Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
February 6 - February 12, 2025
and the remedy—to remove the book—is clear. She goes on to state that if the book was reviewed then the problem resides with the reviewers. If there is “appropriate staff of people” the books will be “more age appropriate” and “this new staff/group will not choose such vile books for a young child to read without their parent’s knowledge.”
This accusation is indicative to monosemic interpretive strategies—for the challenger, there are no alternative ways to understand the meaning of the text.
Like other challengers, she states that books like Invisible Man should not be discussed in school and is concerned that teachers have some sort of prurient interest in the book if they are willing to discuss such topics out loud with their students.
This touches on another common theme throughout challengers’ discourse: that the process for evaluating books is opaque and that sometimes the decision is based on the opinions of very few people.
“Did the book have curricular value?”
The committee also discussed the idea that “‘life’ is not always pleasant” and that the book is an accurate portrayal of the pre–civil rights era in the United States.[14]
According to Mr. Boyles, the board member whom I was able to interview, many of the members had not read the entire book before this vote.
vote. As will be discussed in the following chapters, throughout challengers’ discourse there is an acute
Mr. Boyles is arguing that there should be a clear connection between the text and “truth” in the real world.
Yet for some reason this is okay in svripture
He fighting for freedom of speech and democracy and everything and I said
going against what he’s doing.
A lot of times it takes the good with the bad to really come out with a good answer to something and sometimes you have to take a little bad for the greater good.
www.corestandards.org/assets/Appendix_B.pdf.
accessed July 22, 2014, http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/challengedauthors.
17. Emily J. M. Knox, “Intellectual Freedom and the Agnostic-Postmodern View of Reading Effects,” Library Trends 63, no. 1 (2014).
These missives capture several of the common themes in challengers’ discourse that will be discussed in this chapter, particularly her concern regarding the decline of society, the role of public institutions, the perceived lack of parental involvement in their children’s lives, and the preservation of children’s innocence.
guilty I will give some evidences that L P L conjoins with the SIECUS curricula and Planned Parenthood to destroy our great nation.
Bold choice of language
As will be demonstrated throughout the study, challengers often employ martial language that associates the presence of a book and its availability to children and youth in public institutions as an act of war.
the parameters by which they chose the book, I didn’t see anything in here about values, or morality, or our ability to care for individuals.
Did you read the whole thing
It is clear from the speaker’s statement that society’s morals were more in keeping with his own 50 years ago and changes in the guiding morals and principles since then have
to society’s detriment.
Although this challenger does not explicitly state which morals were present in society in the past and are now in decline, other challengers offer several examples of how morals have changed, including in the areas of sexual mores, explicit violence, and the presence of stereotypes in literature.
A culture is civilized inasmuch as women and children are respected and defended by men.
Apparrntky humanisn and cincern for others is very gender based
(Book challenge letter, Lewiston, ME, January 30, 2008)
SEX ED IS GENOCIDE NOW
As noted above, at some point in the past, books like the ones in question
never have been allowed on library shelves or in school curricula in the first place.
It is important to note that this is not a wholly nostalgic argument. Instead, it is more accurate to view it as a reactionary argument.
They construct public institutions as more than simply depositories—they are public symbols of the community itself and should also be spaces of both safety and orderly knowledge.
Are they tho
In fact, these two traits are often mutually dependent for challengers: if difficult, unsanctioned knowledge is present in a school curriculum or public library collections, then the institution cannot be considered a safe, trustworthy place.[2]
Warner defines a public as a relationship among strangers that must consist of strangers.
Publics in this sense are self-organizing and, in modern capitalist society, often only exist because of the powerlessness of the individual.
Eg not being able to move
In this instance the public library becomes a kind of “cover” for the challenge.
For this challenger, libraries are seen as a venue for collecting all knowledge while the school curriculum should be reserved for ideas that she deems legitimate.
However, this is coupled with the idea that parents’ authority trumps a student’s wish to read the book.
One main rule of a school library and a school board is to protect students.
From?
Challengers often take issue with the idea that their children are required to read books with which they disagree.
The primary issue which is pertinent to this meeting today, is that this book is required reading and that the SPS teaching staff lacks the insight, knowledge base and accurate information to successfully balance classroom discussions.
Identitarian politics at play here
Students should never be required to be exposed to such knowledge.
Prior to her discovery of the book’s inclusion, she trusted the administration to provide materials for the children of her community that were in keeping
with her own ideas of what is appropriate.
If the institution fails to do so, then they fail to help parents protect their children.
Finally, there is the sense that parenting is difficult and that public institutions must help parents with the difficult task of raising children.
children are often constructed in challengers’ discourse as innocent vessels who, through education and life experiences, are filled with knowledge from various sources.
online. I didn’t let my kids when they were five watch R-rated movies for the same reasons.
Straw man
Here the challenger argues that other parents can simply get the book from another source while at the same time scolding parents for being willing to provide such objectionable material to their children.
(Although note that there are also challenges against books that are on recommended book lists.) This is a method of maintaining power over their children’s education in public schools.
is important to note that this is only needed for particular books and it also, in some respects, lessens the authority of teachers and other educators and their own power over the school curriculum.
The interviewee’s statement implies that she is concerned with the moral development of both her own and other people’s children.
The schools and libraries are structured in this discourse as a support system for parents.
Children are seen as beings in need of protection from the outside world, especially when it comes to protecting their “innocence.”
