Book Bannings

SilverBear said:

i just looked at my son's online school library catalog and found the Bible, the Quran, the Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita, and the I Ching. I'm sure there are other religious books on the shelves as well.

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Yes, it’s reference in this case.

SilverBear said:

Separation of church and stae doesn't have any impact on what books are in a library. Separation of church and state means that the state cannot endorse a particular religion.

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Right. And public schools are part of the state.

The burning of the scrolls about sorcery was done voluntarily by their owners who had been converted to Christianity. The passage is not relevant to burning or censorship of school textbooks unless the books' own authors withdraw them from publication and/or use in schools.

Vanellus said:

The burning of the scrolls about sorcery was done voluntarily by their owners who had been converted to Christianity. The passage is not relevant to burning or censorship of school textbooks unless the books' own authors withdraw them from publication and/or use in schools.

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They did so voluntarily because they had to (Luke 20:20-26, Matt. 22:15-22, Mark 12:13-17, 1 Pet. 2:11-25, Rom. 13:1-10). Christianity became tolerated in the Roman Empire with the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, and later the state religion with the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 AD. The Apostle Paul is commonly believed to have died in the 60s AD.[1][2]

What else could they have done?

On April 6, 2022, at roughly 10:20 AM Eastern Time, I removed an unnecessary footnote. My apologies, I'm a fallible human being who's predisposed towards selfishness.

Archivist said:

But this was an action involving privately-owned scrolls, so it has no bearing on books held by a public institution.

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I'm going to end the conversation with you here. God bless.

Archivist said:

But this was an action involving privately-owned scrolls, so it has no bearing on books held by a public institution.

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Do public institutions not have the right to select which books they use?

I am not generally in favor of book banning, but I do think there are books that shouldn't be in school libraries (eg. books that graphically depict rape and incest). Public libraries in the adult section, yes. School libraries, no.

DragonFox91 said:

Were my peers asleep in school? We literally learned about slavery, racism, MLK Jr, Rosa Parks, the South being evil, etc. every year again & again since 1st grade. Are they completely dumb it wasn't taught? My school was 99% white in a city 99% white . & that was 25 years ago!

This nonsense that white conservatives suppress knowledge about the country's history of slavery, racism, civil rights, etc. NEEDS to end now!

I STILL read opinion pieces that NONE of this is taught & it drives me bonkers.

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Agreed. Grew up in a very small, mostly white town and had the same experience.

Archivist said:

They do. Book banning involves not refusing to buy the book for the collection, but removing it from the collection after it has already been purchased. Selection of material is usually left to the librarian. Ordering that books be banned is usually done by administrators or school boards.

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Why shouldn't libraries be able to remove books they don't approve of?

Archivist said:

It isn’t the library that doesn’t approve of the books. As I said, it is usually administrators and school boards, people who are not trained in collection development.

Tell me, do you approve of censorship? Why should books like Where’s Waldo, James and the Giant Peach and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See not be on library shelves.

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Why should "The Bluest Eye" be on a middle school library shelf? Who thought that was a good idea?

Archivist said:

It isn’t the library that doesn’t approve of the books. As I said, it is usually administrators and school boards, people who are not trained in collection development.

Tell me, do you approve of censorship? Why should books like Where’s Waldo, James and the Giant Peach and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See not be on library shelves.

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I don't see why administrators can't regulate the material they have in their library.

As to whether I approve of censorship. Sure. Nothing wrong with it.

Archivist said:

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was once banned throughout the American South by white school boards and administrators

Nothing wrong with it? Really? As I said earlier, the Nazis also saw nothing wrong with it. The book burning scene in the third Indiana Jones movie was based on fact.

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Many books have been banned publicly as well. 120 days in Sodom was banned and you probably couldn't find it in a great deal of libraries today because of it's inappropriate contentographic and horrific character. That's not a bad thing.

To automatically compare censorship to the Nazis, when all groups with power have done it, demonstrates to me you have a false frame of this entire debate. Are you of the opinion that all books must be present in a library? That there can be no standards, moral or otherwise?

Archivist said:

Except we are not talking about putting inappropriate contentography on school library shelves, are we?



I offered the Nazis as an example because they are history’s best-known book banners and book burners.



Perhaps you don’t understand just how many books there are. There is no way that every library could have every book in print. I am suggesting that collection development be left in the hands of the librarian, a trained professional.

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Why shouldn't 120 days of Sodom be ready for consumption at a library or anywhere else for that matter? I would think it's because we have certain standards but then if we have standards and are going to say inappropriate contentographic material is forbidden, te library is not free. We are imposing a value judgement that plenty of sexual revolutionaries would be against. They would complain that their text that they revere is being unfairly displaced. What then? Either the standard holds or it falters. In much the same way with conservatives accepting or removing certain books, either they are allowed to have their standards or they are not.

Are the Nazi's history's best known book banners? Certainly prominent from a certain political perspective which views those who ban books as similar, but the most known? The Communists regulated the books and content their populations consume. Before them, Christians did much the same to prevent dissident material getting out there. Even in today's democratic societies certain books and views are not permitted to be shown. It does a disservice to paint the picture as so one sided and neglect that all societies have engaged in censorship, to one degree or another.

A trained librarian? What would that entail in terms of book selection? What standards are you advocating be used that are neutral and free of bias? There are none. Your standards are different from the Conservative Christian's standards and thus would prevent the latter from implementing their own. You certaintly wouldn't want to see in education, libraries or other venues of learning and influence an equal access to the dissident authors I would read.