Cancelling Dr. Seuss

[nebo113]

Marshy....You're just funny.  Encyclopedias are one of the BEST sources of information about all those things that terrify right wing nuts:  sodomy, incest, homosexuality, satanism. 

[marshwiggle]

Marshy....You're just funny.  Encyclopedias are one of the BEST sources of information about all those things that terrify right wing nuts:  sodomy, incest, homosexuality, satanism.

You seem to be under the impression that information is something that I want to suppress. You are mistaken.

It is one thing for a library to contain a book that makes an ethical case for veganism. It is another thing entirely for a teacher to read that to her class and tell them how eating meat is morally wrong. Similarly, it is one thing to have a book in the library about vaccine hesitancy, and another entirely for a teacher to tell his class that vaccines are a tool of government control.

I have much less concern about what information a student has access to than about what moral claims teachers force students to appear to accept.

[Parasaurolophus]

Dictionary?

That's absolutely not the case. Dictionaries were established as part of a very clear (and misguided) linguistic agenda. And the decisions about what to include and what not are often themselves guided by political moral, etc. reasons. That's why, for example, the OED has an entry for 'goblin mode', which nobody uses, but none for 'pegging', which has been in widespread and constant use for over twenty years.


EDIT: I said 'decade', but it was coined in 2001.

[waterboy]

Ok...not a dictionary.  How about a plant ID book?

[Parasaurolophus]

Marshy....You're just funny.  Encyclopedias are one of the BEST sources of information about all those things that terrify right wing nuts:  sodomy, incest, homosexuality, satanism.

You seem to be under the impression that information is something that I want to suppress. You are mistaken.

It is one thing for a library to contain a book that makes an ethical case for veganism. It is another thing entirely for a teacher to read that to her class and tell them how eating meat is morally wrong. Similarly, it is one thing to have a book in the library about vaccine hesitancy, and another entirely for a teacher to tell his class that vaccines are a tool of government control.

I have much less concern about what information a student has access to than about what moral claims teachers force students to appear to accept.

This is nonsense. Moral claims are normative. That's inescapable. Besides, the classroom is full of moral claims students are required to accept, such as that hitting one another is wrong. If you eliminate any and all moral claims, you'll be left with rather little.

Besides, you're not allowing school libraries to serve the diverse range of their users. What's appropriate for a seventh grader is different from what's appropriate for a twelfth grader. If you only fill the library with See Spot Run (which, incidentally, is designed to service a particular--wrong--ideology about learning to read) and nothing else, you're depriving everyone outside of the first graders. And forcing them to read hellish bullshit.

[ciao_yall]

Dictionary?

Encyclopedias, science books, biographies, lots of fiction.

As long as the science book doesn't include....

• Creation of the solar system
• Age of the earth
• Dinosaurs
• Evolution
• Reproduction among birds, bees, plants and animals
• Chromosomes and gender

[ciao_yall]

Marshy....You're just funny.  Encyclopedias are one of the BEST sources of information about all those things that terrify right wing nuts:  sodomy, incest, homosexuality, satanism.

How about just listing the many religions of the world and in history? And how fascinating that the Shintos and Hindus believe just as fervently as Christians do about Jesus?

[ciao_yall]

Ok...not a dictionary.  How about a plant ID book?

As long as it doesn't list any of these plants.

[Wahoo Redux]

Dictionary?

That's absolutely not the case. Dictionaries were established as part of a very clear (and misguided) linguistic agenda. And the decisions about what to include and what not are often themselves guided by political moral, etc. reasons. That's why, for example, the OED has an entry for 'goblin mode', which nobody uses, but none for 'pegging', which has been in widespread and constant use for over a decade.

Read "Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars Over Word Usage" by David Foster Wallace for a deeper read on the politicizing of the dictionary and language itself.  There are several complete versions but they are Chrome extensions and don't hyperlink very well.

[Wahoo Redux]

Encyclopedias, science books, biographies, lots of fiction.

(Yes, any of these can be written with a particular slant, but there are lots written without the goal of trying to change peoples' minds about something,

Oh Marshy...oh Marshy, oh Marshy, oh Marshy...

You do realize that The Chronicles of Narnia are 100% Christian indoctrination, right?

Oliver Twist can be read as an indictment of the lower classes for their behavior and lifestyles.

Nobel laureate William Golding's The Lord of the Flies has been challenged multiple times because it makes young boys look like animals.

Fairy tales inculcate all sorts of gender roles at the same time they are anti-authoritarian, particularly when the authority is a parent figure.  Sometimes they are simple recitations of violence and cruelty.

The Lord of the Rings infantilizes the working class and elevates the gentry and aristocratic class.

The Iliad and Odyssey are chock-full of objectionable stuff.

Every story tries to convince you of something whether it means to or not. 

Not every story tries to convince you about things that are currently controversial.

You really need to read more and think about what you are reading if you are going to make these kind of statements.

[Diogenes]

Utah is staunchly Republican https://ballotpedia.org/Davis_County,_Utah
At least one local politician seems to be in favor of the ban:
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/02/1179906120/utah-bible-book-challenge

Ken Ivory, a Republican legislator in the state, released a statement on Thursday reversing his position on the ban, after initially calling the complaint a "mockery." He wrote that the Bible is a "challenging read" for children, and that the Bible is "best taught, and best understood, in the home, and around the hearth, as a family."

That article is missing important context: Ken Ivory, the Republican quoted supporting, authored the bill that passed this year making removing books so much easier. So he's defending his own law, unintended consequences and all.

More fun context, Utah Parents United, the stanchly religious group that lobbied Ivory on this bill and does most of the grassroots reporting of books across the state have been quoted in response to this Bible ban, "... It is sad when religious texts are used in a culture war."

[ciao_yall]

Quote from this weekend's NYTimes regarding AI, but also relevant to this discussion about what is "appropriate" or "moral" or "indoctrination."

"Sanity is a very narrow sliver of the possibilities of mind. Because we have culturally accepted norms, we have a certain way of acting and thinking and speaking, and if you deviate from that a little too much, then you're, at best, weird, and at worst, clinically insane."

[apl68]

If I might, a little explanation about how library collection development and selection work:

Much of what libraries collect is simply a matter of getting what patrons are demanding.  This is especially true of public libraries.  School and academic libraries do some of this demand-directed acquisition as well. 

Libraries also attempt proactively to build collections of materials that will meet their community's interests and needs.  This is especially true of school and academic libraries, and to some extent of publics (Depending on the size of the library and the abundance of the acquisitions budget).  For this, they need the help of various selection aids that can give them recommendations about what to acquire in different areas.  These include:

Core collection guides with recommendations on a wide range of subjects.  These take the form of very expensive specialized volumes or database subscriptions.

Reviews by subject experts found in academic journals and the like.  May also include lists of recommendations prepared by subject experts (Librarians are quick to share and borrow things like this).

General review publications, such as The New York Times Book Review and the Times of London Literary Supplement.

Specialized library review publications, such as Library Journal, School Library Journal, and Horn Book.  These contain reviews and recommendations by librarians for librarians.  I have a lot of experience of using Library Journal as a review publication--in fact, that's the main thing we use it for here.

You use core collection guides when you're trying to build a collection from scratch or go back and beef up a collection using in-print, but not necessarily the latest, materials.  The review publications are for keeping up with the newest stuff that's coming out.  Librarians obviously can't personally read everything they acquire for their institutions.  We have to depend on reviews and recommendations from review publications to have an idea what to get.  And that's where...issues can arise.

Continued below

[apl68]

Continued from above

Library review publications like Library Journal can only review/recommend a small proportion of what gets published.  Within these limits, they try to cover a very broad number of categories for different needs and interests.  Some categories get reviewed with every issue, some only every few months, some mainly in occasional special interest sections.  So, for example, you can find reviews of a selection of social sciences and natural sciences titles in every issue, but specialized fiction genres, such as Christian historical romances or graphic novels, only in some issues.  You'll find an enormous variety of different types of items for an enormous variety of types of patrons in Library Journal.

That said, they have to prioritize...and it's pretty clear, if one reads LJ on a regular basis, that items representing certain types of perspectives have more priority, and are accorded more respect, than others.  I hesitate to use a term that tends to be thrown around very subjectively as an insult, but it's pretty fair to say that LJ, and the American Library Association's leadership in general, come across as being pretty "woke."  Items informed by intersectionality and LBG++++ perspectives are reviewed continually and usually praised and recommended to the skies by reviewers.  Items that represent more socially conservative perspectives, when they are reviewed at all, tend to be reviewed negatively, or at best damned with faint praise as suitable for (implicitly benighted) patrons that request them.  The social and political biases of most LJ reviewers come through loud and clear.  On several occasions I've seen reviews contain statements that many readers would find frankly hostile and insulting.

Let me make clear that I don't object to LJ reviewing works informed by intersectionality and LBG++++ perspectives.  They're being published, they're being read, and librarians are here to supply and serve all sorts of patrons.  What concerns me is the extent to which so much of the library profession's leadership is taking very clear sides in some very deeply controversial matters, stances that in many cases go beyond simply trying to make sure all groups are fairly served and into some pretty radical territory. They're trying to nudge libraries, library collections, and library services in general into that sort of radicalism and advocacy.

This is a carefully considered professional judgement on my part, and I am not unique among library professionals in having such concerns.  But these concerns are not welcome in many library professional circles, especially at a national level.  I and others have been concerned for a long time that many libraries and librarians have been needlessly courting a backlash through their advocacy, and through widely expressed attitudes of contempt and disrespect toward large segments of their communities that don't see things their way (I hear things at conferences).  And now, sure enough, we see that that backlash has arrived.

I do not approve of or support the legislation meddling in library affairs that we've been talking about on this thread.  I think it throws the baby out with the bathwater, and risks creating all sorts of unintended consequences.  In the analog, in-person world I've stood up and told local and state elected officials as much.  I do, however, understand the concerns that have sparked the backlash, I do believe that some of them are legitimate, and I do believe that most of this backlash could have been avoided if segments of the library profession hadn't made such a point of courting it in the first place.

[marshwiggle]

That said, they have to prioritize...and it's pretty clear, if one reads LJ on a regular basis, that items representing certain types of perspectives have more priority, and are accorded more respect, than others.  I hesitate to use a term that tends to be thrown around very subjectively as an insult, but it's pretty fair to say that LJ, and the American Library Association's leadership in general, come across as being pretty "woke."  Items informed by intersectionality and LBG++++ perspectives are reviewed continually and usually praised and recommended to the skies by reviewers.  Items that represent more socially conservative perspectives, when they are reviewed at all, tend to be reviewed negatively, or at best damned with faint praise as suitable for (implicitly benighted) patrons that request them.  The social and political biases of most LJ reviewers come through loud and clear.  On several occasions I've seen reviews contain statements that many readers would find frankly hostile and insulting.

Thanks for the historical perspective. Would you say the focus on " moral" content has become bigger of late? My sense is that a few decades ago there was much more focus on books that were well-written,  rather than having a "message". But I'm a layman in this.