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Comment by 99_00 | Hacker News Reader

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Does the algorithm ban the sex ed textbooks, or does the school only have the abstinence only books?

Also, the list of books that are actually banned is quite eye opening:

    Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan

    Sold by Patricia McCormick

    A Court of Mist and Fury (series) by Sarah J. Maas

    Monday's Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson

    Tricks by Ellen Hopkins

    Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

    The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

    Beloved by Toni Morrison

    Looking for Alaska by John Green

    The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

    Crank by Ellen Hopkins

    Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

    The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

    An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

    The Color Purple by Alice Walker

    Feed by M.T. Anderson

    Friday Night Lights by Buzz Bissinger

    Gossip Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar

    I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

I'm a bit surprised that Ulysses by James Joyce didn't make the list, but maybe the AI couldn't get through it either.

I'm pretty skeptical of these so-called "book ban" laws, but it's not obvious to me that these books are definitively "age appropriate" for K-6 (which seems to be your implication).

Nobody in K-6 is reading The Handmaid's Tale anyway. These book bans are about High School libraries, at least according to the linked law in the article[1]. The law claims it applies to all "publicly funded schools".

[1]https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/publications/LGE/90/SF496.pd...

I would’ve. I was deep into Stephen King at that age.

Ah, my bad. The link I saw said K-6.

You're misreading the text. The K-6 references are about banning teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity. The parts about "Age appropriate books" are specifically for all school levels K-12 (scroll down in the statute to find the twelfth grade reference). I guarantee you that these books were not on the shelves in K-6 libraries.

Ah, that must be it. Thanks for the correction.

Yeah, because there's a difference between pornography and "sex acts." Plenty of YA novels have sex acts in them, because children need to have AT LEAST an academic understanding of the process and social context around it.

To say otherwise invites teenage pregnancy, which unlike moral outrage (which by its very nature is not evidence supported), causes actual serious consequences in the lives of innocent people.

It's especially funny because the places which are enacting reactionary policies like this one are also the ones that don't offer sex-ed :(

Or they offer provably inferior abstinence only education

It's not inferior if your goal is a large amount of lower class babies growing up with few prospects outside of the military and retail jobs for the rest of their lives.

> Seems like a rational use of technology to ensure compliance with a rational public policy

Seems like a gross overreach of the morality police continuing to press nonsense issues to rile up their voting base, brought to you by exactly the people you'd think would do such a thing.

Your comment is ironic considering that the article is designed to rile up exactly the other side.

Age inappropriate according to whom? I can think of all sorts of stuff that’s objectionable in places like Florida but perfectly fine elsewhere. Example: a story with a gay character might flip out Ron Desantis but not raise an eyebrow in Berkeley.

No one wants age inappropriate stuff. We just have some wildly different ideas of what that means.

>I can think of all sorts of stuff that’s objectionable in places like Florida but perfectly fine elsewhere

Can you name a tittle that Florida has removed from public schools but you feel is appropriate?

The ABC's of Black History was removed from elementary schools and only allowed in middle schools in Miami-Dade.

What is the reason it was removed, and what issue do you have with that reason?

I listed a title, which is what you asked for. I’m not here to lay out the entire case. Rest assured, it is easily searchable if you are so inclined. If not, that’s fine too. Enjoy your night.

I don't know if you've read the book or not, or heard the arguments against it, but your response sounds exactly like the response someone would give if they only know the title of the book and that others have defended it, but is totally unfamiliar with the content.

Here's a whole list of 'em: https://pen.org/banned-books-florida/

There are the usual ones like "My Two Dads and Me" and "My Two Moms and Me". "The Berenstain Bears and the Big Question", LOL? "Hachiko: The True Story of a Loyal Dog", WTF. "Henry Aaron’s Dream", for people who find baseball offensive, I guess. "The Life of Rosa Parks". "Thank You, Jackie Robinson"; more baseball hate. "Unstoppable: How Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team Defeated Army" shows some people hate football, too.

Each of those is appropriate for kids, and I'd love to hear specific reasons why someone believes one isn't.

>I'd love to hear specific reasons why someone believes one isn't.

How can you disagree with the reasons those books were removed when you admit you don't know the reason.

It’s on the people banning a Rosa Parks story to provide the extraordinary evidence that it was deserved.

They obviously have reasons. Without looking at the book, we can't say if it should be in schools or shouldn't. When explaining Racism to Grade 2 students great care must be taken. Imagine being the only black kid in all white classroom. You know you look different. Everyone does, but no one thinks anything of it. And then they tell you that you are systematically oppressed, and that your race, not your character, is the characteristic that will define your life experience. Good Luck kid!

Also, we don't see the list of other civil right books that may be in classrooms.

But the fact that "The Berenstain Bears and the Big Question", a book about God, was rejected suggests that this isn't some conservative conspiracy.

In fact, it sounds like a moral panic from the left.

The problem is the gay character is at a strip show, and nobody in Berkeley is batting an eye at young kids being around as men get money shoved in their under garments at a drag show

That’s idiotic. You believed the lie.

These things can be weaponized by changing the definitions so I'm not as inclined to trust a model that could be trained by those with ulterior motives. But to your question: There were books available to me in late grade school and middle school that had sexual acts and they're (rightfully in my opinion) considered classics or at least important reading. Some parents might consider those inappropriate and if they had their way I might not have been exposed to those works until much later when their impact would have been vastly decreased.

This idea that sex or sexual acts are inherently "bad" is puritanical thinking and doesn't really serve anyone's interests who has to participate in the real world where sex is part of the fabric of our existence. If parents want to impose a puritanical mindset on to their children that's their business and maybe a compromise is that they should be able to exclude their kids from reading certain material just like they can excuse them from learning sex ed.

No one said sex is "bad".

Support for explicit sexual content in public schools is the minority opinion. As such, it is up to supporters to present the case for it's benefits, and the responsibility of parents who hold those views to expose their children to descriptions and depictions of sexual acts.

Support for sexual content in public schools K-6, perhaps. But these bans apply to high school as well.

I'm not going to dance this dance with you though. We both know that there are ulterior motives here that extend well beyond "sexual acts" and are absolutely about shaming or hiding the existence of homosexuals, trans people, etc. from teenagers for as long as possible. You're arguing from the position of their barely disguised pretense and literally no one actually believes that.

Heterosexual sex acts in books are allowed?

I'm not playing this obnoxious game where we all pretend that this pretense is real. I'm not even sure what is gained from playing these games outside of a cable news segment where you're obfuscating things to confuse stupid people. And besides, this was covered in my first comment anyway.

Sex education happens in 6th grade. Unless you’ve been living under a rock most kids already know what sex is 6th grade onwards if not earlier.

These bans are usually in junior high and high school libraries. Even in public libraries, these books are not shelved in the childrens' section. This is not about six year olds being confronted with pornography, but rather critically acclaimed novels that reflect the actual lives of sixteen year olds. These bans do nothing to protect children. They only remove literature from school libraries.

Lotta kids only find out what they’ve experienced is sex abuse by reading a description of it in a book.

What’s appropriate is cultural and personal, should be decided by some matrix of parents, child themselves, and educators who know them personally.

Trying to universalize mushy concepts like “age appropriate” will end with the removal of potentially anything. Which is exactly the point. I’m sure the architects of this are very grateful for your assistance in normalizing it.

> Are there people who support age inappropriate books, or books with descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act in classrooms and school libraries?

yeah sex scenes are fine, unless we are talking erotica kind of writing (which isn't in school programs), so you're getting people to grow into normal, healthy adults and not late-blooming porn-binging incel mass shooters

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