Book ban in California school

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‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ Other Books Banned From California Schools Over Racism Concerns​

Schools in Burbank will no longer be able to teach a handful of classic novels, including Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird , following concerns raised by parents over racism.

Middle and high school English teachers in the Burbank Unified School District received the news during a virtual meeting on September 9.

Until further notice, teachers in the area will not be able to include on their curriculum Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird , Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men , Theodore Taylor’s The Cay and Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry .

https://www.newsweek.com/kill-mockingbird-other-books-banned-california-schools-over-racism-concerns-1547241
 
Wow.

Every book you listed is one of my favorites. I personally think that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the greatest book written by any American throughout our history. I try to read it at least every other year, and I have several copies of it.

And I LOVE!!! Mildred’s Taylor’s books!

My younger daughter never bothered to read any of the books that she was assigned in high school–except Of Mice and Men, which she read 3 times because she loved it so much! I think it has helped make her a very compassionate person.

(She still got A’s on all her tests and graduated at the top of her clsas–she’s a good listener and when the teachers lectured about the books during class, she paid attention when they said things like, “Three life-changing events in the Scout Finch’s life were…” or “Let’s discuss seven character traits of Huckleberry Finn.” Those were the kind of teacher’s comments that showed up as essay test questions!)

I would pull my children out of a school that did this kind of censorship.

I can’t help but wonder if they are also banning some of the current popular books featuring troubled homosexual or transgender teens. I’m guessing not–they probably have to get rid of the books listed above because there isn’t time to read those AND the teen sexual-awakening books.
 
Maybe they will replace the novels with Conrad’s “The N-word of the Narcissus”.
 
I haven’t read “The Cay”. The N-word appears courtesy of Wodehouse in some of the “Jeeves” novels, too.
 
The Cay was one of the first books I read as a teen. It wasn’t for school (chances are I wouldn’t have read it if it was ☺️). I thought the black character was the hero. I’m starting to think a lot of these wokesters may be drinking way too much caffeine.
 
Huck Finn has been on the “most banned books list” since I was a kid. It will likely be on it for the next 100 years. Nothing new to see here.

There are generally public libraries, Amazon, and even Archive dot org for the older books, where any kid who wants to actually read a book, banned or not, can find it. Reading a book on one’s own is often a much more satisfying experience than the kind of analysis and discussion that often accompanies reading it “for school”.
 
I think you just made the point.

We all want to act so indignant at such censorship…but we readily put up with it in many other places.
 
Not to worry - your children may not read some good literature but they will know how use a condom and where to get birth control and procure abortions. They will understand that all white people are racist and born with privilege and owe reparations to any and all people of color who can never be racist. They will know that straws are illegal and evil while cocaine and other drugs are not [At least in Oregon]. They will learn that men are bad [especially the white ones] and misogynistic and who seek to keep all minorities in chains and women as sex slaves … They will learn that there are an unlimited number of genders - that you can change your gender at will. That anyone can marry anyone and that is good … oh yes … and God is dead

Your children will understand that science says an unhatched condor chick is really a condor - even as it lays in the eggshell and deserves all the protection of law. Similarly a pregnant Orca is carrying a baby whale in utero and that baby orca also in fact a baby whale. While learning that a baby in the womb is not human at all. Its a mere mass of cells deserving of no protections and can have its life ended with no protections in law - at all …
 
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In a sense, he’s a Christ-like figure. “No greater love hath a man than to lay down his life for his friend.”
Maybe it’s the religious imagery which is considered objectionable.
 
Twain would absolutely love it. And it drives the censorship brigade crazy that Twain is and will continue to be considered one of the greatest American authors, justifiably so.

Besides, anybody with a brain working can appreciate Huck Finn. I have a friend from college who is about the most benign liberal person on earth, raised Jewish, and in college he had an unabridged copy of Huck Finn that he was reading and he thought it was about the greatest writing ever on racial inequality. He used to read passages of it out loud to his friends and marvel at how insightful they were and what great writing it was.
 
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vz71 said:
We all want to act so indignant at such censorship…
Click to expand...
Not all of us do.

Where there are shared values, you may find less objection to the removal or suppression of content deemed unacceptable.

Some are proactive about marking inappropriate content here and don’t want the nightmare of anything-goes. There was someone here not long ago posting messages insulting the Church. The person was censored. I am thankful for it, as this is not the place for that.
 
I think a lot of the objections simply have to do with people not wanting to remember or think about the past histories of countries and times when racial inequality was the order of the day. There also seems to be a general bias against books dealing with race that were written by white authors, or anything where a white man is the hero of the story by rescuing the poor person of color, etc. And I can just imagine the reaction if that Conrad book about the Narcissus was actually taught, even with the controversial word excised, because the person of color in that book is lazy and a conniving malingerer whose antics cause a lot of trouble. He’s not a good person who’s being wrongly oppressed.

There is perhaps some argument to be made that students have to have reached a certain maturity to appreciate such works in their historical context, and that many high schoolers might not have reached that level yet.
 
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