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QuothTheRaven713 t1_j1udro3 wrote

Reply to comment by Ren_tho in I just finished The Giver today. It was as good as I had anticipated. by TheKarolinaReaper

I read it at 10. It's one of my favorite books of all time.

No books should be banned.

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laurpr2 t1_j1vfj9p wrote

So if The Turner Diaries (always a good litmus test) popped up on your state's middle school curriculum, you'd be cool with that then?

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QuothTheRaven713 t1_j1w1k9q wrote

That's a bad-faith strawman running on low intelligence.

Schools are usually good at discerning what subjects and books are okay for students to read, and at what grade level. Flowers for Algernon for instance has a short story version shared to middle schoolers, which eliminates the sexual content, while high schoolers get the full novel version that leaves it intact.

Aside from The Giver, most dystopian novels are aimed at an older audience. The Giver and maybe The Hunger Games would be taught in middle school, but dystopian books with heavier/more explicit topics like 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, etc., are all high-school age and up.

And even without all that, the discussion wasn't based on school curriculums. It was on the subject of book bannings. What books are assigned to a certain curricuulum or not has no basis in what I said. Only book bannings, and I'm thoroughly against any books being banned for any reason.

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laurpr2 t1_j1w43l4 wrote

>That's a bad-faith strawman running on low intelligence.

No, it's a litmus test.

Anyone who says they're against "book banning" (which is to say, not banning at all, but books being removed from school curriculum or school libraries) must be on board with any book being in said curriculum or libraries. Otherwise, if they're okay with some books being excluded based on their content, they aren't actually against "book banning" at all.

For example, when I say I am against book banning (properly understood), I mean it. I believe people should be able to sell, buy, own, and read any work of fiction, including books that I think are evil and harmful (like The Turner Diaries).

I can infer that your response means that when you said "No books should be banned," you didn't really mean that—you meant that The Giver should not be banned (which I agree with if we're talking about middle school and higher).

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QuothTheRaven713 t1_j1w6kus wrote

I don't even think any book should be banned from curriculums. I do think that books that are assigned should be appropriate to grade level, the same way I wouldn't approve of someone taking a 9 year old to a PG-13 or R-rated movie. Would I feel that's inadvisable, sure, but I wouldn't call for banning it.

There's a difference between feeling some books should be taught in curriculum at any appropriate age level and thinking they should be banned. If a middle school doesn't teach about a book, but a kid finds a book that's out of their usual age range in the school library or something and decide they want to read it on their own, then that's fine as long as they're aware of what they're getting into.

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laurpr2 t1_j1w89or wrote

>I don't even think any book should be banned from curriculums. I do think that books that are assigned should be appropriate to grade level,

But those are just two sides of the same coin. If you deem that Stephen King's "IT" isn't appropriate for middle schoolers, then you've "banned" it from the curriculum.

None of these "book bans" ever prohibit kids from ordering the "banned" book off Amazon or getting it from their local libraries or pirating an ebook. They're free to read what they want without any repercussions from the school. "Book bans" (despite the inflammatory language surrounding them) boil down to restricting what's on the curriculum and stocked in the school library.

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bigthink t1_j2473fn wrote

One is deciding not to use something. The other is disallowing it from being used.

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Ren_tho t1_j1uoddn wrote

I agree it shouldn't be banned. But we also shouldn't misrepresent why others think what they do.

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laurpr2 t1_j1vf2w7 wrote

No no no, that's far too nuanced....burn the book-banners at the stake! Including anyone who doesn't want The Turner Diaries in school classrooms (whoops, there goes most of the sub).

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