Tennessee County bans prize-wining "Maus"

[Bludogdem]

Not for children, but it should be in high school libraries for sure.

It was removed from the 8th grade Language Arts curriculum . Not banned.

Wasn’t removed from high school.

Wasn’t banned from the school library.

[Bludogdem]

Again, you're either being willfully dishonest or just plain ignorant.

Was the Tennessee banning put forth to the voters? Did the people of the county vote for it?

Nope. So, you can't scream "DEMOCRACY!!!"

The voters voted for a school board to make decisions. That is democracy.

[gounion]

Pot to kettle

Yep. Right back atcha. You can dish it out, but you're too much of a child to take it.

[gounion]

The voters voted for a school board to make decisions. That is democracy.

Ah so you're on the book banning side too. Do you like the Texas guy banning 850 books?

You conservatives never change do you?

[carmenjonze]

It was removed from the 8th grade Language Arts curriculum . Not banned.

Wasn’t removed from high school.

Wasn’t banned from the school library.

We have said this several times in this thread. Please notify the second-dumbest person on this board, who keeps saying the book should not be in school libraries because it portrays Polish people as pigs.

Dumbest Person no. 1 otoh thinks kids should have to download it off the internet.

[carmenjonze]

The voters voted for a school board to make decisions.

What a stupid thing to say.

Do you think Jewish voters voted for these dumb bigots to ban Maus from the 8th grade curriculum?

[carmenjonze]

Ah so you're on the book banning side too. Do you like the Texas guy banning 850 books?

You conservatives never change do you?

Conservatives will always be dumb as dirt.

The reason they are conservatives is because they choose to be dumb as dirt, even with a universe of information right at their fingertips.

[ProfX]

Since you cited the Wiki,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maus#Remo ... curriculum

On January 10, 2022, the board of trustees of McMinn County Schools in east Tennessee, in a 10–0 decision, removed Maus from its curriculum, in response to concerns over its use in 8th grade English Language Arts classes.[136] The board cited as its reasons "rough language" and "unnecessary" profanity (eight words, including "damn"), a small drawing of a nude woman drawn as a mouse, mentions of murder, violence, and suicide, whether it was age-appropriate, and what the board deemed the values of the community; one board member said that at one time the author of Maus had drawn cartoons for Playboy magazine.[137][138][139]

(my note: uh ... so?)

The ban overrode a Tennessee state curriculum review that had approved the book. A former teacher who spoke at the meeting observed that "there is nothing pretty about the Holocaust, and for me this was a great way to depict a horrific time in history." The vote attracted media attention the day before Holocaust Remembrance Day,[138] and was covered by media in the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Israel.[140][141][142][143]

Spiegelman called the decision baffling, "Orwellian", and "daffily myopic", continuing "I can't believe the word 'damn' would get the book jettisoned out of the school on its own." Spiegelman said that he got the impression that the board members were asking, "Why can't they teach a nicer Holocaust?"[144][137][145]

The Tennessean noted the significant backlash to the decision.[146] Tennessee State Representative John Ray Clemmons, serving on the House Education Administration Committee, criticized the board's action, saying: "Books are being stripped out of public libraries that give detailed personal accounts from survivors and about victims of the Holocaust."[147][148] Tennessee's US Representatives Jim Cooper and Steve Cohen condemned the ban; Cooper called the decision "outrageous" and "really shameful", and Cohen said that he hoped to see the board's decision reversed.[149] Author Neil Gaiman tweeted: "There's only one kind of people who would vote to ban Maus, whatever they are calling themselves these days."[144] Tennessee Wesleyan University librarian Alex Sharp, in McMinn County, pointed out that "children see more than eight swear words in one TikTok video nowadays", and that "When we start banning books, we get into really dangerous territory where we are stunting our children, and not allowing them to have exposure to important ideas."[150]

[snip]

An Episcopal church in the county announced that it would conduct a discussion of Maus on February 3, including discussion of the complicity of many churches in the Holocaust.[157]

[snip][end]

[ProfX]

The voters voted for a school board to make decisions. That is democracy.

So are elected officials being held accountable for their actions.

Representative democracy works that way - when they are not representing the wishes of a majority of voters/parents of schoolchildren in their district, they need to be held accountable. Technically, of course, I think they also need to listen to teachers and students whose decisions they affect, too, they could be called "stakeholders".

If there are 3 Moms for Liberty in the district that wanted the book removed, but 97 parents who feel otherwise (numbers are of course hypothetical), I don't think they are doing this.

As I just noted, the board actually overturned the state position on the use of the text in the curriculum, which HAD found it to be age appropriate.

[carmenjonze]

As we all know, this CRT stuff was just a ruse to start using the law to censor anything the right doesn't like. Reality check:

"
In Florida, the legislature is pushing through a ban of history education that causes "discomfort," and despite claims to the contrary, there's simply no way to teach about the history of lynching or slavery or Jim Crow without said discomfort. As Kathryn Joyce reported for Salon, one of the most immediate results was a school district in central Florida canceling a training seminar for teachers on how to teach subjects such as the March on Washington, Brown v. Board of Education, and the Montgomery bus boycott.

"

Next time that blithering confederate Glennfs whimpers about cancel culture, somebody remind him of this one.

_________

Black News Channel
@BNCNews

#Criticalracetheory concerns led a Florida school district to cancel a seminar for teachers over the #civilrightsmovement. @marclamonthill spoke with Flagler College professor @dr_mbutler, the lead scholar of the seminar, to discuss the incident. #BlackNewsTonight

[VIDEO]

https://twitter.com/BNCNews/status/1488702452358696962

[carmenjonze]

Another reminder that bigoted conservative repressives are not just banning a book from a curriculum in Tennessee. They are actively seeking to books in school libraries.

Banned: Books on race and sexuality are disappearing from Texas schools in record numbers - NBC News

Facing pressure from parents and threats of criminal charges, some districts have ignored policies meant to prevent censorship. Librarians and students are pushing back.

KATY, Texas — From a secluded spot in her high school library, a 17-year-old girl spoke softly into her cellphone, worried that someone might overhear her say the things she’d hidden from her parents for years. They don’t know she’s queer, the student told a reporter, and given their past comments about homosexuality’s being a sin, she’s long feared they would learn her secret if they saw what she reads in the library.

That space, with its endless rows of books about characters from all sorts of backgrounds, has been her “safe haven,” she said — one of the few places where she feels completely free to be herself.

But books, including one of her recent favorites, have been vanishing from the shelves of Katy Independent School District libraries the past few months.

Gone: “Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts),” a book she’d read last year about a gay teenager who isn’t shy about discussing his adventurous sex life. Also banished: “The Handsome Girl and Her Beautiful Boy,” “All Boys Aren’t Blue” and “Lawn Boy” — all coming-of-age stories that prominently feature LGBTQ characters and passages about sex. Some titles were removed after parents formally complained, but others were quietly banned by the district without official reviews.

“As I’ve struggled with my own identity as a queer person, it’s been really, really important to me that I have access to these books,” said the girl, whom NBC News is not naming to avoid revealing her sexuality. “And I’m sure it’s really important to other queer kids. You should be able to see yourself reflected on the page.”

Her safe haven is now a battleground in an unprecedented effort by parents and conservative politicians in Texas to ban books dealing with race, sexuality and gender from schools, an NBC News investigation has found. Hundreds of titles have been pulled from libraries across the state for review, sometimes over the objections of school librarians, several of whom told NBC News they face increasingly hostile work environments and mounting pressure to pre-emptively pull books that might draw complaints.

Records requests to nearly 100 school districts in the Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin regions — a small sampling of the state’s 1,250 public school systems — revealed 75 formal requests by parents or community members to ban books from libraries during the first four months of this school year. In comparison, only one library book challenge was filed at those districts during the same time period a year earlier, records show. A handful of the districts reported more challenges this year than in the past two decades combined.

All but a few of the challenges this school year targeted books dealing with racism or sexuality, the majority of them featuring LGBTQ characters and explicit descriptions of sex. Many of the books under fire are newer titles, purchased by school librarians in recent years as part of a nationwide movement to diversify the content available to public school children.

[carmenjonze]

[snip]

An Episcopal church in the county announced that it would conduct a discussion of Maus on February 3, including discussion of the complicity of many churches in the Holocaust.[157]

[snip][end]

McMinn County church to host Maus book discussion, after educators remove it from curriculum - WBIR

Correction: "educators" did not remove it from the curriculum. Ideologues on the school board removed it from the curriculum.

Organizers at St. Paul's Episcopal Church said it is important for parishes to discuss the book. They said that too many Christian churches in Europe and the U.S. did not protest the events under the Nazi regime as they unfolded in the 1930s and early 1940s, leading to Nazi Germany killing around 6 million Jewish people during the Holocaust.

Organizers said many churches chose to turn away from the suffering out of a sense that "those events were not their concern." However, they said anti-semitic is still prevalent today and affects communities across the world, and in Tennessee.

Sounds like JoeMemphis.

[carmenjonze]

You posted a picture of Nazis burning books and claimed that’s what I supported.

GoU was right to compare you to book-burning Nazis.

You guys are so far-gone in your depravity, you think book censorship is "representative democracy."

The other con genuinely thinks it's his family that is being oppressed by a book about the Holocaust being on public school library shelves.

This type of fascism-creep is exactly how authoritarian governments come to power in other countries, and why segregationism lasted so long in this one. It's not lost on anyone that in the present day, the three of you are sympathetic to the Jan. 6th insurrection.

You are such the fucking coward.

You have a filthy mouth. The slavery church would not approve.

[JoeMemphis]

Since you cited the Wiki,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maus#Remo ... curriculum

On January 10, 2022, the board of trustees of McMinn County Schools in east Tennessee, in a 10–0 decision, removed Maus from its curriculum, in response to concerns over its use in 8th grade English Language Arts classes.[136] The board cited as its reasons "rough language" and "unnecessary" profanity (eight words, including "damn"), a small drawing of a nude woman drawn as a mouse, mentions of murder, violence, and suicide, whether it was age-appropriate, and what the board deemed the values of the community; one board member said that at one time the author of Maus had drawn cartoons for Playboy magazine.[137][138][139]

(my note: uh ... so?)

The ban overrode a Tennessee state curriculum review that had approved the book. A former teacher who spoke at the meeting observed that "there is nothing pretty about the Holocaust, and for me this was a great way to depict a horrific time in history." The vote attracted media attention the day before Holocaust Remembrance Day,[138] and was covered by media in the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Israel.[140][141][142][143]

Spiegelman called the decision baffling, "Orwellian", and "daffily myopic", continuing "I can't believe the word 'damn' would get the book jettisoned out of the school on its own." Spiegelman said that he got the impression that the board members were asking, "Why can't they teach a nicer Holocaust?"[144][137][145]

The Tennessean noted the significant backlash to the decision.[146] Tennessee State Representative John Ray Clemmons, serving on the House Education Administration Committee, criticized the board's action, saying: "Books are being stripped out of public libraries that give detailed personal accounts from survivors and about victims of the Holocaust."[147][148] Tennessee's US Representatives Jim Cooper and Steve Cohen condemned the ban; Cooper called the decision "outrageous" and "really shameful", and Cohen said that he hoped to see the board's decision reversed.[149] Author Neil Gaiman tweeted: "There's only one kind of people who would vote to ban Maus, whatever they are calling themselves these days."[144] Tennessee Wesleyan University librarian Alex Sharp, in McMinn County, pointed out that "children see more than eight swear words in one TikTok video nowadays", and that "When we start banning books, we get into really dangerous territory where we are stunting our children, and not allowing them to have exposure to important ideas."[150]

[snip]

An Episcopal church in the county announced that it would conduct a discussion of Maus on February 3, including discussion of the complicity of many churches in the Holocaust.[157]

[snip][end]

Was the book banned? Was it removed from the library? Or was the decision ultimately not to use the book in the 8th grade language arts curriculum? I’ve heard banning, censored, burning etc. what exactly was decided?

[gounion]

I notice that you didn’t reference what my comment was responding to. Why is that. You are such the fucking coward.

I'll TELL you why I didn't reference what your comment was responding to. The main reason is you lied - you tried to pretend you hadn't called me an authoritarian. You can never take responsibility for your actions. You lie that you didn't, when your words are there. Then, when the egg is all over your face, as usual, you scream "YOU MADE ME DO IT!"

No. YOU are responsible for your actions. Not me. You are worse than what you accuse me of.

[gounion]

Was the book banned? Was it removed from the library? Or was the decision ultimately not to use the book in the 8th grade language arts curriculum? I’ve heard banning, censored, burning etc. what exactly was decided?

Are you fucking able to read?

[carmenjonze]

Was the book banned?

Yes, it was banned from the 8th grade curriculum. This has been addressed already by me and others in this thread.

Was it removed from the library?

Please tell your intellectually-stunted friend crying about the depiction of Polish people that to his chagrin, it never was.

Or was the decision ultimately not to use the book in the 8th grade language arts curriculum? I’ve heard banning, censored, burning etc. what exactly was decided?

You should have read the post you just replied to before posting this troll trash.

That said, you guys think "government bureaucrats" banning books and removing them from school and public libraries on behalf of a few astroturfed rightwing operative "parents" is "democracy" and "liberty".

I bet you alto think Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, too.

[gounion]

Was the book banned? Was it removed from the library? Or was the decision ultimately not to use the book in the 8th grade language arts curriculum? I’ve heard banning, censored, burning etc. what exactly was decided?

You know, you raise ignorance to an art. Why can you not find the answer to these questions yourself?

[carmenjonze]

You know, you raise ignorance to an art. Why can you not find the answer to these questions yourself?

The most ignorant, uninformed, and intellectually-incurious people in any given thread are always conservative men.

Never, ever, fails.

[gounion]

The most ignorant, uninformed, and intellectually-incurious people in any given thread are always conservative men.

Never, ever, fails.

In all these pages, his ONLY argument is just screaming "DEMOCRACY" and saying we hate democracy. While he sort of tries to say he's not in favor of censorship, that's exactly what he does, in fact, favor. He will not speak against either the Tennessee school board nor the idiot in Texas banning 850 books. He refuses to take any stand whatsoever.

It's truly gutless.

[Libertas]

The most ignorant, uninformed, and intellectually-incurious people in any given thread are always conservative men.

Never, ever, fails.

And they never get better, they never admit it, they never say “oh wait a minute, I was wrong.”

NEVER. You won’t find one example of it here.

Right now they are rooting on the Russians against America and the West, the cons on this board are doing exactly that because they vote for Republicans, hell they probably do support Russia over Biden and America.

[marindem01]

The voters voted for a school board to make decisions. That is democracy.

No it is not. This the very essence of "Big Government". "Big Government" is taking upon itself the right to decide can and/or can be read in a public library. Even if that what is being read is in Public School Library.

Government does NOT have the right to censor what the public can read. It's called the First Amendment.

[carmenjonze]

In all these pages, his ONLY argument is just screaming "DEMOCRACY" and saying we hate democracy. While he sort of tries to say he's not in favor of censorship, that's exactly what he does, in fact, favor. He will not speak against either the Tennessee school board nor the idiot in Texas banning 850 books. He refuses to take any stand whatsoever.

It's truly gutless.

"DEMOCRACY!!!!!1"

"PARENTS!!!1!"

"GO DOWNLOAD IT FROM THE INTERNET!!!!!@!" - something he's too lazy to do his own self

He, Glennfs, Bluedogdem and some of these compliant "moderates" around here are dumb, willing cogs in a very destructive wheel.

[marindem01]

Loving your country is NOT a meteric. You cannot decide unto yourself that while you believe in Democracy, you have the right unto yourself to decide what others can read, hear, say, how the worship or where people cannot gather to protest.

You don't want to read "Maus", fine don't. But just because YOU do not want to read it, does not mean you decide that others can't read it either. There were and are people who still want the take To Kill A Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men.

I hate Mein Kamph and Marxist Theory is just plain boring. That does not mean I would ever someone else what they can read. I had Chairman Mao's Little Red Book on the shelf of my quarters at Forth Meyer.

Censorship for self-serving reasons is the worst kind censorship. Just because YOU do not like Maus or want to read it, but you do not have the right to decide for others.

And it most assuredly NOT any form of Democracy.

[carmenjonze]

No I am for common sense and local citizens being incharge of what is taught in the public schools within their community.

WHICH "local citizens"? The dupes of the Kochs and AEI and the Heritage Foundation?

Or normal "local citizens" like St. Paul's Episcopal church, which supports the book and is holding a free and open to the public meeting about Christian churches and their abysmal response to the Holocaust.

viewtopic.php?p=14708#p14708

You could even go yourself and learn something about who "local citizens" of any locale actually are.

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/registe ... hOTHmobDN_

BTW there isnt a censorship law in Florida.

Uninformed, and incocorrect. An anti-CRT bill has been passed and related ones proposed, all in the same mold as you guys' Heritage Foundation, anti-CRT laws that you're implementing around the country. The intended results are:

• limiting the teaching of US history in compliance with American exceptionalist ideology
Critical Race Theory Is Banned in These States - Newsweek

• canceling history education courses about how to teach the Civil Rights movement viewtopic.php?p=14700#p14700

• surveilling teachers with bodycams and mics
Proposal Would Lead to Surveillance Cameras in Every Classroom, and Teachers to Wear Microphones - Flagler Live

• allowing parents to sue if they think you guys' chimera version of "CRT" is taught
DeSantis Unveils ‘Stop W.O.K.E. Act’ So Parents Can Sue Over Critical Race Theory In Schools - Forbes

That first one literally bans the use of both the 1619 Project, and this distorted version of critical race theory that none of you have read in your propagandized lives.

I love it citizens taking charge of what goes on in their public schools are now a mob

There is indeed a type of "local citizen" that approaches public schools with a mob mentality. They can be seen on a weekly basis threatening teachers, threatening school board members, shrieking into the mic, spouting ridiculous conspiracies about trans girls in sports and masks and vaccines and whatever they've been told "CRT" is.

Invariably, they are nearly 100% 1- white, 2- conservative, 3- repeating Koch talking points, and most importantly 4- all of the above.