The Most Banned Books in U.s. Schools
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The debate around banned books in U.S. schools is heating up, with many questioning the logic behind restricting access to certain titles. Some commenters, like nerdjon, are even inspired to create "banned books" bookshelves, while others, like seg_lol, argue that the goal of book bans is to shield people from ideas they wouldn't normally encounter. The discussion takes a critical turn as commenters like orthecreedence and NickC25 point out the absence of certain titles, such as Mein Kampf and "Space Relations", from the list, suggesting a potential bias in what's considered "banned". The thread highlights the complexities and nuances of book banning, with some arguing it's a form of censorship, while others see it as a way to protect certain groups.
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I don't understand the logic of banning these books, do they act like the internet doesn't exist? Kids will find this information, I found plenty of information about being gay 20ish years ago in high school.
Then again being short sited is one of their strong suits.
Book bans are not designed to stop people that know about these books and the ideas they contain. They know that those people will still find them and read them.
> I found plenty of information about being gay 20ish years ago in high school.
Lots of kids didn't and they don't know they didn't and that is the point.
But (well until the last couple of years) you would have still seen "different" people on tv and in movies.
And I get that the point is to make it so the kids are not being exposed to different ideas and beliefs. I am just struggling to understand how that is actually a realistic idea in todays world.
I am against the banning of books from purchase or from public libraries, however banning books in schools is not that. It is gatekeeping this information from young and impressionable minds, just like we do with movies, games, drugs, all sorts of things. Things that may have negative consequences on developing minds.
You may disagree with what books are banned or why, but allowing unsupervised exposure of elementary aged children to sexually explicit and graphically depicted books such as Gender Queer is not appropriate. If a child wants access to this, their parent or adult can buy it for them or rent it from the public library.
My local bookstore proudly features a table of "banned books" right at the entrance. It's a pretty good advertisement!
That's great idea, may stores have them!
This is not about bookstores but about school. So then, would you put that bookshelf in a second grade class. How early do kids need to hear about "Five troubled teenagers fall into prostitution as they search for freedom, safety, community, family, and love". I mean, a lot of those kids still believe in Santa maybe telling them about teenage prostitutes is a bit early.
Either way, this is a silly argument. All these “banned” books are also readily available in your public library - they’re pop lit, your local library likely has more copies of Maas than all the Greek writers of antiquity combined.
Search for “deaccessioning” and “equity based weeding” and you will find all the information you could wish for. The classics are being thrown into dumpsters or pulped to make room for more computers and Sarah J Maas. In one particularly egregious Canadian case, all books published before 2008 were destroyed. In many cases this is politically driven.
Perhaps you know how the use to work, but not how they do now. It’s very grim. Many invaluable niche works, particularly of local history but also of technical subjects, have now been destroyed forever by librarians. The assumption too is that everything is probably digitized somewhere so it doesn’t even matter. Cultural and political and funding concerns as actual literacy has declined have completely subsumed that original purpose of libraries.
Since you did not specify exactly where in Canada you live, nor did you provide any evidence whatsoever for Mein Kampf not being available through your library system, I cannot directly disprove your lie. And I, of course, have no clue what you typed into the "collection search bar". That said, Vancouver appears to have 14 copies of the book available: https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S38C5311543 Ottawa four: https://ottawa.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S26C189364 Toronto ten: https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Entt=RDM32676...
While I cannot check every public library in Canada, I still feel 100% confident in calling you out as a liar.
That's not banned...I wonder why?
You also won't see The Passing of the Great Race in the list.
That's because it is, and the people pushing for this are.
Bigots want there to be no visible LGBT people in society. "Your child will encounter a gay person someday" is not an argument they care about because they would also like to ensure that gay people cannot be visible in other parts of society.
Your school not stocking books you want is not a ban. It’s the prerogative of the institution to choose how it shapes minds. It cannot avoid taking on some angle, since any incomplete collection is an editorial choice.
>Your school not stocking books you want is not a ban. It’s the prerogative of the institution to choose how it shapes minds.
At least some of these books are banned from schools by state-level law, not the school district.
https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/1069/BillText/er/...
The bill is all about pronouns, heterosexuality, abstinence, and getting books out of libraries on those grounds.
A ban would be you'd get in trouble for having the book in your possession, which isn't the case here.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2024/08/02/utah-book-b...
"The law, which went into effect July 1, requires that a book be removed from all public schools in the state if at least three school districts (or at least two school districts and five charter schools) determine it amounts to “objective sensitive material”"
>Aren't there other books that are banned for legitimate reasons like hate speech and racial hate that aren't included here?
I don't know, and I'm not sure how it is related to my comment.
Would you want your kids reading Mein Kampf or The Passing of the Great Race? I wouldn't.
No, they are "prohibited in the school setting". You cannot bring it with you.
Banned makes sense to me as shorthand though sure it's not quite exactly accurate. Suggest me an alternative?
Or am I completely wrong, and Jared Taylor's "White Identity" is available in every school library, explaining its absence from "banned" books lists?
[1] 'Banned' meaning not using taxpayer money to make them available to schoolchildren.
Have words lost their meaning?
There are few who can’t go onto amazon.com or ebay.com and ship a book to themselves for a few dollars.
Prevented to be stocked? Library removed?
What should we call it when you can legally acquire the book, read and share it with other people with no concern from the law or authorities whatsoever? Do you think the correct word for this is "banned"?
https://pen.org/book-bans/book-bans-frequently-asked-questio...
Special accommodations are made for students. Parents can ask for their child not to participate in activities they deem inappropriate. I see this happen all of the time during Halloween events. It would be nice if Christian conservatives would do the same.
I sure am glad that there is an Objectively Correct set of books children should be exposed to, unaffected by issues of identity, politics, or morality, and it's just a matter of applying dispassionate expertise to discover it.
The reference you posted is about collection management at libraries London School of Economics in England. England has different history with respect to colonization than the US. A sordid history in-fact. We are also talking books for adults not children under 18.
The US itself is was decolonization project. I hope you know that colonialism is rarely judged a good thing in modern scholarship.
Yes, the difference is the political activism of librarians is institutionalized [0]. You don't view the absence of Jared Taylor's "White Identity", or any similar book, from school libraries, as "suppressing societal critiques", do you? Why, because it's done quietly and tacitly?
It's so funny seeing the same people complaining how every institution is systemically racist or whatever-ist (including math [1,2] - I made sure links are for the US, since apparently that is such a special case that critiques of institutions in even the most closely related countries are completely inapplicable to it), then turn around and claim that "no, this institution that does what I like is beyond politics, driven by pure expertise", even in a field as fuzzy and political as child education.
> The reference you posted is about collection management at libraries London School of Economics in England.
Thank you for this uselessly reductive interpretation. While yes of course libraries in those other, lesser countries are politicized and in need of correction, libraries in the US are objective and beyond reproach - unless [3] that [4] reproach [5] comes [6] from [7] the [8] left [9,10,11].
When activists lobby to change institutions how I like, this is good and necessary - those institutions are systemically racist, colonialist, and biased!
When activists lobby to change institutions how you like [12], this is bad and political - those institutions are dispassionate, apolitical, objective experts!
[0] https://libnews.umn.edu/event/librarians-and-social-justice-...
[1] https://www.clrn.org/why-is-mathematics-racist/
[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/modern-mathematic...
[3] What It Means to Decolonize the Library - https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/l...
[4] Interpreting decolonization in academic libraries - https://www.ala.org/news/2021/12/interpreting-decolonization...
[5] Decolonizing the CSW Library - https://library.csw.org/home/decolonize
[6] Taking Steps to Decolonize Library Collections, Policies, and Services - https://serials.atla.com/proceedings/article/download/3336/4...
[7] Over the last decade, there have been increasing calls to “decolonize” the archive. - https://whc.yale.edu/what-colonial-archive
[8] Diversifying the Curriculum & Decolonizing the Collection - https://blogs.library.duke.edu/blog/2022/04/11/diversifying-...
[9] Remembering the Howard University Librarian Who Decolonized the Way Books Were Catalogued - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/remembering-howard-un...
[10] Diversifying Collections - https://www.wocandlib.org/features/2022/5/11/diversifying-co...
[11] Anti-Racist Collections Workbook: A Tool for Building Inclusive Library Collections - https://www.journals.ala.org/index.php/lrts/article/view/855...
[12] I don't actually like it, I just don't fool myself into thinking what librarians are doing is any different. If anything, it is worse, since it is invisible and unchallenged.
Yeah, no.
Either it's high schoolers and below in the comments here, or it's histrionic adults who identify with the same.
Parents (customers) lobbying school administrators about what should be in the school library = bad, evil.
The definition you gave for banning books does narrow it down a bit though. Restriction on the publication, sale, or importation isn't a ban, but possession is. Ah. I guess a book is only banned if you face legal consequences for owning it after purchase during the very limited window that it may appear on bookshelves. In that case, I can't say for certain that Australia, Canada, Germany, and New Zealand bans books, but I can say that I would not want to be in possession of certain types of books in these countries. The definition of 'banned books' gets a little murky here though, is the inevitable police detention and interrogation due to the possession of the books themselves or rather obscenity/hate speech/Nazism/terrorism/drug laws? Does it count if the detention and interrogation occurs after an unrelated search of your property? Is a book only banned if it is confiscated from your possession? Does it count if you win your court case?
Which leaves the only Western nations that fit such a definition as being Austria and the United Kingdom, which do objectively criminalise the possession of banned books.
Is it like if you bring the book to school you’ll be sent home or something?
Most schools (at least in Idaho) have libraries attached to the school.
[1] https://www.acluidaho.org/app/uploads/2024/05/final_2024_05_...
What there actually are, are books that schools refuse to carry in their libraries because they don't think the content is appropriate for children. I would assume this happens in every country.
You are just fundamentally wrong on the facts here. This list is specifically books that were removed from libraries due to outside forces. I'm not worried about school librarians deciding that a book's content makes it unsuitable for their students. These are situations in which parents or government officials are telling the school to remove a book already present.
https://pen.org/book-bans/book-bans-frequently-asked-questio...
Because it's their explicit job function. Librarians aren't hired to watch over unchanging collections of books like cryptkeepers. They have budgets to buy books with.
Yes. This is normally done by a school librarian, who has extensive training in curating collections, and who is hired by the school board.
Call me when you're arrested or fined for buying any book in US.
What in the world are you talking about? Why are you spouting a bunch of bigotry that isn't relevant to anything?
That still doesn't address my original question. Is there historic precedent for this type of micromanaging of school libraries (if you're adamant that we shouldn't use the B word) that most of us would still agree with today? Because many of the books on the list seem more likely to follow the path of eventual school classics like The Grapes of Wrath or To Kill a Mockingbird than they are to continue to be banned decades into the future.
How are children supposed to develop into adults, if they are denied reading about the experiences of others?
I'd agree with limiting access based on age, but a lot of these laws have a binary if not outright ban on library access.
What's appropriate to a 10, 12, 14, and 16 year old is pretty broad as these kids mature fast in a few short years. I see no reason why any 16 year old should be restricted from any book.
The first time I tried to check out one of those very adult books the librarian called my parents and asked if it was OK. My parents said "Yes. Let him have whatever he wants." They made a note in my account and the next day they let me have have whatever I wanted.
If that hadn't happened I would be a very different, and much dumber, person now.
I don't understand what the issue is with just asking the parents?
I suspect that most of the people responsible for these "bans" don't want that to happen because some parents will approve of things they don't. Most of this really IS an attempted ban rather than just "appropriate age related content" issue. They don't want to control what THEIR kids can see. They want to control what YOUR kids can see.
The notion that the school board would simply ask a parent, then deal with the parents from kid A complaining that they read a book checked out by kid B is out there.
We run our schools to a lowest common denominator system.
We had a better system once (maybe only in this one way). We can do it again.
It's just so bizarre to make an argument (A very valid one!) about freedom of information by openly lying to the public.
You can look into it, if you're curious! Some of these books are indeed banned, by state-level law no less! It's not a curation choice.
So, banned then?
Sorry, I'll edit my comment to be more clear. It is illegal for school libraries to stock it, even if they want to.
Librarians and teachers choose books, then some external party forces them to be removed. If you don't like the term "banned", choose a term you like better.
Which book was that?
https://pen.org/book-bans/book-bans-frequently-asked-questio...
This doesn't seem to be a particularly large problem.
That is not a rebuttal to your point -- I don't have a guess on whether or not the chilling effect is significant. I'm just noting there are follow-on effects to be considered.
There are much worse, much bigger problems and we need to constantly be reminding people of how big issues actually are. Book bannings are concerning but what is the size of the actual impact? I see this issue more of as an embarrassment for a handful of schools and boards who are bowing to moralizing fools, people are acting like they're afraid of an escalation to Fahrenheit 451 when we really should be mocking the book banners for their foolishness instead of being afraid of them.
This is far from the only issue suffering from a lack of sense of scale.
Probably also worth asking if this problem is really independent, or if it's a facet of larger, more clearly damaging trends.
And it all started with people complaining about books in the library.
This does on account for soft bans like undisclosed do not buy lists. No need to ban what you are not allowed to buy.
This is like saying "there are only 147 cities and towns who voted for X while 15,000 towns didn't, therefore X is very unpopular" without taking into account how many voters live in those cities/towns.
By this definition, The Bible is the most "banned book" across the country, even though it's probably the most consequential piece of literature ever written.
This continuous doublespeak is even more humorous considering the site has actual shopping links to every 'banned book'.
Would you agree for the school to have the book "The Passing of the Great Race", a famously racist and white supremacist book in your school library?
Personally I think using banned for "being actively prevented from accessing" makes plenty of sense even if you can effectively circumvent those attempts somehow.
The strict meaning that people seem to want to apply in here does not seem particularly useful to me. Almost no books have ever been banned by that standard, but there is a clearly organized movement in the US to remove all reference to queerness from public life. Flexible on nomenclature here but that context is very important.
I think if librarians were buying "straight" books with the same explicit and adult content and putting them in elementary, middle, and high schools, the same parents would be complaining about those too.
I have absolutely no problem saying that bigots who insist that no books containing LGBT characters appear in libraries are bad people while also thinking that The Turner Diaries shouldn't be in public schools.
https://americanliterature.com/author/mark-twain/book/the-ad...
The older I get, the more I think that there is wisdom in the words of Col. Sherburn on the cowardice of the average person.
By the way, I have a hunch that HN is aware of whose alt account this is, and I wager the chances of the original poster being punished for issuing threats on an alt account is almost nil.
Is this a common stance? I thought it was more like, no books glorifying LGBT lifestyle or teaching it as if it’s not controversial and it’s just a fact of life (as proponents sincerely believe, of course, not saying no one is thinks it is a fact of life, that’s just the part that is controversial). I understand disagreeing with that, but it isn’t the same as opponents pushing for zero gay/etc characters period, right?
I haven’t been following this topic too closely though so I might be missing what people are screeching about on the right today.
What is an LGBT lifestyle?
My life before and after discovering the nature of my queerness is remarkably similar, though with a fair few more relationships and a lot less anguish afterwards.
The implication of "lifestyle" usually being "ability to exist in a society without any major obstacles due to being LGBT", "ability to receive true healthcare related to being LGBT", "ability to be legally recognized and accommodated as a result of it" or "ability to express your queerness in public without being seen as the villain".
Imagine somebody getting upset for glorifying a straight lifestyle. The absurdity is amusing.
She has a bisexual daughter who has attempted suicide twice. She has told her daughter that she’d be better off dead than bi.
Also I’m very sorry if there are books that contain gay characters where there aren’t constant asides reminding the reader that these people are going to hell. The “gay lifestyle” is just gay people existing.
False.
The work is never done, after removing the books with practical tutorials, blue prints and historical revisionism you always continue to have a candidate at the top of the list. The work that remains now are all fictional books that portray an uncomfortable reality.
After those are all gone the new reality will again have a most terrible book. The work is never done.
Remember that the parents are deciding for other parents what appears in libraries.
This thread is full of people falling over themselves trying to convince you that a book ban isn't actually a book ban, and whatever it happens to be isn't that big of a deal.
If the banning of books from libraries isn't a big deal - why is it being done in the first place? Is it just virtue signaling, or does it have a specific objective? If it has a specific objective, isn't that objective worth interrogating instead of brushing off as not a big deal?