DISCLAIMER: I’m as against book banning as any other blue-blooded Liberal. I don’t want some uptight butthurt Karen telling me what books my children can’t read at school. I’m not trying to set up a gotcha or anything. And in fact, I wasn’t sure if this thread belongs in FQ or GD.
But if the Left doesn’t want uptight butthurt Karens telling American parents what books their children can and can’t have available to them at school (or in their local library), then what does the Left want in this regard? Is it the position of liberal academics that the (school, public) librarian should have 100 percent, absolute discretion over what does and does not go on the shelves? Is there some sort of consensus on this among leftist politicians and thinkers?
For whatever it’s worth, I’ve never had any iron in this fire. Strictly on principle, I think book banning sucks. But in a practical sense, I’ve never had kids, and if I did, I’m pretty familiar with an easy way to skirt book bans: buy the book myself. Yes, I realize this isn’t an option for every parent, and that there is larger significance to the issue, etc.
Good question. An anything-goes policy could, at least in theory, result in school libraries being filled with pornography, racist and antisemitic propaganda, and books advocating dangerous woo and conspiracy theories. Does refusing to stock such things count as “book banning,” and if not, why not?
The opposite is librarians deciding based on the principles of the associations and that they learned in school. An actual librarian can give more details, but it has to do with community interest—the whole community, not the ban-happy ones alone.
The opposite of book banning would be forcing everyone to read a specific book or set of books. Sounds like the sort of thing some dictatorship somewhere has probably done, actually. It’s just switching the polarity from “forbid by force” to “mandate by force”.
Yes. The consensus is that all books go on the shelves according to the judgment of competent educational professionals, who make their judgments in conformance with contemporary societal standards for the specific age group.
The Karens and Todds who object at school board meetings to certain books they don’t like deserve an explanation. They should be given that explanation, subtly emphasizing that they’re either stupid or out of touch with reality, and then should be shut out of the conversation.
The opposite of book banning was very well elucidated by VP candidate Tim Walz. Republicans want to ban books that don’t reflect Republican ideology. Progressives want to ban child hunger; they want to ensure that schoolchildren are well-nourished and well-educated.
Trusting the discretion of trained librarians worked perfectly well up to this point. It isn’t a leftist position, but a broad consensus position, that there is nothing that needs to change.
Leftists have general position that knowledge should be freely available to all. Unless you are a way out there on the fringe leftist, you are also going to say that access to this knowledge must be mediated according to the age of the child and their ability to comprehend.
I read at a high school level in grade school, and my parents never thought that I’d read – from their own library – books like Jerzy Kozinski’s The Painted Bird, Portnoy’s Complaint, Tropic of Cancer, and other books that could hardly have been more inappropriate, some of which giving me long-lasting nightmares. So I am in favor of screening children’s books. That’s completely different than censorship.
I, too thought of the mandatory ownership and possession of the Mao book in China. I think the North Koreans also mandate ownership of some Kim doodads.
In my view, the opposite of book banning is free access to the internet which includes piracy of endless millions of books and papers. That decentralizes information and makes it available to everyone.
Obviously there are some legal concerns about piracy, but I would consider that to be the opposite of book banning. A world where everyone can get almost every book or scientific paper they want for free.
However you seem to be asking what books should children have access to in public libraries and school libraries. I have no idea. I mean obviously you can’t get pornography at the library, but they are also taking away books that discuss racism or that treat gay people and trans people as human beings too.
Years ago I acquired many copies of The Satanic Bible. Any time I saw the book being sold cheaply, I’d buy it. I don’t recall why I originally started this, but I eventually had a dozen or so copies.
I then stopped acquiring and began distributing. I left a copy in a couple motel room nightstands, a doctor’s waiting room, a car repair waiting area, etc. Eventually I gave them all away.
Who knows what effect it might have had. It was fun for me.
Sure, why not. Isn’t that a big part of their job? From the beginning of the time when libraries were invented until a few years ago, isn’t this how it worked? What was the problem?
Anyway, the opposite of book-banning is forced book ownership, as others have mentioned. Your thread title doesn’t match your OP very well.
I had to buy the Satanic Bible several times in order to read it once. It kept getting stolen or confiscated from me. (V. boring, title best part, do not recommend). But I like your idea.
The real flaw with book banning lies in the very nature of the young minds they are aiming to protect.
Nothing, NOTHING drives young readers to seek out reading material quite like a banning. If you think keeping it out of the school library will keep it from their eyes you’re living in a dream world.
You know that Minecraft has an entire library of banned material from the whole world over, right? Available to anyone playing the game to read.
All that bans do is ensure your children read the book. So they can see what all the fuss is about. Decide for themselves.
Besides they can find it faster on the internet than you can ban it.
All that bans do is drive more young people to read the very books, you’d rather they not!
I thought this phenomena was widely understood. It’s what discourages most who are inclined to want a book ban from pursuing one.
Did American conservatives not get the memo? How is it NOT self evident?
Most of the banners are just doing it to get the attention and take over school boards and local legislatures. “Won’t someone think of the children??!?” is a good way to get votes.
I haven’t ever heard of this. That’s pretty cool. What’s the mechanism for reading them? Right there in the game, or can they be downloaded?
I was always a voracious reader who read almost anything and everything. Occasionally an adult would question the appropriateness of my reading choices. A few I remember in particular were Flowers in the Attic and some Harold Robbins book I was reading at about 11 years old. A lot of adult push-back on both of those. A lot of the sex stuff I just plain didn’t get and skipped over, a lot fell into the “ew, gross, sex” part of my 5th grade brain. I’ll tell you what, though: I had an amazing vocabulary as a child.
My suggestion for all of these uptight parents who want to keep their children in a bubble is to police what THEIR CHILDREN read and don’t worry about what my children are reading. Maybe at the beginning of each school year one of the eleventy million bits of paperwork could be a library permission form with various levels from “no restrictions” all the way to “previous permission required for all check outs”.
I’d say what “we” want is what we want in all these “culture wars” questions: Trust the judgement of the professional people who have actually studied the issues.
No actual librarian is going to put actual pornography on a school library shelf. That just doesn’t happen. What does happen is extremist right-wingers will label something, like a Judy Bloom book, as “pornography”, and rant about that, while completely ignoring the actual reasons a librarian would leave that book where some Grade 5 kids can find it.
