Banned Books Week

[Mark Chance]

I'm firmly with Djeta on this one. I cringe whenever someone suggests restricting access to a book to protect innocent children from the content therein. If kids are old enough to be reading something, they should be able to make judgements on how much of the message to believe or disbelieve.

I have had any number of students over the years who are talented readers and yet, at the same time, are basically incapable of separating fact from fiction except in the most egregious cases. This is especially true of students between the ages of 6 and 12, who are, generally, still very concrete in their thinking and unable to grasp the nuances of metaphor, simile, et cetera.

The ability to do X does not equate with the maturity to understand X and all of X's ramifications.

To protect them from controversial messages makes it unlikely that they'll be able to read critically when they become adults and suddenly have access to all sorts of information. We should worry more about having our children learn how to read critically, how to be discriminating, and how to integrate new ideas into their value system than we do about protecting them from hearing or reading "bad" things.

A person has to have a "value system" (whatever that is) before they can "integrate" anything new into it. The average child, ages 6 to 12, doesn't have a "value system." They don't have the life experience necessary to form reasonable (with the emphasis on "reason") opinions about a host of different subjects.

It is a parent's job to decide what is age-appropriate for his or her children, and then work within the parameters of that decision. My 6-year-old son is a proficient reader, probably two years ahead of the curve. Nevertheless, he doesn't read anything that either my wife or I do not approve of, no matter if he can read the words themselves.

Reading does not equate understanding, as any reading teacher with but one year of experience can attest.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

I'm firmly with Djeta on this one. I cringe whenever someone suggests restricting access to a book to protect innocent children from the content therein. If kids are old enough to be reading something, they should be able to make judgements on how much of the message to believe or disbelieve. To protect them from controversial messages makes it unlikely that they'll be able to read critically when they become adults and suddenly have access to all sorts of information. We should worry more about having our children learn how to read critically, how to be discriminating, and how to integrate new ideas into their value system than we do about protecting them from hearing or reading "bad" things.

wow, this whole threads reminds me of what one of my political friends used to say about his anti-gun control work. "We'd have won this by now if it weren't for our allies." I have never seen a better argument for restriction of some books than you saying "If kids are old enough to be reading something, they should be able to make judgements on how much of the message to believe or disbelieve." Just conflating "challanged" with "banned" so badly makes free speech advocates look bad.*

Ugh and "become adults and suddenly have access to all sorts of information."? This is what is called a strawman. And it isn't a very good one.

*It makes them look quite a bit like the christian coalition style ranters who claim that the bible is banned because they couldn't get through a history curriculum using genesis as a text, or other specious 'bans'.

Kahuna Burger

 

[Kahuna Burger]

I have had any number of students over the years who are talented readers and yet, at the same time, are basically incapable of separating fact from fiction except in the most egregious cases. This is especially true of students between the ages of 6 and 12, who are, generally, still very concrete in their thinking and unable to grasp the nuances of metaphor, simile, et cetera.
...
Reading does not equate understanding, as any reading teacher with but one year of experience can attest.

I'm in perfect agreement with Mark Chance.... I knew this was a screwed up thread...

Kahuna Burger

 

[Glyfair]

I found a site that lists reasons for the top 100 books were challenged:

http://solonor.com/bannedbooks.php

Admittedly, a few of the books he doesn't really seem to know why they were banned (he lists the Stupids as being banned because the characters were "stupid").

 

[Aaron2]

wow, this whole threads reminds me of what one of my political friends used to say about his anti-gun control work. "We'd have won this by now if it weren't for our allies." I have never seen a better argument for restriction of some books than you saying "If kids are old enough to be reading something, they should be able to make judgements on how much of the message to believe or disbelieve." Just conflating "challanged" with "banned" so badly makes free speech advocates look bad.

Its called "Banned Book Week" because "Books That Some Guy You've Never Heard Of Doesn't Want His Kids To Read Week" lacks the same punch.

I remember not too long ago when my Barnes & Nobles had a huge table of books for sale with the sign "These Books Are Banned" above it. I was afraid to touch them.


Aaron

 

[Crothian]

I remember not too long ago when my Barnes & Nobles had a huge table of books for sale with the sign "These Books Are Banned" above it. I was afraid to touch them.


Aaron

My local B&N has that same table right now

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

It'll be interesting when we get the library trio in here: Mr Noah, Mrs. Buttercup, and the Chuthlu Librarian

Ok, I'm here. Now the discussion can begin...

Actually, I don't know if I can really say more than has already been said by others. I'm against the challenging/banning of books, for many reasons. I can however, tell a few stories about situations I've been in where books have been challenged.
Growing up, my mother was a school teacher, and always encouraged me to read, as long as the books were what she considered suitable and I could reasonably understand them. Her definition of suitable was very broad, and rarely did I have anything taken from me. I can't say the same for my third grade teacher, who took my copy of The Hobbit away from me because "It's too long for an 8 year old to be reading." I had just been given the book as a gift, and Mom was furious at the teacher. She went into school the next morning and took her to task for that, and I'll never forget it. She may not have liked that I was reading Stephen King in middle school, but Mom kept buying them for me. I think I turned out all right, except for this desire to accumulate as many books as possible...
In my professional life, I have worked as a bookstore manager, an assistant editor for a major publisher, and now in a library. In each of these jobs, I've run across people who had problems with books. At the bookstore, I once had a mother march her 17 or 18 year old son back into the store to return Interview with a Vampire, then yelled at me for selling it to him. She kept it up until we had to call security to remove her from the store. We also had an elderly woman who used to gather book sup from around the store that she objected to, drop them at the counter and tell me to send them back because they were corrupting society with sex and murder. Then she would buy 3 or 4 Harlequin romance novels and leave.
At HarperCollins Publishers, somehow people would get our office number, and call to tell us we were responsible for corrupting young minds or that we had no right to publish some of the books we did. One time, I received a package in the mail containing a copy of The Crow: The Lazarus Heart which we had published a couple months earlier. The book had been torn to pieces, and the long letter that came with it included a review of the story, including long quotes from the book that were objectionable, and very vivid descriptions of why they were wrong to have been in the book. After several pages of this, the letter writer asked for a refund because the bookstore she purchased it from wouldn't give her money back because she had "torn the filthy book to pieces."
Currently, at the library, we have a faculty member who has been going through the libraries collections and demanding that books be removed for various reasons. Some of the reasons include: obscene, not good examples of literature, bad words, not being true stories (ie. it's fiction), and "I don't like it." So we take the books from him, give them to the circulation manager, and they get reshelved.
Are any of these cases going to lead to something big? No, probably not, but book challenges start somewhere. As with so many things these days, small minded people can be very persistant, and if given the wrong (or right) venue to be heard, they can cause problems. In the meantime, I know where I stand on the issue, and will be fighting if necessary to keep information free for those who desire it.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

It seems to me that one issue hasn't been addressed: the issue of public accountability for public institutions. There is no question of keeping information free for those who desire it--it's a matter of what information is available to those who desire it. Space and funds are limited and libraries make choices about what magazines to subscribe to, what books to put on the circulation shelves, and which ones not to purchase or to sell. If I go down to the public library in my city, odds are good that I won't be able to find a copy of vol III of Jaroslav Pelikan's history of Christian Doctrine. It's almost certain that I won't find an unedited edition of John Howie's _Scots Worthies_ (several later editions were heavily edited so as to remove material that didn't coincide with the editors' theologies). That information is probably not free for those who desire it. However, those who desire to read Howard Stern's book find that that information is free for those who desire it. And maybe there's a good reason that the library has chosen to make the particular information that it has chosen available and not others. I can think of several possible reasons. However, as a public library, those reasons should be open to public scrutiny, debate, and modification.

It seems strange and hypocritical (not to mention arrogant) to say that municipalities, etc. ought not to have any say in what they pay to purchase and house on their library shelves. (Why do we fund libraries at all if it's not becaues we judge that they generally provide a desirable service to the community? And that ought to make continued funding contingent upon actually providing the community with the desired service). It may or may not be a good thing for someone to buy and read Howard Stern's _Private Parts_ with their own money and on their own time. However, it doesn't seem obvious to me that it's a good use of public funds to purchase dozens of copies of _Private Parts_ so that people have it available to them in a public library. It's certainly not obvious that doing so is in the public's interest. Nor does it seem obvious that to ask whether the money might have been better spent on new dictionaries, online academic article databases, or a subscription to an academic journal makes one into a book burning Nazi troglodyte.

And even if the library is not publicly funded but is an endowed library, it still seems that the question of "why do you subscribe to Hustler but not The Weekly Standard" is a legitimate one. And "Because we're smarter and wiser than you and we decided to buy these books" doesn't seem like a very good answer.

Free speech is one thing. The purchase of books for public reading is another. It does not infringe upon the free speech of the Illinois Nazi party if a library declines to carry their journal. It doesn't infringe upon the free speech of Howard Stern if libraries decide that stocking his book won't help them best fulfill their mission (whatever that may be) or serve the public. And it doesn't infringe upon either of their free speech rights if concerned citizens disagree with the idea that stocking Stern's book or the party's pamphlets in their library is a bad idea and use whatever legal/administrative/elective oversight is available to them to ensure that better (in their opinion) judgement is used in the future.

 

[Buttercup]

but a community should have the right to expect a certain level of appropriateness when it comes to the materials that a school uses to impart lessons. Books (especially for young children) can be fun and funny without being stupid.

But whose definition of appropriate are we going to use?

I manage a branch library in a large public library system. About half a dozen times each year, I end up with a parent in my office complaining about the 'appropriateness' of something they found on our shelf. The following is exactly what I tell them.

"I'm glad you came to talk to me. I can see that you are a concerned parent, and that's wonderful. And I fully support your right to control what your children read. I support it so much that I wouldn't dream of taking that right away from you. But here's the thing. I also support the right of every other parent who uses this library to control what *their* children read. And sometimes, not all parents agree on what is or is not appropriate. For example, we have a book on our shelf called Daddy's Roommate which is the story, told through a child's eyes, of his gay father and the father's new boyfriend. Some of our patrons don't want their children to read that book, for various reasons. But some other of our patrons want and need that book, because it reflects their lifestyle. Now, however you might feel about the choices those other parents have made, the truth is that they pay taxes just like you do, and I do, and every other adult in this county does. This library and its collection belong to *all* of us. So I have to buy books that appeal to many different sorts of people. You can find books in this building that represent every point on the political spectrum, from far right to far left. You can find books that address opposite sides of controversial issues here. Pro abortion and anti abortion. Pro homosexuality and anti homosexuality. Pro Harry Potter and anti Harry Potter. I invite you to read the books that appeal to you, and to select the books for your children that are appropriate for you family's values. Isn't it wonderful that we live in a free country where we can all make these decisions for ourselves?"

In seven years, that has shut every one of them up. Because it's the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

 

[Buttercup]

Lots of intellignet and valid points. Look up there ^ to read them.

Oh, ye most noble and ancient of basilisks, after reading your post, I checked my library's online catalog. We do indeed have the History of Christian Doctrine, but it's 5 volumes, not 3. We also have Socts Worthies, but being a revised edition dated 1870, I suspect that it is indeed edited. I further suspect that the unedited edition would be nearly impossible to find, and quite expensive if if could be.

Materials selection for a public library is a balancing act, as I'm sure you can imagine. On the one hand, a library wants to purhcase the 'best books' but on the other hand, the library is well aware that most people don't want to read those books. They want to read Danielle Steel and Howard Stern. So the selectors have to try to decide what mix will best serve the needs of their clientelle. The selector also has to be careful to remove their personal agenda from the mix. Or perhaps I would be more honest if I said "try to remove their personal agenda from the mix" because, as we all know, human beings are subjective by nature, and so the best we can do is to try to be aware of our inherent biases, and not let them rule us when we should be striving for objectivity.

Municipalities do indeed have the right to set community standards, and to expect their schools and libraries to uphold them. In my experience, however, outside of the most extreme examples of behavior or belief, it's hard to get any random group of people to agree what those standards should be. So in the end, the schools and libraries have to work at that balance I mentioned above.

There was another point related to your post that I wanted to address. Money. Resources are indeed finite, be they shelf space or dollars to purchase the books in the first place. It is much easier to please everyone if the library in question has enough money to buy the books that you want, and the books the little old lady down the street wants, and the books that the nutjob on the park bench wants too. When there isn't enough money to do all that, most libraries that I've worked at will try to please the largest number of taxpayers. This means the library will refrain from buying Scots Worthies before it will give up Danielle Steele and Howard Stern.

Things may be different elsewhere, but in the US, pop culture is the engine that drives just about everything. I'm not saying that's good. I'm just saying that's the way it is, from where I'm sitting.