Banning YA and younger books

[littlemissattitude]

Originally Posted by Brown Rat

Diane Ravitch, who has published several books on the history of education in the U.S., offers some amusing (or horrifying) examples of this sort of self-censorship in The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (2003).

That's a fascinating book, Brown Rat. I read it soon after it was published, and I'm afraid that while I was reading it, I had a bad habit of stopping, asking whoever happened to be around when I was reading, "Can you believe this?" and reading passages of the book aloud at them. Horrible of me, I know, but I just couldn't help myself.

One of the most amazing things in the book was the part about the depiction of our elders...can't say senior citizen, can we? There was a prohibition against picturing older individuals as frail or sickly or using a wheelchair or walker or cane. Well, that is my mother they are erasing from existence in school books...she appears frail (although she's a lot stronger than she looks), and she uses a walker to get around sometimes. The reality is that some folks become ill and infirm as they age.

Then again, the information in Ravitch's book leads me to believe that textbook publishers have only a glancing familiarity with reality and don't want school-age children to have any knowledge of the real world.

Sorry. I still get angry when I think about the social engineering that lists like those reported by Ravitch. Of course, we don't want sexism and ageism and racism promoted. But they are going about achieving the goal of defeating those attitudes in the wrong way. Grrrrrrr.

[j. d. worthington]

I am going to restrict myself to two quotes and one brief (I hope) comment; else you are all going to be exposed to the educational and possibly entertaining spectacle of my brain exploding all over your screens. First, the quotes:

"Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it." -- George Santayana

"Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead to the future." -- Euripedes

This is the price we pay for viewing literature as entertainment rather than what it truly is: the use of myth to explore the very heart's blood of what it means to be human.

[Brown Rat]

Grrrr, indeed. There's probably a publisher's checklist that bans stories that depict humans growling . . .

[mikeo]

Originally Posted by the smiling weirwood

Actually it was Mikeo who derailed it, we just helped!;D

I'm so proud! =D

Nice post Brown Rat - I'm going to have a look for that book, even if reading it may be bad for my blood pressure..