List of things banned by school text books - Page 2

Spiffor · May 4, 2003, 09:45

Can anybody explain why Huckleberry is banned from US schools ?
It was my first take on American literature, and Huck and Tom Sawyer were popular figures among the kids when I was young (thanks to the cartoon).

Edit : I've read the article too, and it seems PC is really going over the line in the US. The different depiction of slavery in the West and in Arabia completely sucks, for example. The complete oblivion of the dinosaur's existence is shocking

Maybe the solution to this would be to dump value judgments out of these textbooks, in order to let the kids think for themselves a bit, maybe with the teacher's 'guidance'

loinburger · May 4, 2003, 09:54

Quote:

Originally posted by Spiffor
Can anybody explain why Huckleberry is banned from US schools ?

It's not. I read it when I was a freshman in high school.

Some states ban it, others don't (Illinois being one of those that doesn't). IIRC it's banned primarily because it contains several instances of the word "nigger."

mrmitchell · May 4, 2003, 10:30

Quote:

Originally posted by Dissident
And don't get me started on short people. I have no clue what to call them. midgets? short people? I have no clue.

Hey! Quit making fun of us!

*cough* Vertically Challenged *cough*

I think the goal of political correctness is to confuse people - sentient primate-descended hominids - until we all can't even figure out if we're different, we're all trying to figure out whut our group name means.

Traianvs · May 4, 2003, 10:31

oh boy

you ban a book for just that?

BeBro · May 4, 2003, 10:47

Quote:

Originally posted by loinburger

It's not. I read it when I was a freshman in high school.

Some states ban it, others don't (Illinois being one of those that doesn't). IIRC it's banned primarily because it contains several instances of the word "nigger."

Besides the usual US bashing - why can they simply ban it? Isn´t somehting like this protected as "free speech"? I mean often people wonder that certain Nazi-stuff is banned in Germany, and they seem to wonder even more when they hear that nearly everybody here accepts certain limits to the freedom of speech (although sometimes those limitations are really idiotic) while I get the impression that most Americans are not willing to accept something similar.

I remember Rah replied me once that in the US you can only limit free speech if something incites violence. I just want to know how those who ban such books justify it.

yavoon · May 4, 2003, 10:53

well huckleberry was banned from my high school school because it had the word nigger nearly 200 times in it.

Spiffor · May 4, 2003, 10:56

BeBro :

I think, in this instance, Huckleberry is "banned" as pupils are not forced to read it to discover American literature. But they still can read Huckleberry if they want to.

It is an idiotic ban, but it is not the same as a limitation to free speech.

BeBro · May 4, 2003, 11:01

Edit: to yavoon

Yep, I understand, I could give you examples from Germany as well (eg. Hitler´s "Mein Kampf" is totally banned here, except for historical studies). I just aks because I thought that there is a general difference between the US and Germany about how far should free speech go.

BeBro · May 4, 2003, 11:03

Oh and not that I want compare Hitler to M.Twain

BeBro · May 4, 2003, 11:05

Spiff: you mean their argument goes like "banning the books at school doesn´t limit free speech, because ou can read it at home"?

Sava · May 4, 2003, 11:10

Dissident. Why do you blame everything on liberals? It simply isn't true that this is some liberal agenda. If anything it's the workings of a few isolated dumbasses in the California school system. And this is a local thing, not a national thing. Get a clue!

Spiffor · May 4, 2003, 11:11

BeBro :
Yes. IIRC, Mein Kampf is completely verboten in Germany, except with the right allowance for history students or researchers. It's not like you can buy Mein Kampf in any library.

I'd suppose you can buy Huckleberry in any library in the US

loinburger · May 4, 2003, 11:11

Yup. When they talk about banning books they really mean that the book isn't on the state's education curriculum, which is entirely different from e.g. disallowing the publication of a book.

Edit: Bloody X-posts, that was directed at BeBro.

BeBro · May 4, 2003, 11:19

Ok, now I got it

And Spiff, you´re right about "Mein Kampf"...

Dr Strangelove · May 4, 2003, 11:21

Quote:

Originally posted by Kontiki

Actually, I think that would be quite easy, and come to think of it, quite fun. I'll have to keep that in mind for next winter.

You could stage a competetion to see who could create the most "fun" breasts on their snow person!

Personally I think that most of this person's complaints are bogus. I've never heard anything about banning the mention of Mt. Rushmore, or protraying amerinds in rural settings, or referring to the founding fathers as anything else. Some people just need to make up something to be angry about in order to mask their personal failings or to conceal the unacceptable problems that are the true source of their distress. If I had been the talk show host I would have remarked something along the lines of "Why don't you just come out of the closet and be done with it?"

yavoon · May 4, 2003, 11:25

yah strangelove talk show hosts do like their condescending psycho-analyzing.

Sava · May 4, 2003, 11:41

Strangelove

Odin · May 4, 2003, 12:55

This PC stuff is a bunch of BS!

Why do people object to 'Founding Fathers", they were all men after all. I can't beleive that people whant to ban To Kill a Mockingbird too, it ticks me off.

you can't even say "that sucks" or "thats gay" either.

St Leo · May 4, 2003, 13:16

you can't even say "that sucks" or "thats gay" either.

Well, you shouldn't say "that's gay", but why is "that sucks" banned?

Odin · May 4, 2003, 13:21

Quote:

Originally posted by St Leo
you can't even say "that sucks" or "thats gay" either.

Well, you shouldn't say "that's gay", but why is "that sucks" banned?

That sucks is a term from oral sex, and well, you know how puritanical the US is.

Inverse Icarus · May 4, 2003, 13:51

Quote:

Originally posted by Odin

That sucks is a term from oral sex, and well, you know how puritanical the US is.

yea, i got yelled at by a teacher for telling a girl she sucked, the (female) teacher went off on me for about 20 minutes about what i was implicating.

(she does, by the way)

loinburger · May 4, 2003, 13:54

I had a teacher go off on me for calling girl a filthy wench. Dammit, she had it coming.

Dis · May 4, 2003, 14:23

Quote:

Originally posted by UberKruX

(she does, by the way)

the teacher or the girl student?

I find that many women suck, but I fail to see how that is a bad thing.

Sava · May 4, 2003, 14:30

I stabbed a girl with a pencil in 4th grade.

Dis · May 4, 2003, 14:52

isn't that attempted murder?

If you did that now days that is what they would charge you with.

Ben Kenobi · May 6, 2003, 17:56

There was an article yesterday in the National Post (My new housemate likes the paper, which I cannot stand), on this topic.

They had one section describing how you cannot tell stories about mountain climbers because this is discriminatory to people who live in Kansas!

Unbelievable. Who's to blame for this?

According to the article, evil leftists.
Time for the pitchforks, folks.

mrmitchell · May 6, 2003, 18:09

They're not evil lefties. They're "ungood persons with politically-oriented liberalism."

Ben Kenobi · May 6, 2003, 18:14

What does that make Conservatives then?

Dis · May 6, 2003, 18:50

actually I heard some conservative supported this for some reason, so I cannot blame all lefties for this.

but either way it is stupid.

You can't keep changing words to describe things. Eventually you will just run out of words

Lorizael · May 6, 2003, 19:10

There are terms that are offensive to certain groups of people, and those shouldn't be said, but free speech should still protect it. And then there is rewriting history, which is the most blasphemous thing I have ever heard. Not that I can speak of blasphemy, being as how I'm a hethen and all. But still, rewriting history makes me wanna hurl. Knowledge is power, for ****'s sake. You distort knowledge, you destroy our society. Ug, I'm being fatalistic. Stupid fascist liberals. I'm a liberal, but not like that. Gah. Bye.