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.

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…)

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.

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…

…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.

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.

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:

Children are just that: children. They’re not little adultsâ�¦

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.

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…