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Comment by throwaway0a5e | Hacker News Reader

Per the linked[1] meeting minutes that it seems maybe three people in these comments read they don't really care about the book or it's message. They're quibbling about whether or not they can find an equivalent meaning book for teaching the same lessons that uses less foul language.

This is the most dry and mundane "book banning" I have ever heard of.

Furthermore, the minutes don't say anything about keeping it out of the school library which directly conflicts with what TFA alleges.

[1] https://core-docs.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/asset/uploaded_...

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I feel you’re dramatically underselling it - the book has also (reportedly; edit may have not been) been banned from the school libraries.

But furthermore, the reasons given strike me as extremely silly - I can’t remember any even mildly titillating nudity in Maus - the only nudity I can recall are piles of stripped corpses. And the idea that the phrase “god damn” is somehow inappropriate when coming from the testimony of a survivor of mass slaughter strikes me as bizarre. This sort of moralistic kneejerking is dangerous - something superficially objectionable can be found in a great many works of key significance. The girl at the napalm bombing of Trang Bang village is full frontal nudity - should we erase that powerful image from anything our children might learn? Sometimes nudity and profanity are simply a matter of what happened, and exorcising them means teaching a watered down version of the truth.

Regardless, it's categorically different than trying to ban the book for its subject matter. They literally spend a couple pages of meeting minutes arguing about whether suitable replacements with less vulgarity can be found, clearly they take no issues with teaching the holocaust.

This is a bunch of self important educators banning a book over stuff that doesn't matter, not a bunch of ideologues banning a book because they don't like the message as one would think based on TFA and most of the comments in here.

Maus is an incredible book. Banning such a deeply engaging depiction of the holocaust because it contains the word "damn" is pearl-clutching to the point of self-parody. It is difficult to imagine another book that could hold the attention of 8th-graders anywhere close to as tightly as this one. I've seen someone read it cover to cover in the middle of a party because someone said "You should check out this book."

Maybe the board really is ignorant of it content and only exist to quibble. If they are actually motivated to keep their kids ignorant, there is no way in hell they are going to say so in public! Either way, they are doing their kids a huge disservice.

And, regardless of intentions, this is a poster-child example of dubious book-banning. You might as well re-write '1984' because you think kids can't handle mean characters. Or, similarly: https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/26/media/china-fight-club-ending...

Ironically, the ending of the Chinese version of Fight Club is closer to the book's ending than the original movie:

https://www.tmz.com/2022/01/26/chuck-palahniuk-not-mad-china...

A book (or movie, or album) can be incredible and still not be appropriate for some levels of maturity. The board didn't argue about the subject matter, quite the opposite. The concern was specific content in the book that violated board policies.

This is a very different story than most people here are making it out to be.

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