Do you believe that a school, in exercising selectivity in student assigned reading, and in choosing the good over the bad, is "banning books"?
Do you believe that a school, in exercising selectivity in student assigned reading, and in choosing the good over the bad, is "banning books"?
Thanks for calling me on this Jim, and sorry I couldn't respond sooner. I read your response yeterday, but wasn't in a position to respond then.
IMO, it is the duty of schools to educate children with the goal of forming a sound foundation so that they can continue to learn and make their own choices as they enter adulthood. It isn't the school's duty to expose kids to things that are way over their heads.
Those tasked with approving/disapproving of what our kids should be exposed to, should limit the materials to things that are age appropriate. There's just no need to expose kids to certain issues at the K-12 level. When kids are exposed to these issues, it's just an attempt by an elitist cadre of people determined to social engineer our kids into a mirror image of themselves.
I'll get off topic a bit here, but when I hear of high-school students skipping school to participate in political protests, it is clear evidence of an activist teacher. Have you ever heard a child espousing a view on some subject at an early age and thought, this kid is just echoing the views of an adult they've been exposed to. You can generally tell, when they voice firm opinions on life issues that they couldn't have possibly formed at such an early age. My thoughts on subject matter presented by teachers or books, is about the same. Age appropriate...
Now, if those given charge to approve/disapprove of materials and subject matter can't handle the position properly, someone else should step in individually or as part of a group. And while I agree with the ultimate last step, I would like to avoid it if at all possible.
When we go down that path, the idiotic is too easily attached to the reasonable. I don't think homosexuality is a topic that kids need to have demystified by the schools. If kids were exposed to a frank book on that topic, I'd have a problem with it. I don't like it covered in sex education either. To me it would make sense to band with other parents to stop this. What would probably happen though, is that some leftist agent would jump in and demand any reference to Jesus be removed from reading materials, just to put the brakes on the whole effort. It's sortof like opening a Constitutional Convention, while good things could come of it, bad things would probably also come of it.
In theory, I'm not a big fan of opening up pandora's box. I am in favor of school boards making reasoned decisions that let our kids be kids. If a rogue board can't, then I would probably approve of a parental group stepping in. I'd just rather things not get that far.
The next election, I'd do my best to make sure the offending board members were retired to the nearest local commune, where they could live out their fantacies out of eyesight of the children they had been tasked to educate and protect.