capita at 700$+ in 1600, china at 800$+, a level that wasn't approached by UK until late 1800s and most of Europe until 1900s.

Which one are you looking at? I’m looking at the 1–2008 AD chart, which shows Britain at 975 in 1600 and India and China at 550 and 600.

India and China were clearly stalled at a pre-industrial level of development before the British came, while the British were on a sharp upward trajectory.

You’re also overlooking the counterfactual. What would’ve been India’s level of development if the British had never went there? It might still be pre-industrial.

> We want the kids to use their freedom and free will, and to think for themselves - even or especially when it challenges the adults - and to learn how to do that.

No, history has shown that thinking is dangerous. We shall avoid that. Thanks to Netflix and Spotify the mind of the child can be occupied 24h a day. The last thing a child shall do is to challenge the establishment.

> It's an essential skill to a democracy (and a free market), and to teach them freedom for all by giving them freedom, instead of teaching them that people should be sheparded.

And who will collect our data then ? Who will fight the wars to give to reach people more ?

> There are limits to what we want middle schoolers exposed to, but I think my approach is different than what you describe.

There are no limits. Every limit can be achieved and left behind. The purpose of educational system is to destroy the mind of the child so he accepts what is given to him and never asks questions. And, when he asks questions only stupid questions are allowed. No "why"s and no critique.

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be where people are drawing the line lately, especially in "conservative" areas.

It's hard to argue there's anything but racism (or xenophobia) going on when they ban a book such as A Big Mooncake for Little Star.[0]

[0] https://twitter.com/pacylin/status/1440318317806317569

Homophobia and transphobia too.

https://ncac.org/resource/lgbtq-book-bans-and-challenges

https://wgntv.com/news/downers-grove-parents-students-clash-...

> but at least that they express things in a way that is psychologically appropriate for kids at their level of development

Frankly, we have little real idea what's psychologically appropriate for kids. Consider that over 65% of papers in psychology fail replication. I would be very skeptical of anyone claiming they know what's psychologically good for anyone.

You're probably right, but nonetheless, the original commenter's point stands about the state having literal and legal responsibility for peoples children. It makes sense to be conservative in deciding what material to put in the school library.

""In carrying out searches and other disciplinary functions pursuant to such policies, school officials act as representatives of the State, not merely as surrogates for the parents, and they cannot claim the parents' immunity from the strictures of the Fourth Amendment."" (NJ v TLO)

Meaning: schools have the right (and responsibility) to take steps necessary for the safety of children, but those rights are rather limited compared to those of parents, because they must also satisfy the limits set by constitution for all acts of the state and its representative. Banning books is an excellent example since it is almost the textbook definition of a restriction of free speech at the same time as having exceptionally weak arguments for its necessity, ostensibly to prevent psychological harms, which is a dubious concept to begin with.

> It makes sense to be conservative in deciding what material to put in the school library.

It really doesn't. School is one of the best places we can have people encounter challenging idea and works for the first time. If we coddle people on school and then they are exposed to those ideas on their own (which they will be) then they have fewer resources to aid in processing those ideas and are more likely to end up confused and misinformed.

That’s a good formula for college, once children have become legal adults and are responsible for themselves. While they’re children, it’s up to the parents to expose them to the world.

Most people don't go to college and even if they did, you need to start teaching these cognitive skills much earlier.

Yes and no. I would argue it's even more important to maintain a variety of voices in repressive environments like private religious schools and libraries, especially where queer kids (as one of many examples) there may not have any access to stories reflecting their own experiences. Being that repressed is far more harmful than anything fiction can do, and I speak as that literal example there.

I owe my entire current mentality to the books and literature I found on my own beyond the parent's wishes. They're good people in many ways, but having that sanctum to explore other experiences was critical.

> It makes sense to be conservative in deciding what material to put in the school library.

Does it? Is there actual evidence of harm from having these materials available, or is this really just pearl clutching?

With that attitude, you might as well do away with teacher certification, mandatory training, and just give the job to anyone who passes a background check.

Not quite. There's no evidence that the training does anything so we can do away with that[1]. Set a subject matter test, hire the people who do best on the test and have them teach it. Primary school could be more obviously day care to its great improvement, like at Sudbury or deomcratic schools, or at Summerhill, where the students can do whatever they want as long as they're safe and stay on school grounds.

[1]It's easier to pick a good teacher than to train one: Familiar and new results on the correlates of teacher effectiveness

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02727...

Research highlights ▶ Majoring in education is not associated with teacher effectiveness. ▶ University attended for college is not associated with teacher effectiveness. ▶ Acquiring a master's degree is not associated with teacher effectiveness. ▶ Teachers become more effective with a few years of teaching experience. ▶ Teachers may become less effective later in their careers.

> Frankly, we have little real idea what's psychologically appropriate for kids.

You must be joking. Look at parental guidance for movies and games for example. Violence is good and appropriate. Just show no blood. ( Harry Potter). Sex is not good except when in Disney movies and preferably between a prince and a princess. Scenes of normal life are borring just like story costruction. Children must learn that they have to reach the goals as fast as possible, no matter what means are employed. And did i mention violence ? Maybe they don't have it at home but it must be introduced somehow in their lifes. They also need to speak more hysterical. TV and politics have shown that if you speak in normal tone noone will listen to you.

> What kinds of ideas cross this line of appropriateness you or I may disagree on, but the point is that it exists in a school setting, which the article seems to pretty much miss altogether.

I doubt it. If you consider censorship bad then different justifications for it all add up to [justifications for banning books which can be repurposed as needed].

Reading Clive Barker, Stephen King and history books did me no harm as a pre-teen and I see no reason to believe reading more graphic things would do harm either. Plenty of people reject your argument as nonsense.

I don't believe the article is denying the schools' right and responsibilities in protecting children from harm. It is just assuming as much as commonly accepted.

Then, it does the same with regards to the "harmfulness" of these books. Or, more specifically, it names some books (Beloved etc) as well as concepts (health education) in a way that assumes its audience will tend to agree that these aren't harmful to children.

That it doesn't necessarily extend that belief to all books is clear from the distinction it makes when it separates some books from others that have been "caught up in this net [such as] books about health education, teen pregnancy, civics, philosophy, religion,..."

Sorry to highjack an unrelated comment but your previous one to Scott Adams was to the wrong Scott Adams. You thought he was the author of Dilbert and the one doing the AMA is actually a programmer of classic text adventure games. I couldn’t reply there because that comment was flagged/dead.

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