# This kid is a hero.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [September 1, 2009, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499 "2009-09-01T15:52:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Agent\_Foxtrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agent_Foxtrot)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2009, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499/1 "2009-09-01T15:52:33Z")
[I StumbledUpon this.](http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AoCt3NHGwM8BxD2H1669H3_ty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20090305151758AA7dWwd)
What an amazing kid. It’s because of people like him that we’re not permanently living in the Dark Ages.
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### Author:  [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2009, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499/2 "2009-09-01T15:54:13Z")
I saw this a while ago. Best part: “Twilight is banned also, but I don’t want that polluting my library.”
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### Author:  [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2009, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499/3 "2009-09-01T15:55:10Z")
What kind of educator bans books? I know, I know, lots do, but they shouldn’t.
Loved the Twilight quote.
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### Author:  [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2009, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499/4 "2009-09-01T16:01:38Z")
Wow… I can sorta understand why they don’t like some of the books, but _Mort_? The Canterbury Tales?
I’m not the kind of person who goes around asking if every internet story is real, but… is it?
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### Author:  [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2009, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499/5 "2009-09-01T16:04:07Z")
The thing that makes me wonder if it’s true is do high schoolers read that much? I remember being in the distinct minority as a voracious reader. But if someone had “contraband books,” maybe that would have made it more fun.
ETA: What’s wrong with asking about the truth of every Internet story? It seems fitting on a site like this.
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### Author:  [@Hal\_Briston](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hal_Briston)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2009, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499/6 "2009-09-01T16:05:21Z")
Wait…_Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy_ is a banned book?
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### Author:  [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2009, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499/7 "2009-09-01T16:39:58Z")
> [@garygnu](#):
>
> I saw this a while ago. Best part: “Twilight is banned also, but I don’t want that polluting my library.”
One would have hoped that the student would see in this the same urge that drove the school to do what it did. Libraries have to be choosy, to be sure, but I prefer my librarians to base their decisions on usage patterns and borrowing statistics, not value-laden judgments of “pollution.”
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### Author:  [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2009, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499/8 "2009-09-01T16:40:48Z")
I don’t know if I buy his explanation - I went to a reasonably strict Catholic high school, and we read a bunch of the books on his list **in class** :
Canterbury Tales
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Candide
Divine Comedy
Connecticut Yankee
Slaughterhouse 5
Dorian Gray
Lord of the Flies
Catcher in the Rye
And the Catholic church has stated that evolution is probably correct, so I don’t know why Evolution of Man would be banned in his school. Either he’s in some Mel Gibsonish crazy Vatican II rejecting sect, or there’s something he’s not telling.
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### Author:  [@Reno\_Nevada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reno_Nevada)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2009, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499/9 "2009-09-01T16:44:12Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#):
>
> One would have hoped that the student would see in this the same urge that drove the school to do what it did. Libraries have to be choosy, to be sure, but I prefer my librarians to base their decisions on usage patterns and borrowing statistics, not value-laden judgments of “pollution.”
Actually, he/she only chose “about half” of the books on the list, based on “literary quality.” This is a respectable reason to select books for a library.
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### Author:  [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2009, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499/10 "2009-09-01T16:45:25Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#):
>
> One would have hoped that the student would see in this the same urge that drove the school to do what it did. Libraries have to be choosy, to be sure, but I prefer my librarians to base their decisions on usage patterns and borrowing statistics, not value-laden judgments of “pollution.”
But it’s not like this is a real library. It’s just him providing stuff out of a locker. He has very limited space–why not just provide the stuff that he thinks is good? The students do have other options.
I’m also having a hard time seeing why they’re embarrassed to get the books from bookstores or even the public library. It’s not like these books seem all that racy. Slaughterhouse Five? Animal Farm?
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### Author:  [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2009, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499/11 "2009-09-01T16:47:34Z")
Does their town not have a public library?
What happened to the good old days when kids sold pot out of their lockers?
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### Author:  [@Agent\_Foxtrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agent_Foxtrot)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2009, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499/12 "2009-09-01T16:51:10Z")
After years of listening to fundie bantering, you guys are still surprised at some of the bannings? Allow me to teach you, Grasshopper. 😛
**Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy** : Contains aliens. Aliens don’t exist because God only created one planet capable of sustaining Man. Furthermore, aliens are incapable of receiving God’s love because they haven’t heard the Good News. Denies the existence of a geocentric universe.
**The Canterbury Tales** : Holds pages and pages of lies about sex in the 14th Century. Everyone knows that premarital sex, promiscuity, farting, and flirtatious, sexually liberated women didn’t exist until the godless hippies.
**Animal Farm** : Talking animals? Absurd as female car mechanics. Unrepentantly asserts that the Ten Commandments aren’t perfect.
**Mort** : The power over souls belongs to God and God alone. Contains witchcraft.
**Candide** : States that the best of all possible worlds doesn’t necessarily include God.
**The Holy Qu’ran** : And just why would you want to read that?
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### Author:  [@Labrador\_Deceiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labrador_Deceiver)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2009, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499/13 "2009-09-01T16:53:15Z")
> [@msmith537](#):
>
> Does their town not have a public library?
[QUOTE=kid from the article]
Oh, and since you’re probably wondering “Why can’t you just go to a local library and check out the books?”
[/quote]
Has anyone verified if this story is actually true? I’m not sure if that’s possible, but it would be nice to know.
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### Author:  [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2009, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499/14 "2009-09-01T16:54:30Z")
> [@msmith537](#):
>
> Does their town not have a public library?
>
> What happened to the good old days when kids sold pot out of their lockers?
Well, he does say:
> [@](#):
>
> Oh, and since you’re probably wondering “Why can’t you just go to a local library and check out the books?” most of the kids are too chicken or their parents won’t let them but the books.
But if they can go to the school library or this fake locker library, I don’t see why going to the public library is so scary. Granted, mine was right across the street from the school.
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### Author:  [@Labrador\_Deceiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labrador_Deceiver)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2009, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499/15 "2009-09-01T16:54:52Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#):
>
> I’m also having a hard time seeing why they’re embarrassed to get the books from bookstores or even the public library. It’s not like these books seem all that racy. Slaughterhouse Five? Animal Farm?
That sounded weird to me, as well. Of course, the kids have never read most of these books & have no real way of knowing why they were banned.
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### Author:  [@Agent\_Foxtrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agent_Foxtrot)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2009, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499/16 "2009-09-01T17:03:03Z")
Maybe the bannings are simply a super-secret liberal plot to get kids to read. I haven’t gotten the memo, though… have any of you?
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### Author:  [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2009, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499/17 "2009-09-01T17:14:03Z")
> [@Agent\_Foxtrot](#):
>
> Maybe the bannings are simply a super-secret liberal plot to get kids to read. I haven’t gotten the memo, though… have any of you?
I was just thinking the same thing. Back in the Stone Age, when I was in high school Spanish class, we read \*El Sombrero de Tres Picos(The Three Cornerd Hat). \*Our cheap highschool edition, in the preface, said that three short portions had been excised to “make it more suitable for high school aged students)”
First thing I did was go to the public library, in the foreign language section, to find out what I was missing. I was disappointed, those passages were still, even to my then-prissy self, rather tame.
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2009, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499/18 "2009-09-01T17:18:24Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#):
>
> The thing that makes me wonder if it’s true is do high schoolers read that much? I remember being in the distinct minority as a voracious reader. But if someone had “contraband books,” maybe that would have made it more fun.
Shrug, I used to trade books with half a dozen of my classmates… Giovanni Guareschi’s Little World for Lope plays for Zane Grey westerns…
Two of us could go through two books a day, the rest were at more normal speeds, but we all would have read anything so long as it wasn’t compulsory reading (for some reason, they never pick an author’s best books for Lit).
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### Author:  [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2009, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499/19 "2009-09-01T17:28:12Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#):
>
> I don’t know if I buy his explanation - I went to a reasonably strict Catholic high school, and we read a bunch of the books on his list **in class** :
>
> And the Catholic church has stated that evolution is probably correct, so I don’t know why Evolution of Man would be banned in his school. Either he’s in some Mel Gibsonish crazy Vatican II rejecting sect, or there’s something he’s not telling.
Yup - the same warning bells went off for me when I read this. I don’t buy it.
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### Author:  [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2009, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-kid-is-a-hero/508499/20 "2009-09-01T17:29:49Z")
> [@Nava](#):
>
> Shrug, I used to trade books with half a dozen of my classmates… Giovanni Guareschi’s Little World for Lope plays for Zane Grey westerns…
>
> Two of us could go through two books a day, the rest were at more normal speeds, but we all would have read anything so long as it wasn’t compulsory reading (for some reason, they never pick an author’s best books for Lit).
Yeah, I guess things were different for me. I remember at one point in class, we were being polled on what we did over the summer (in French) and I was the only one who had read more than 3 books for fun (as in not stuff that the English department had asked us to read before fall). And I mean, these kids were mostly all really motivated in terms of getting good grades and getting into a good school. Reading wasn’t, in general, considered a fun thing for them.
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