I'm reading "Schools nationwide are quietly removing books from their libraries/Meet the librarians fighting bans and scrambling to preserve children’s freedom to read" by Hannah Natanson (WaPo).
Research shows there is an association between children reading certain kinds of explicit texts — those that depict sexual violence, degrade women or do not discuss boundaries or consent — and engaging in risky sexual behaviors, as well as sex at an early age, according to Amy Egbert, a research fellow in Brown University’s Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior.
But, Egbert said, she doesn’t believe that those types of books are available in school libraries. The books being challenged, she said, are often those that deal with difficult topics, featuring a main character struggling to understand their own sexuality or experiencing some kind of racial tensions or racism.
Removing those books is an obstacle to children’s development, she said, pointing to research — including on abstinence-only sex education — that shows that not talking about subjects with children does not change their behavior.
So... Egbert said there are the good and the bad sort of books with sex for children and she doesn't believe that the bad sort are available in school libraries. Wouldn't that be because librarians are vigilant about which sex books they keep in the school library? Now, there may be a dispute about where the line is between what's bad for kids and what's good, but who should decide? I think the article is saying that librarians are being proactive precisely because they don't want to have to get into a big public debate with parents.
Why the quiet removal of books?
Why don't they conspicuously announce the list of books they previously chose to include in the collection and are now removing? Isn't it because they don't want to talk about it? Why can't we talk about it? Ironically, there's a fear of talking about what sexual material is appropriate for children. They'd rather deaccession the book than defend their original choice.Here are the specific books mentioned in the article (with my Amazon links and quotes from a publisher or professional reviewer):
"Gender Queer" — "Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears."
"Lawn Boy" — "Moving . . . Evison convincingly evokes the small disasters and humiliations that beset America’s working poor. Mike’s gradual growth into self-awareness is punctuated by moments of human kindness and grace that transpire in and among broken-down trucks, trailer parks, and strip malls."
"All Are Welcome" — "Celebrate a school community as a great common ground where families of all kinds connect and share in their children’s educational journey…. the book’s refrain of 'All are welcome here' feels both deeply reassuring and almost radical in our polarized time."
"It Feels Good to Be Yourself" — "This expansive, straightforward framing of gender emphasizes curiosity, joy, and positive self-expression . . . . Exceptional."
"Families, Families, Families!" — "Moms, dads, sisters, brothers — and even Great Aunt Sue — appear in dozens of combinations, demonstrating all kinds of nontraditional families! Silly animals are cleverly depicted in framed portraits, and offer a warm celebration of family love."
"All Boys Aren’t Blue" — "From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys."
"Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe" — "Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship - the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime."
"Heartstopper" — "Charlie and Nick are at the same school, but they've never met ... until one day when they're made to sit together. They quickly become friends, and soon Charlie is falling hard for Nick, even though he doesn't think he has a chance.... 'The queer graphic novel we wished we had at high school.' Gay Times..."
"Prince and Knight" — "This is an illuminating fairy tale for young readers to be able to see that not every prince would like to marry a princess...A great addition to any library or classroom, especially where fairy tales are in demand."
"My Princess Boy" —"Dyson loves pink, sparkly things. Sometimes he wears dresses. Sometimes he wears jeans. He likes to wear his princess tiara, even when climbing trees. He’s a Princess Boy. Inspired by the author’s son, and by her own initial struggles to understand, this heartwarming book is a call for tolerance and an end to bullying and judgments."
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65 comments:
I have heard about 'straw man"
is there such a thing as "straw context' where 'straw man'? proliferates
Five-year-olds are not struggling with their sexual identity.
They think the other sex has cooties, and that the paste tastes kind of good.
The radical left is a cult.
I would like children to learn how to read well in K-3 first. A child who likes to read and reads well will search out further material on topics of interest to read and evaluate for themselves. A child who never attains a reading level even equivalent to their grade level, let alone higher, knows only what someone else tells them the printed material says and is less likely to question it because they have no point of comparison.
Spoliation of evidence = supports the inference of a guilty mind
I thought these people were Out and Proud. Why are they not seeking engagement with their customers, i.e. the parents and taxpayers?
It's a very tricky subject and really requires me to know the books and consider 'good judgement' when it comes to which kids and what age when it comes to these topics. And that's different for different people. But...having good judgement when it comes to our kids has not been in vogue for a few decades. Which is why this is a topic now.
But I got stuck at the first words: "Psychologists, academics and librarians reached by The Washington Post..."
Because I wonder how many psychologists, academics, and librarians the Post actually spoke with, where were they located (all in Maryland or DC or perhaps they called some in Michigan or Texas? Nah. You know they didn't. Further, did they make that up? Did they actually talk with more than one psychologist or does the reporter have a psychologist friend she knows.
Sorry to doubt the reporting from WaPo, but its WaPo. I'd be a fool to take this on it's merits alone. They've proven that themselves over time. I'd say, if we spent less time banning good judgement we'd not have to worry about banning books.
This is about the divided attention and limited time of dual income families and single parents more than changing standards. Back in the days before it became left wing political and shrank, the Parent-Teacher Organization (pta.org) was a massive force in schooling. Parents were closely involved with school and they played a large role in shaping course content and ensuring their children's success. The country was then dominated by traditional protestant Christian standards, so all talk about sexuality would have been held for puberty (or even later).
Ignore the sexual content for a moment, as traditional parental responsibilities were GIVEN by parents as well as TAKEN by school boards and library decisions. Strong, forceful parental involvement is only a shock to detached bubble-dwelling people and communities...northern Virginia swung sharply conservative in last year's election because of the novel, naive, and downright goofy claim that the authorities rather than parents should control school curricula in a DEMOCRACY. [Plus some push related and extremely radical claims that parents shouldn't be told of vaccine efforts, nor told about gender identity practices of their own children, etc. etc. etc.]
The democratical child groomers are having to come up with new euphemisms and even muddier language to achieve their goals.
Unfortunately for them, the lights have been turned on and parents have become wiser.
My favorite school library book was Fun Fare, a collection of Readers' Digest humor.
It includes the "I was sure I had two when I came in" story.
How about this approach:
Okay, teachers and school librarians, once you've started educating your students to a level of proficiency in reading and math that comports with their grade level, then we can talk about having you undertake to supplement the role previously filled by family, of teaching about sexuality.
Until then, butt out. You've got plenty of teaching to do that isn't going to freak out parents, many of whom would be very likely to disagree about your woke/identity/queer agenda.
So get cracking on reading and math! It's not like we need your help on the sex-ed front. Besides, given how thoroughly you've bollixed-up reading and math education, we're not too sure we ought to put you in charge of anything further.
"Psychologists, academics and librarians that lust after small children, and want to groom them said they see value in introducing children to books that contain challenging material, including of the sexual kind,
fify!
Child porn is now the "In Thing" and the Supreme Court will instruct us. Get those kindergartners indoctrinated !
"Gender Queer," at the least, has explicit images and graphic prose descriptions of gay sex. Entirely inappropriate for any grade below high school, and I'm not sure it would be appropriate there either. Same thing if it were a book about heterosexual sex.
Of course, in my middle school library there were books like Relic, with strong language and graphic descriptions of a monster tearing people apart and eating their brains, which today I wouldn't think appropriate for my 12 year old self to be reading, but it didn't harm me. I think.
I've seen a few of those "All are welcome here" signs around my town.
I wonder the people who display those signs feel about welcoming Jehovah's Witnesses and neo-nazis?
It is expected, on the left, that you will be intolerant of non-radical point of view.
Ugh, can’t we just let kids be kids?! What’s the rush in throwing them into the pool of adult neuroticism so fast and early? Quit putting adult motives on kids who still believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. Encourage curiosity, wonder and choices and not lock them into a path at freaking 12 years old. How many kids are obsessed at being astronauts or marine biologist and then discover something completely different months or years later? How many people reading this blog thought they were going to be fireman or vets in elementary? Bully for you if you ended up that but I bet you got to decide that as an adult.
There is absolutely value in acquiring knowledge on difficult and diverse subjects, but there’s also value in knowing the time to introduce those things to young minds. Childhood is such a brief period in human lives, I don’t know why we’re obsessed as a culture in cutting it shorter than it is already. /rant finished
If all of the material is appropriate for the age of the children why must the school library collection have books removed?
Social progress: Keep women appointed, available, and taxable; normalize human rites for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes; and, NOW, child sexual exploitation, too. Throw another baby on the barbie, it's over.
Why would anyone believe Amy the Expert from Brown?
Brown is named after a slaveowner and trader and Brown refuses to change its name.
And I’d bet Big Money that Amy is wearing a mask right now and is a true believer in CAGW. Fuck her!
“After inheriting his father's estate in 1791, Brown became such a great benefactor to the school that it was renamed Brown University for him in 1804 when he donated $5,000 to the college.“ His father was a slave trader. The money came from slave trading. I will never rest until Brown University is renamed George Floyd University.
Gotta groom those children so the pedophiles get what they want. Normalizing this is the new Progressive thing to do.
Roseann said...
A child who never attains a reading level even equivalent to their grade level, let alone higher, knows only what someone else tells them the printed material says and is less likely to question it because they have no point of comparison.
In the Olden Days, the Church wouldn't let the Bible be printed in "the vulcate", because they didn't want people reading it on their own (or so i was told); that is, for Exactly the reasons Roseann gives.
Comparison/Contrast
*The new powers that be;
*Are Happy with school kids not being able to read at a 1st grade level
*Don't want ANYONE to read, ANYTHING (just the veiwscreen like in Fahrenheit 451)
*Block opposition voices from twitter, facebook, etc
makes me wonder why?
finally, What Sort of Person, wants to talk to preteens about sex?
Seems like it would take a certain type
Of All the Things, in the World, to be concerned about..
What Sort of Person, would think that their "right" to talk to preteens about sex would be THE thing to be concerned about?
Seems like it would take a certain type
I'm reading "Schools nationwide are quietly removing books from their libraries/Meet the librarians fighting bans and scrambling to preserve children’s freedom to read" by Hannah Natanson (WaPo).
So long as Hck Finn is not one of the books that "librarians" are "scrambling to preserve children’s freedom to read", all teh rest is bullshit.
The totalitarian thug "librarians" are fighting to keep left wing propaganda in, and fighting to keep their power to indoctrinate kids into the Left's fucked up ideas, nothing more.
There is nothing principled, moral, or ethical abotu what they're doing. it's all power politics
This gets linked to a lot of non-WaPo subscribers with a personal interest.
It's going to take a lot of riots to distract us from the child-porn/creep-factor branding going on here. I think we ran into the Overton limit of the culture war. If the system doesn't police itself to prevent this, the traditional culture (or what's left of it) will. It's showing that it is up for the job by what we've seen so far from the traditional culture's media (outside the NYT/WaPo/Atlantic/etc media Althouse reads so we don't have to - and note how it even starts to come out here - thanks, AA). The education blob is just now finding out just how mad we are at them. When we go here, they know somebody, somewhere is playing for keeps.
I might be able to think of a more uncomfortable piece of branding to carry into an election year, but I'd have to try really, really hard to do it. This doesn't have a temporal dimension, by the way. These values have held sway for far longer than any of us can track history back. We evolve hard away from this, as a species.
Congratulations, Progressives!
Just as the right has to do with the proto-Nazis and such, you've got to keep your house clean or you'll find out where the old diseases have been hiding. I have a lot of teacher friends that are simultaneously livid and terrified by all this. Kids are disappearing from their schools and getting their instruction at home, and that's in Florida. FLORIDA.
And it’s up to parents to decide what their primary school aged children read in that regard. Schools can provide books and lessons on reading writing and ‘rithmatic then if they demonstrate responsibility we will consider letting them try history again. Stay in your goddamned lane and stop trying to talk sex with other people’s children. Why is that so hard for progressives to understand?
When I was about ten, I tried to check out of the local public library a book called "The Foxes of Harrow."
It is one of those costume drama novels popular in the 40s and 50s. The librarian called my mother to see if I was allowed to read such racy books. Interestingly, the author, Frank Yerby, was black.
Times have changed.
'Lawn Boy' is the one where an adult tells the 12 year old protagonist about his sexual encounter when the adult was 12 years old.
I mean, this is a semi autobiographical book. This anecdote puts up all sorts of red flags.
In my suburban town west of Boston, a school Diversity
submcommittee last year quietly offered a "recommended summer reading list" pushing Critical Race Theory (e.g. Kendi's "Stamped (For Kids)", and several others extolling CRT/EQUITY as well as portraying Trayvon Martin and Michael "Don't Shoot" Brown as innocents murdered by whites.
The minutes of one subcommittee meeting noted that parents were objecting to another book speaking of "white devils", but......nahhhhh....let leave it in.
These books are aimed at K-4 students.
Meanwhile the citizens of this 1.5% black town are blissfully unaware that the CRT/DEI radicals are slowly but relentlessly destroying the town's reputation for educational excellence.
The latter remind me of parasitic wasps that lay eggs into eucalyptus-munching moth caterpillar hosts, which are then eaten out bit by bit by the larvae.
I suspect the 98.5% non-black citizenry don't know what's going on.
But I swear I've heard a few of them humming the Ohio Express's 1968 hit....
...."Yummy yummy yummy I got love in my tummy...."
.. A great addition to any library or classroom, especially where fairy tales are in demand.
I see what they did there...
Marlo Thomas has a lot to answer for...
The queer community is not educated/initiated by their parents (as are almost every other community). Instead, to maintain any sort of continuity as a community, the next generation must be educated by older volunteers. You can guess how this will often turn out.
Think not about who puts these books on the shelf, but who writes these books and publishes them. What is it that these people want? Artistic expression? Advise to younger self? . . . Maybe. . . Maybe not.
Dude. School got weird.
It is not surprising to me that the party of pro abortionists and trans activists are pro kiddie porn of any shade. Kids are to be acted upon without intervention of their parental unit. Because experts. Didn't you see... they said "experts".
The Finders weren't Amish.
Psychologists, academics and librarians reached by The Washington Post...
Let's parse this out.
Pyschologists went from considering homosexuality and transgenderism as mental disorders to considering them perfectly normal, not to mention considering mutilation of children to be perfectly healthy, reflecting a left-wing takeover of the profession. Their concerns here are obviously self-serving and completely predictable, given that grooming children to be the next generation of the LGBT community is something that would please them on a personal level. Also, anyone they screw up then becomes a paying client to get "fixed."
Academics have been, at this point, well established to be overwhelming left-wing and overwhelming intolerant of competing ideas beyond what they teach right now. Honestly, that is not a lot different than academics throughout history other than the lopsided political bias. They have also gone to great lengths to burden their students with massive amounts of debt, for which they blame everyone but themselves. The opinions of academics would have meant something maybe a couple of decades ago, but currently they are indistinguishable from radical political activists and mercenary ones at that. They have murdered their own fields and now beg us for respect, a respect they have done nothing to deserve.
Librarians are the profession with the inferiority complex, the "not quite" academics. This is also a profession that has been taken over by the left, so we get to hear them harp about the need of free speech and to think of the children, when they are not praising themselves for letting homeless people masturbate to pornography on the computers right in front of same children. They protest too much.
"...reached by The Washington Post": Ah, yes, the stable of "experts" that the Washington Post carefully cultivates (a) to give them the answers that they want in order to confirm their worldviews and (b) for reporters to act as stenographers as doing actual research is hard. Nothing says credibility than rubber stamps that journalists use because journalists are incompetent in all topics and, to be fair, everyone does want to go out to the bar and get plastered rather than take their job seriously.
We did not get past the first sentence, and it is already obvious that the article is not worth reading.
Rabid diversity, ageism, obviously. Keep your sons and daughters appointed, available, and as nonrefundable tax credits. Here's to "our Posterity", included, excluded, selected.
Shouldn't they be teaching the kids calculus? It is never too early to get them started on difficult subjects.
I see reason for any child below 7th grade to be exposed to ANYTHING sexual in nature.
Period.
Leave the fucking kids alone.
Will they let Huckleberry Finn in through the side door?
MJB Wolf, the Supreme Court directly dealt with that in Island Trees School District v. Pico. Neither parents nor community groups get to hinder a students First Amendment right and restrict what a school library offers in terms of books.
Classroom libraries and classes themselves are different than a school library, as noted in this case. Trying to restrict books from both sets of shelves would seem to counter precedent
It is not the job of public schools to indoctrinate, teach or otherwise expose your children to information about challenging topics like sex and gender. Period.
In today's world, there are plenty of ways for kids and parents to find such information and share it as they see fit. If schools were already providing a wold-class education then perhaps we could have a useful discussion of where to expand their portfolio. But public schools are FAILING our children big time in educating them for the Information Age world, or even for the manual labor world which requires literacy and computational skills these days. Teachers unions focus on topics outside of their core mission because they don't know how or won't improve basic education. So they want to distract us and make us believe that they are doing a big service to America for making kids know about anal sex but not how to spell it or read about the health issues involved.
Schools would be far better if we fired everyone with an Education degree and started over with teachers who are subject matter experts in math, language (reading and writing), etc.
The multiculti book publishing borg has forced all joy out of reading.
There was plenty of violence, oppression, and sexual harassment in actually classic books that had larger points to make. See, for example, To Kill a Mockingbird, in which Atticus Finch vigorously opposes women gaining the right to be jurors. The book, not the movie. Of course.
But the librarians purged these books and replaced them with pricey, noxious, non-humatarian treacle approved by the ADL and the ACLU.
"Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity"
"eir"? Is that a pronoun or a typo?
They are doing it quietly because if they do but openly, they have to admit that some books aren't appropriate on school shelves. And once they grant that (rather obvious) fact, all the air goes out of their outrage sails.
Are we to believe the WaPo chose the Psychologists, Academics and Librarians they talked to ...randomly?
I think the best person to choose the appropriate context, care and tact is a parent. Not a school.
Dude. School got weird.
Hope and Change. Progressive corruption ("entropy", riot, disorder, death) is a law of Nature. The ostensibly scientific man, woman, chimp have an idealized understanding of evolution inferred from the patterns in their minds.
The idea that you're going to turn public schools, or even private schools, into wholesome environments for children is absurd. The Democrats control the schools, and their interest in other people's children is entirely motivated by their desire to exploit those children, economically, politically, and sexually. Your kids would be better off if you sent them to play in the sewer every morning.
I don’t trust school librarians to make too many healthy age appropriate selections. They don’t have time to read all these books; they only have time to read short reviews, summaries, or book jacket blurbs. Because most school librarians, moreover, are trained in schools of education that are heavily marinated in CRT ideology, too many of them wiil evaluate books ideologically. Now the new trend in school and public libraries is to hire so called “Diversity Librarians” whose job is be sure that acquisitions and holdings meet diversity, inclusion, and equity criteria. School librarians also have little knowledge of the history of children’s literature or of literature itself, nor do they understand the real complexities of learning to read.
Mark said...
MJB Wolf, the Supreme Court directly dealt with that in Island Trees School District v. Pico. Neither parents nor community groups get to hinder a students First Amendment right and restrict what a school library offers in terms of books.
Classroom libraries and classes themselves are different than a school library, as noted in this case. Trying to restrict books from both sets of shelves would seem to counter precedent
*************************
Wrong.
Here's a summary of what that splintered decision held:
"On the principle that “the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas,” he concluded that the removal of books from the shelves of a school library implicates students’ First Amendment rights in part because of “the special characteristics of the school library.” Justice Brennan then concluded that school officials may not exercise their discretion to remove books from a school library based on “narrowly partisan or political” grounds, because doing so would amount to an “official suppression of ideas.”
In a concurrence, Justice Blackmun rejected the notion that a school library was distinct from the school itself and also disagreed with the notion that students had a First Amendment “right to receive” in the context of a public school.
"The fifth vote to affirm the court of appeals was provided by Justice Byron R. White, who concurred in the judgment but expressly disavowed stating any views on the First Amendment question. Because of this unusual breakdown in the votes of the justices, the legal holding of Pico consists simply of Justice White’s very limited opinion."
So...a very limited opinion, and not on-point. Nothing in that decision forecloses attack ponographic books, which the court has held are NOT protected by 1st Amendment considerations, ESPECIALLY regarding exposing children to them.
Pornography isn't an "idea". If it were, why is it illegal to post child pornography on line? Or even have it stored on your hard drive?
"It is not the job of public schools to indoctrinate, teach or otherwise expose your children to information about challenging topics like sex and gender. Period."
What about 18 year old high school seniors, who are technically adults?
Your sweeping generalization lumps 5 year olds with 18 year olds, which is nonsensical (and also goes against prior SC rulings about the rights of students within school and libraries).
Your talking points do not seem to factor in past precedent.
Rcorean, if you're waiting till the 7th grade to teach your kids about sex, you are in big trouble. By 7th grade your kids could probably teach you about sex.
Wake up, people. Libraries aren't polluting our kids, you lack of understanding about anything in the real world is. If they are exposed to the right-wing of doing anything, they are never going to survive in the real world,just like their ignorant,non-informed parents.
Vicki from Pasadena
Go ahead and call me a lib, i can take it, i've been called worse.
Schools, libraries, and school librarians are really not that relevant anymore. As already noted they can't do the traditional things--the things that they used to do pretty well--any more so have to lurch into other areas.
Technology enables kids to learn easily, in great detail and clarity, what my generation learned vaguely only by strenuous and covert effort.
Good old technology.
'Lawn Boy' is the one where an adult tells the 12 year old protagonist about his sexual encounter when the adult was 12 years old.
I know at least three women who were raped or having affairs with older men by the time they were 14. My impression is that it does cause problems later in life, and I'm pretty sure their parents didn't know about it. I could support some education about such things, but I also suspect that is not what is going on.
effinayright said...
Mark said...
"It is not the job of public schools to indoctrinate, teach or otherwise expose your children to information about challenging topics like sex and gender. Period."
What about 18 year old high school seniors, who are technically adults?
Your sweeping generalization lumps 5 year olds with 18 year olds, which is nonsensical (and also goes against prior SC rulings about the rights of students within school and libraries).
Your talking points do not seem to factor in past precedent.
*********************
As I said, the case you cited is NOT precedent. Pornography does NOT have 1st Amendment protection.
What's more, the previous poster referred to "children". Your pointing to 18-year old ADULTS was not part of her case.
"Go ahead and call me a lib, i can take it, i've been called worse."
I'll bet you have.
victoria said...
Rcorean, if you're waiting till the 7th grade to teach your kids about sex, you are in big trouble. By 7th grade your kids could probably teach you about sex.
>>>>>what ridiculous assertion.
Wake up, people. Libraries aren't polluting our kids,
>>>> another assertion, also unsupported by any facts or supporting reason.
>>>> since when has it been "the job" of schools to teach kids in K-8 about sex with accompanying lurid graphics?
you lack of understanding about anything in the real world is.
>>>>Vicki from Pasadena is a self-styled Wise Old Lady from Pasadena. Just ask her!
If they are exposed to the right-wing of doing anything, they are never going to survive in the real world,just like their ignorant,non-informed parents.
>>>There she goes again!! Cue up the Beach Boys song!
Vicki from Pasadena
Go ahead and call me a lib, i can take it, i've been called worse.
>>>>You're not just a lib. You're an AOC-class ditz.
Leave the fucking kids alone.
========
thanks - if they are already fucking >> kids would like some privacy.
Wake up, people. Libraries aren't polluting our kids, you lack of understanding about anything in the real world is. If they are exposed to the right-wing of doing anything, they are never going to survive in the real world,just like their ignorant,non-informed parents.
Vicki from Pasadena
Poor Vicki thinks every kid is a hard leftist and pervert. I can only imagine what your kids are like, if any.
question: Do they include books about Catholic saints, or Christian heroes?
Or is the indoctrination only about pushing the religion of woke, whose values often are diametrically opposed to the conservative values of their parents, especially those of us with Hispanic, Asian, or other ethnic backgrounds.
File under: Suicide of expertise.
I can sort of understand it. The way to establish yourself as an expert is to tell parents that the way they want to do things or the way they've been doing things for years is wrong. If it weren't, we wouldn't need so many experts and experts wouldn't be recognized as experts or even have jobs.
Mark mistakenly misinterprets another case and tries to slide 18-year-olds into a discussion about primary school. Still hoping to confuse and corrupt others’ children, eh mark?
I think that a lot of educators mistakenly feel that they are actually responsible for raising the children, not the parents. The parents should decide what adult themes are appropriate to teach to children, and at what age. When in doubt, don't expose kids to it.
chuck said...
“Shouldn't they be teaching the kids calculus? It is never too early to get them started on difficult subjects”
I wouldn’t try this in lower (elementary) school. But derivatives are not that hard for kids who understand algebra. Not the math behind them, but how to do them. But algebra isn’t that horribly difficult to teach for those who truly understand the subject. The problem is that most school teachers really don’t understand algebra, and calculus is something from another planet. This shouldn’t surprise anyone - school teachers aren’t the brightest bulbs to start with, and for the most part would have been in a different department if they could understand math that well. Not being able to understand basic college math, and at least intro Calculus, closes a lot of doors in college. No STEM, business, economics, etc. Likely no social sciences grad school. What’s left? Law for the bright ones, and teaching or gender studies for the rest. Why not hire math majors to teach? They do, but for the most part, public school teaching is a unionized government position. And unions are the modern equivalent of guilds. For public school teaching it is considered to be more important to be properly indoctrinated, than to actually have much subject matter expertise.
How do I know that Calculus can be taught in middle school? Because I taught my kid to do derivatives in a couple afternoons when they were that age (7th-8th grade). Integrals followed in early HS. It greatly helped that I was the third generation in my family to have a math or engineering degree, and in my family of 5 boys, two ended up majoring in engineering, and another two of us got math degrees (doing our engineering in grad school). And one history major. My kid is the 4th generation, graduating Summa cum Laude with honors in Physics and Math, followed by an engineering PhD, and uses partial differential equations heavily at work.
Are we math geniuses? Maybe my next brother. But otherwise, no. A lot of it was that there was never a fear of math. We were taught, as was my kid, that math was easy, and only stupid people didn’t understand it. It’s like public speaking - it’s the fear that keeps you from succeeding. In calculus, you don’t really need to actually understand why it works until maybe college. You just need to understand how to crank the equations. I had an intro to Calculus twice in HS, and I think that we got bogged down in the why, and so the how didn’t sink in as well as it might have. But that did allow me to skip the first semester of Calculus in college (my kid, and 3 of my younger brothers, skipped the whole first), and unconstrained with the why, the how was easy, as was going back and picking up the why later. Why did I end up a math major? It was fun. And a lot easier than almost anything else. Easiest major in my college - no comps or GREs required. Just pass enough classes, and, voilà , you have a degree in mathematics. To this day, I think that a lot of it was fear of mathematics on the part of most of the rest of the students. We didn’t have a fear of math because our mother had a degree in math, and made it fun for us. And she didn’t have fear because her father had an engineering degree, and one of his sisters had a master’s degree in math.
MJB Wolf, most of these bills do not just limit themselves to elementary schools. In fact, if you look at the book list that wasncirculated last year by the Texas rep, a majority of those books were at the HS reading level ... meaning they would be removed from High School libraries.
Perhaps you should actually look at the hook lists being circulated, as you seem to think that they strictly limit themselves to only the lowest grades. They aren't, and your unwillingness to account for what these book lists look like show a profound lack of seriousness.
Focusing on a small section of what your side is proposing is not an accurate picture of the whole movement you are supporting.
It's OK to punch a Nazi. I get to decide who is a Nazi.
It's OK to pull inappropriate books on sex from third graders. I get to decide....
I sense a trend.
Removing these books retards student development, but wearing masks all day, every day doesn't? Just want to understand where the priorities are.
Michael K
a well adjusted adult,contributing to the greater good,thank you very much.
Vicki from Pasadena
Wow, I knew librarians were a bunch of hive minded simpletons but this is just gross. Gone are the days when moms got exercised about Judy Blume books.
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