The last map showed America’s dominance in winning Nobel Prizes. Via Bill Petti on Twitter comes today’s map showing book bans and challenges by state in America over the past three years. Is your state on the list?
Some of the banned books include Grendel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Of Mice and Men, The Golden Compass and Hoops. According to the BBC bans on 3,736 books and other print materials have been requested since 2001. The most banned book is the one about the gay penguins.
I think it would be appropriate to quote one of America’s most famous pieces of literature:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Book banning is sad behaviour, and I am by no means saying it only happens in the US. freedomtoread.ca maintains a list of over 100 books and magazines that have been challenged in Canada over the decades. Wikipedia comes to the rescue with a massive list of books banned by governments from around the world. Is your country on it?
Luckily, no Robert Kaplan books are on any of the lists.
Get the RSS
Comments to this entry
kurt9
October 12, 2009
3:44 pm
cirby
October 12, 2009
4:40 pm
Children are just that: children. They're not little adults, and they don't need to have quite the same access to literature that adults have. Quite a few books shown on the map are not, by any stretch, suitable for schoolchildren.
Many are not even "banned," per se. They're just "curriculum challenges," where people don't think the books involved need to be taught as part of the normal schoolwork.
Of the ones that are outright banned, how about Cormac McCarthy's "Child of God," which just happens to include pedophilia and necrophilia? I don't think schoolkids (yes, even high school students) should have that sitting in the school library, or allowed to be used in class (in this case, a 14 year old kid used it for a book report - the teacher should have just said "no, pick something more appropriate for your age group, and take this note to your parents for a parent-teacher conference"). Not exactly a sterling example of "book banning." This case calls into question the provenance of the entire list...
Scott
October 13, 2009
3:17 am
T. Greer
October 13, 2009
5:55 am
Sejo
October 13, 2009
8:54 am
And above all, I do not think that the communities, or the institutions, should have the right to decide. That is up to the parents of every single child. I surely do not want any politician telling me what's best and what not to raise and educate the persons I am paying to feed, grow, learn – and to which I gave life. No no.
UNRR
October 13, 2009
12:14 pm
newspaper
October 13, 2009
4:52 pm
Younghusband
October 14, 2009
6:47 am
Anyways, I can't get over how many bans and curriculum challenges there are in the first place. Like the (bad) example Cirby talked about, I would expect teachers and parents to use their judgement on a case-by-case basis. Cirby said:
Yes, but their parents are adults, and should be the ones making the decisions. A blanket ban is simply retarded. The kids have access to much worse stuff on the internet. Lobbying for a ban is also reprehensible. Like I want other parents to choose what my kid cannot read.
Let's have some more parenting, please.
Curzon
October 14, 2009
9:04 am
Roy Berman
October 14, 2009
4:45 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_%28Bill_of_Rights%29
As it says here, in 1833 the Supreme Court ruled that the bill of rights DOES only apply to the federal government, but after the civil war the trend was towards increased power of the federal government at the expense of the states, and the post reconstruction 14th amendment was used as justification for the 1890s-era supreme court to apply the bill of rights to the states. So in short, Newspaper is correct as far as the constitution was written, but he's about 120 years out of date.
Curzon
October 14, 2009
11:02 pm
Roy Berman
October 15, 2009
6:14 am
Roy Berman
October 15, 2009
6:14 am
cirby
October 15, 2009
12:21 pm
"Yes, this is for kids but also public libraries. "
...and in the graphic, there's a total of one actual public library "challenge" (rejected) and one case of someone taking a book and keeping it as a protest (the library has four other copies now due to donations by other patrons).
Most of the rest of the list consists of failed "challenges" with a few "what moron put that in the curriculum?" cases. Seventeen successful removals from curriculum or from school libraries (almost all of them "adult" or sexually explicit in one form or another). Out of a country of over 300 million people. Over two and a half years. From looking at the books they challenged, the books had no business being in the schools' curriculum in the first place.
Younghusband again: "Yes, but their parents are adults, and should be the ones making the decisions."
How about "keep the curriculum noncontroversial and nonexplicit, and if parents want their kids to read something like 'Child of God,' they go get it at a bookstore and teach it themselves?" By including such titles in the curriculum without comment, you're taking control away from the parents, not giving them any.
Chainsaw
October 15, 2009
6:03 pm
Sure thing, but...
Capitalism is controversial
Almost all of American History is controversial
If there are fundamentalists in the district, ALL SCIENCE is controversial.
The scientific method itself is controversial
The Nobel Prize winners in Economics got the prize for saying, basically, that economics is storytelling, not science. Is this controversial?
And so on...
Munro Ferguson
October 17, 2009
12:53 am
cirby
October 18, 2009
6:37 pm
Now, most of the things you list are not controversial. What IS controversial is people making the claims you list.
Munro:
Not so much of a generalization. We have some fairly easy legal definitions. For example, if you still have to go to school by law, that's a fair guideline. The only time people have trouble with "that's a child" is when they're trying really, really hard to push one or more stupid agendas.
Peter
October 20, 2009
10:05 am
http://home.nvg.org/~aga/bulletin43.html
Interesting that so many classic books would be banned for the reasons stated. I agree with Sejo's last comment on that.
Given the standards for banning some of these books, it's a wonder that the Bible itself hasn't been banned (although The Living Bible has...)
sg
October 21, 2009
9:20 pm
How many of these were really just passed over in favor of better stuff?
Same with curriculum. Zillions of books and only two semesters per year. You can't read them all. One could easily argue that other books have more educational value than these.
Munro Ferguson
October 22, 2009
2:13 am
Yes, I know we have some fairly easy legal definitions. It's generally the case that a person under the age of eighteen is considered a child. By that measure your assertion that "a child is just that: a child" suggests that there lies zero difference in intellectual maturity between that of an eight year old and a sixteen year old. Hence my reaction, that such an assertion is a generalization.