Stogie1020 wrote:Frank, I beg to differ. I think that local determination of what the local community feels is appropriate FOR USE IN THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM is exactly why we have locally elected school boards.
From the NYT:
"According to minutes of its meeting, the 10-person board, in McMinn County, Tenn., voted on Jan. 10 to remove the book from the eighth-grade curriculum. Members of the board said the book, which portrays Jews as mice and Nazis as cats in recounting the author’s parents’ experience during the Holocaust, contained inappropriate curse words and a depiction of a naked character."
They decided that using this book, with curse words and depictions of nudity, weren't necessary to teach their community's young students the lessons surrounding the Holocaust.
I am sure you can walk into Barnes and Noble (does that still exist?) in this town and buy (or order) the book. The school board simply decided it was not the appropriate vessel to teach a particular lesson in the formal curriculum for eigth graders.
you make a good point that I overlooked.
I may have blended this specific action into all the things I keep hearing/reading about requests and even demands to remove more books than ever from Libraries.
Related to the misdirection of the op that I may have instigated, I happened to read an opinion piece yesterday written by Michael Mailer, son of Norman. Interesting take on "cancels" and decisions being made by publishing houses...wrote a thought provoking line (several actually):
"The Blue Team cancels independence with howls of wokeness.
The Red Team cancels independence with cries of fake news.
What has happened to America?"
He listed names such as Mailer, Roth, Updike, Bellow, Styron, Twain, Picasso! All with some type of objectionable private or public behavior or other stuff.
"I'm all for bringing skeletons out of the closet" he writes, "And reasonable people can disagree about what to do with them. But authors committing bad acts does not invalidate their cultural legacies. Their work should be judged by what they wrote."