Do I think the Bible should be removed from public Elementary School libraries, as has now been done in one district in Utah? No, absolutely not. On the other hand, I don’t think third graders are going to sit down and start plowing through Genesis or the Gospel According to Matthew. In other words, I don’t see much direct impact from the decision, but that’s not really the point. In this case, the point is that the Bible contains stories of violence, rape, murder and incest that may not seem age appropriate for grade schoolers. Responding to a parent complaint, the “72,000-student Davis School District north of Salt Lake City removed the Bible from its elementary and middle schools while keeping it in high schools.” A decision on whether to do the same with the Book of Mormon may be in the pipeline.
I guess this decision is a result of the Davis school board wishing to maintain some kind of intellectual consistency. And, if so, score one for the anonymous complainant who was no doubt trying to make that exact point about banning books because of racy or violent or supposedly deviant depictions. I strongly suspect this isn’t the outcome they were going for however, as the more logical goal is to be rid of this new passion for censorship rather than adding another book to the banned list.
My strong preference is that people just fucking relax. This national panic about human sexuality and literature in our schools is leading nowhere good. Everything was pretty much fine the way it was, with schools stocking their library shelves without much thought and input from parents. Generally speaking, age appropriate books are going to be selected, and kids don’t need any more shielding from discussion of history or adult life today than they needed last year or the year before that. We shouldn’t be freaking out on the left about politically incorrect language in our classic literature, nor should the right be having a cow about so-called woke depictions that challenge their rigid ideas of race and gender.
Everyone needs to toughen up and have more faith in our children to figure things out for themselves. There’s murder and adultery in The Great Gatsby and there is murder and adultery in the Bible. At some point, everyone should get around to reading both because that’s part of being culturally literate. Put them in our libraries and leave them in our libraries, and let’s focus on something more important.
Amen. Well said Martin
When the side that’s going apeshit on banning books has nothing to contribute as far as talking about those “more important things”, then we can really expect nothing more from them than this sort of craziness. They have nothing in their bag of tricks except fear. They’re thrashing around wildly, looking for anything that might perpetuate that fear and keep their folks motivated.
Completely agree.
One thing that I feel strongly about adjacent to your point is just how silly these bans are in our present society, at least from a technological perspective. I’ve read Tropic Of Cancer, Naked Lunch and American Psycho, and you know what, they shouldn’t be read by everyone, however much I did or didn’t like them (I did not like Naked Lunch at all).
Especially with Tropic of Cancer, which I read just after high school, it is shocking and dangerous, which is what I loved best about it. Around that time the internet was still new, and I had the visceral sense that Henry Miller was not available to read in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, so that message was unavailable. That is not so today. Even if I didn’t still have my copy, I can go google it and find out everything, with quotes. And no matter what adolescent books are currently banned in these schools, the Half Priced Books in town has it, or I can get it for my kid on Amazon no problem.
And we live in a scary time for sure, but I see no evidence that for profit book stores (physical and internet based) are going to not be able to sell these books. I will always be frustrated by religious fanaticism, but this is one of the cultural fights where they are just trying to beat back the tide with a stick.