I’m not going to suggest it’s a good idea, but I know when math books became a topic it was supposedly because some type of political stuff was being included in the problems. Haven’t followed it closely but I do remember hearing that.
If very limited references to the fact that racism even exists are "political", then you're getting pretty close to that joke: "What sexual orientation are you, straight, or political?"
There's actually a very simple argument: The existing system has been used as a workaround by activists to defacto teach things that shouldn't be taught to students. Keeping the books out of the library is the best practical method of stopping this, because directly controlling the contents of the curriculum is hard to enforce.
That argument may or may not be true in this particular case, but it's not some impossible thing that can't ever have a good reason behind it.
Edit: Also, don't confuse school libraries with public libraries. Schools make content-based decisions about what's appropriate for students all the time.
> Also, don't confuse school libraries with public libraries.
What's the actual meaningful distinction here? Both are publicly funded, that students/kid can choose to go to and browse books in (but rarely do). It's not like kids are banned from public libraries.
> The existing system has been used as a workaround by activists to defacto teach things that shouldn't be taught to students.
And who determines, with which justification, what should be taught to students? Teaching science and facts should never be something controversial, and I'd expect teachers to be able (and allowed to) make that decision - they know the children under their responsibility the best, not politicians.
That's a good steel man argument, thanks for articulating it. The irony is, they are solving "activists who defacto teach things that shouldn't be taught" by themselves becoming "activists who ban things from being taught". Opposite side of the same coin.
Translation: The above comment is REALLY mad that kids can learn about the existence of gay people or about how sex and STDs are spread and they feel the need to ensure kids are not told about this topic and that teachers get jail time for mentioning it.
Make no mistake, schools make choices all the time. This decision align those choices to far more insane rules by..guess what...an activist government instead.
A great example of this is John Green's Looking For Alaska. It has a sex scene that is objectively banned by this law.
That very sex scene is an example of why sex should not be the primary goal of a relationship (it goes poorly) and is directly contrasted with a moment of actual love in the very next chapter as an example of how sex is not the most valuable thing about a relationship.
It is a scapegoat for politicians and angry...activist...PTA members to simplify the topic "This book has a charater giving a BLOW JOB!!! My 16 year old is asked to READ IT?! These teachers and librarians are sick!" NOBODY's KID SHOULD READ IT.
Might I add, almost EVERY school keeps a list of alternative books and gives parents the option to opt out.
It's Gay marriage and descriptions of sex today, Alan Turing today cannot be fully explained in a book.
Maybe tomorrow it will be Hitler. "It is too violent of a topic and parents should have the right to keep their kids from reading left-wing details like the holocaust."
What would be the other end? At both extremes there is content that more centrist sides disapprove. Should either of the ends be allowed? Or should it swap around as either side gains power in politics?
It's mandatory state/public education, so the curriculum is legislated and kids are forced to be there, and to start, we have a captive audience. The subject legislation was in response to some arguably extreme cases where there is a concerted effort to distribute lgbtq pornography to kids as a way to use critical theories to shift social norms around sexuality, but uniquely using intersectionality - a recognized political pressure technique to do so. It doesn't work on the majority of adults who see it for what it is, and so its proponents have moved upstream and turned to using the tactic directly on children where they will not encounter resistance to the change they seek to make.
There is little argument that the teachers and advocates for these materials in elementary schools have a stated desire to abolish the civilization these children would otherwise grow up to inherit and become stewards of. Call it what you will, all the words are artifacts of the same basic critical theory and premises ('ist, 'phobic, anti-' etc.) that form a whole new language one either speaks and thinks in, or does not. It's designed to alienate and atomize people so as to manage and extract value from the conflicts you as an activist create. Those words are threats it uses to protect the real underlying ideology from rational scrutiny. From an educational perspective, this is not the drawing out and developing of childrens minds, but rather the funneling and shaping them as an openly stated means to create young activists intent on demolishing the pillars of social stability from which all social growth and progress has emerged.
Instead of having kids and raising them the way religion-based societies and cultures do, mormons, muslims, hindus, christians, etc. and being the change, these activists are leveraging the mandates of the education system to undermine the society they wish to upend. A key front in this is teaching intersectionality, where your beliefs become immutable identities under the umbrella of a system of infinitely regressing subjectivity and criticism instead of deriving a free and independent identity from experience and competence. I'm not going to relitigate intersectionality on this thread other than to say it was invented and not discovered, and all of its proponents' arguments reduce to "everything is made of words, words have no fixed meaning, so nothing has fixed meaning, therefore - all things meaning nothing - my belief is equivalent to your experience, there is only struggle for power, and if you disagree, you are my antagonist." It's nihilism all the way down. They imagine themselves engaged in a kind of science by picking random disciplines and testing them to dissolve in their solipsisms.
To do this, some activists are using pornography as a vehicle to inject this critical narrative into the sexual developent of school children, and adulterate these kids' sense of truth and reality by claiming the new concepts in the minds of children as they begin to apprehend them, with words and narrative that subordinates them to the system of criticism the activists are militating for, and with the neutralizing uncertainties of their theory. Florida's legislature has reacted to it by requiring scrutiny of what goes into those schools.
That is a charitable case for Florida's reaction. I can't defend individuals actuated by deeply held hatreds, or who this view might have something in common with, but if we are going to learn about why someone would go so far as to ban this material, it's important to do so with tools that are not merely the artifacts of the hall of mirrors critical theory solipsisms this virus is using to fillibuster, disrupt, harass, and delay rational discussion about it.
Is this what a charitable case looks like? It sounds like a regurgitation of a conspiratorial fantasy. I'd hate to see what the uncharitable case looks like.
Which for some, (like me), is ludicrous. My own take is that children learn best (or for some, learn at all) when their interest in something is piqued or they are inspired by a teacher. (I only did homework for teachers I liked throughout my time in elementary and high school.) I claim most of what we learn in school is completely irrelevant to our lives anyway (with a clear exception of learning to read at all). My wife rose to an executive position in a big company without knowing her 'times tables'. "Teaching the curriculum" also leads to the textbooks that came into use after the "No child left behind" legislation. When I read them, I was simultaneously outraged and wanted to cry at (a) how dry they were (b) how memorization-focused they were (c) (for Euclidian Geometry) how much wrong information they contained.
With billions of books in the world, having a very short white list of books means the chances of a teacher suggesting a book that would inspire a particular kid plummets. We get a little closer to Farenheit 451 every passing day.
It didn't used to be a law, so clearly something has happened that made this idea popular enough to be passed into law.
I guess teachers thought that because they have access to other people's children, they're allowed to put whatever ideas into their heads that they please. Those days are coming to a close.
Let me be clear that I do not agree at all, in any way with this argument, I'm just answering your question as to what the opinion of people who like this think.
There are books which contain explicit depictions of sex between teenagers. Why do you want teenagers thinking that having sex before you are 18 is normal? Kids shouldn't be reading stuff about sex (gay, straight, or otherwise) before they are adults. The only people who would be opposed to that sort of thing are groomers.
A lot of people replying to this skipped over part of this comment.
I DO NOT AGREE WITH THIS ARGUMENT. I AM JUST PUTTING IT HERE TO ANSWER THE QUESTION!!!!
> Why do you want teenagers thinking that having sex before you are 18 is normal?
Having some form of sexual interaction with peers certainly isn't universal but it is well within "normal" for teenagers. The mechanisms of our legal system require us to treat majority as a binary state that people just switch on one day at age 18, but actual development doesn't work like that in any way.
If you enforce on actual people the legal fiction that no one under 18 has ever encountered sexual material in the world or in their own mind, you're creating all sorts of vulnerabilities for them when they do reach 18 and have minimal awareness of their own boundaries, right to have them, and practice enforcing them.
> The only people who would be opposed to that sort of thing are groomers.
"Groomers" is very commonly used in this context as a homophoblic slur, conflating queer people with child abuse and pedophilia. If that's not your intention I suggest you don't use it in this way in conversations like this. Grooming is certainly a very serious form of child abuse. Coincidentally I'm sure, depictions of it are also banned by this restriction on books. You are not going to help youths realize they are in this situation if you prevent them from ever engaging with the stories of others who have been.
Because having sex before you are 18 is quite normal? It is odd to pretend otherwise, but 16 for example is quite an usual age, at least here in Europe. I doubt it is actually different in the US.
Most people in the world are sexually active before 18. Your teenage years are you prime years of curiosity. Now, yes, they shouldn't be engaging in sexual activities with older, more mature people. But there's zero problem in late teens just being teens and discovering themselves. The more information they have on how to do that safely, the better. This law (and your puritan line of thinking) does the exact opposite. Expect to see a rise in teenage STDs and pregnancy.
Here's the thing: The argument you have articulated there, whether you agree with it or not, is not actually what is being argued (or at least is not all that is being argued).
It's not actually primarily "books which contain explicit depictions of sex between teenagers" that are being challenged by this. It's books talking about the existence of gay, trans, and other queer people as something other than a horrible sin or a mental defect.
If it were just what you say, then yes, that would still be wrong, and stupid...but what it is, in fact, is wrong, stupid, and horrendously bigoted.
I'm not completely sure that everyone making this argument actually believes it. Presumably there are some who do, but I suspect there's a large portion of people who are looking for a way to selectively fire teachers they don't like. Certainly there are politicians who benefit from stoking outrage, and supporters who enjoy boasting of their commitment to their cause by taking an extreme position on a culture war issue.
> Why do you want teenagers thinking that having sex before you are 18 is normal?
It is normal. Actually, it's more normal than having sex for the first time after the age of 18, statistically speaking; while the average age of virginity loss in the US has gradually increased over time, it's still at something like 17.
> Why do you want teenagers thinking that having sex before you are 18 is normal?
It is normal. Teenagers have sex all of the time, and to ignore it and pretend it doesn't happen is dangerous.
> Kids shouldn't be reading stuff about sex (gay, straight, or otherwise) before they are adults.
Yes, they should. How else do they become functional adults? They need to learn so they can make the right choices when it comes to sex, whether that's abstinence, birth control, etc.
> The only people who would be opposed to that sort of thing are groomers.
Yikes. So you're saying people who teach sex ed are "groomers"? If I give my kid a "birds and the bees" book when she's a teenager or younger, I'm a "groomer"? I'm getting the feeling that this is just more right-wing projection.
brightball|3 years ago
I’ll see if I can find a link.
EDIT: Found one. https://nypost.com/2022/04/22/floridas-banned-math-textbooks...
crooked-v|3 years ago
matmc|3 years ago
[deleted]
Jiro|3 years ago
That argument may or may not be true in this particular case, but it's not some impossible thing that can't ever have a good reason behind it.
Edit: Also, don't confuse school libraries with public libraries. Schools make content-based decisions about what's appropriate for students all the time.
CydeWeys|3 years ago
What's the actual meaningful distinction here? Both are publicly funded, that students/kid can choose to go to and browse books in (but rarely do). It's not like kids are banned from public libraries.
mschuster91|3 years ago
And who determines, with which justification, what should be taught to students? Teaching science and facts should never be something controversial, and I'd expect teachers to be able (and allowed to) make that decision - they know the children under their responsibility the best, not politicians.
ryandrake|3 years ago
cratermoon|3 years ago
What things? Can you provide specific examples, lesson plans, or classes of these concepts being taught?
agloe_dreams|3 years ago
Make no mistake, schools make choices all the time. This decision align those choices to far more insane rules by..guess what...an activist government instead.
A great example of this is John Green's Looking For Alaska. It has a sex scene that is objectively banned by this law.
That very sex scene is an example of why sex should not be the primary goal of a relationship (it goes poorly) and is directly contrasted with a moment of actual love in the very next chapter as an example of how sex is not the most valuable thing about a relationship. It is a scapegoat for politicians and angry...activist...PTA members to simplify the topic "This book has a charater giving a BLOW JOB!!! My 16 year old is asked to READ IT?! These teachers and librarians are sick!" NOBODY's KID SHOULD READ IT.
Might I add, almost EVERY school keeps a list of alternative books and gives parents the option to opt out.
It's Gay marriage and descriptions of sex today, Alan Turing today cannot be fully explained in a book.
Maybe tomorrow it will be Hitler. "It is too violent of a topic and parents should have the right to keep their kids from reading left-wing details like the holocaust."
watwut|3 years ago
Ekaros|3 years ago
motohagiography|3 years ago
It's mandatory state/public education, so the curriculum is legislated and kids are forced to be there, and to start, we have a captive audience. The subject legislation was in response to some arguably extreme cases where there is a concerted effort to distribute lgbtq pornography to kids as a way to use critical theories to shift social norms around sexuality, but uniquely using intersectionality - a recognized political pressure technique to do so. It doesn't work on the majority of adults who see it for what it is, and so its proponents have moved upstream and turned to using the tactic directly on children where they will not encounter resistance to the change they seek to make.
There is little argument that the teachers and advocates for these materials in elementary schools have a stated desire to abolish the civilization these children would otherwise grow up to inherit and become stewards of. Call it what you will, all the words are artifacts of the same basic critical theory and premises ('ist, 'phobic, anti-' etc.) that form a whole new language one either speaks and thinks in, or does not. It's designed to alienate and atomize people so as to manage and extract value from the conflicts you as an activist create. Those words are threats it uses to protect the real underlying ideology from rational scrutiny. From an educational perspective, this is not the drawing out and developing of childrens minds, but rather the funneling and shaping them as an openly stated means to create young activists intent on demolishing the pillars of social stability from which all social growth and progress has emerged.
Instead of having kids and raising them the way religion-based societies and cultures do, mormons, muslims, hindus, christians, etc. and being the change, these activists are leveraging the mandates of the education system to undermine the society they wish to upend. A key front in this is teaching intersectionality, where your beliefs become immutable identities under the umbrella of a system of infinitely regressing subjectivity and criticism instead of deriving a free and independent identity from experience and competence. I'm not going to relitigate intersectionality on this thread other than to say it was invented and not discovered, and all of its proponents' arguments reduce to "everything is made of words, words have no fixed meaning, so nothing has fixed meaning, therefore - all things meaning nothing - my belief is equivalent to your experience, there is only struggle for power, and if you disagree, you are my antagonist." It's nihilism all the way down. They imagine themselves engaged in a kind of science by picking random disciplines and testing them to dissolve in their solipsisms.
To do this, some activists are using pornography as a vehicle to inject this critical narrative into the sexual developent of school children, and adulterate these kids' sense of truth and reality by claiming the new concepts in the minds of children as they begin to apprehend them, with words and narrative that subordinates them to the system of criticism the activists are militating for, and with the neutralizing uncertainties of their theory. Florida's legislature has reacted to it by requiring scrutiny of what goes into those schools.
That is a charitable case for Florida's reaction. I can't defend individuals actuated by deeply held hatreds, or who this view might have something in common with, but if we are going to learn about why someone would go so far as to ban this material, it's important to do so with tools that are not merely the artifacts of the hall of mirrors critical theory solipsisms this virus is using to fillibuster, disrupt, harass, and delay rational discussion about it.
crooked-v|3 years ago
Which activists would those be, and what pornography?
allturtles|3 years ago
realworldperson|3 years ago
[deleted]
2OEH8eoCRo0|3 years ago
lcuff|3 years ago
With billions of books in the world, having a very short white list of books means the chances of a teacher suggesting a book that would inspire a particular kid plummets. We get a little closer to Farenheit 451 every passing day.
wyldfire|3 years ago
Didn't you ever read a book that wasn't prescribed by the curriculum?
linuxftw|3 years ago
I guess teachers thought that because they have access to other people's children, they're allowed to put whatever ideas into their heads that they please. Those days are coming to a close.
alexb_|3 years ago
There are books which contain explicit depictions of sex between teenagers. Why do you want teenagers thinking that having sex before you are 18 is normal? Kids shouldn't be reading stuff about sex (gay, straight, or otherwise) before they are adults. The only people who would be opposed to that sort of thing are groomers.
A lot of people replying to this skipped over part of this comment.
I DO NOT AGREE WITH THIS ARGUMENT. I AM JUST PUTTING IT HERE TO ANSWER THE QUESTION!!!!
giraffe_lady|3 years ago
Having some form of sexual interaction with peers certainly isn't universal but it is well within "normal" for teenagers. The mechanisms of our legal system require us to treat majority as a binary state that people just switch on one day at age 18, but actual development doesn't work like that in any way.
If you enforce on actual people the legal fiction that no one under 18 has ever encountered sexual material in the world or in their own mind, you're creating all sorts of vulnerabilities for them when they do reach 18 and have minimal awareness of their own boundaries, right to have them, and practice enforcing them.
> The only people who would be opposed to that sort of thing are groomers.
"Groomers" is very commonly used in this context as a homophoblic slur, conflating queer people with child abuse and pedophilia. If that's not your intention I suggest you don't use it in this way in conversations like this. Grooming is certainly a very serious form of child abuse. Coincidentally I'm sure, depictions of it are also banned by this restriction on books. You are not going to help youths realize they are in this situation if you prevent them from ever engaging with the stories of others who have been.
l33t233372|3 years ago
People under 18 have sex all the time, and they should absolutely be reading stuff about sex before then.
_ph_|3 years ago
gusmd|3 years ago
danaris|3 years ago
It's not actually primarily "books which contain explicit depictions of sex between teenagers" that are being challenged by this. It's books talking about the existence of gay, trans, and other queer people as something other than a horrible sin or a mental defect.
If it were just what you say, then yes, that would still be wrong, and stupid...but what it is, in fact, is wrong, stupid, and horrendously bigoted.
loudmax|3 years ago
crooked-v|3 years ago
It is normal. Actually, it's more normal than having sex for the first time after the age of 18, statistically speaking; while the average age of virginity loss in the US has gradually increased over time, it's still at something like 17.
riley_dog|3 years ago
It is normal. Teenagers have sex all of the time, and to ignore it and pretend it doesn't happen is dangerous.
> Kids shouldn't be reading stuff about sex (gay, straight, or otherwise) before they are adults.
Yes, they should. How else do they become functional adults? They need to learn so they can make the right choices when it comes to sex, whether that's abstinence, birth control, etc.
> The only people who would be opposed to that sort of thing are groomers.
Yikes. So you're saying people who teach sex ed are "groomers"? If I give my kid a "birds and the bees" book when she's a teenager or younger, I'm a "groomer"? I'm getting the feeling that this is just more right-wing projection.
wolrah|3 years ago
notfromhere|3 years ago