I think you're confusing one particularly vocal individual with the general population.

I remember watching "Roots" in school, in 8th grade as part of our teacher's material for the year. We did reports about it. Levar Burton acted his ass off for that film. Same teacher had us watch "Beloved" too. I grew up in a very rural area too.

How about you let publicly funded libraries be libraries and you worry about your own kids?

It boils down to this. You want to ban something you don't like. There is clearly disagreement in this thread about whether the content you want to ban is inappropriate, and you dont seem to be anywhere near in the majority on that.

So if we went and banned everything in school libraries, public libraries, or whatever other space we are calling under the control of the public (loosely paraphrasing you) on the basis of extremely vocal minorities, then we will have very little left on those shelves. The least common denominator of things so inoffensive no one thought to ask for them to be removed.

If you think there should be a conversation about whether a particular book or book series is appropriate, and you want to submit your thoughts in the correct forum to help decide that one or another book shouldn't be there, great. Participate in the process.

Here, though, you seem to have tried hijacking a post about a book on a very different topic and turning it into your own soapbox for railing against a book you declared to be smut.

You're not changing minds in this Lemmy thread. You're not making friends. What you are doing is making a lot or noise a out a topic you seem to be widely disagreed with on, and you seem to be badly reacting to it. Among other things, you repeatedly declare everyone who disagrees with some of the specific things youre declaring isn't a parent. That's rank horseshit. It makes me wonder how well you understand parenting yourself, if your solution to being disagreed with is to yell, flail, call people names, question their morality, and so on.

Take a breath, re-examine your reasons for thinking what you do, and remember to occasionally check reasonable scholarly authorities on what has been found to be harmful to children. Something may seem perfectly obviously harmful that actually isn't harmful, its just distasteful to you and some others. That isn't the same thing.

I never read them but looks like those are bestsellers with good reviews. By calling them "smut" and calling for bans you're not different than christian fundamentalists trying to ban Harry Potter and LOTR.

Which implies there was possibly a time when those books were in school libraries

It implies no such thing. Before that, it would have simply been the school administrators decision as to whether or not to have those in the school library. There's no evidence that any school actually did.

The school board bans come from a blanket list they get from probably some far-right evangelical consulting firm somewhere. It's pre-emptive. And it never used to be needed because we trusted our teachers and long-suffering librarians to do their job. THEY made sure that what was in THEIR library was appropriate.

The school board is just making smoke in order to pretend that there's a fire.

I am surprised at the onslaught of downvotes about not wanting ACOTAR in a school library, seems pretty sane to me.

Are school libraries also public libraries in some places? Where I am at, they are not. They are only accessible to the children attending the school and maybe the staff working there.

I really don't give a shit let kids read fucking porn if they want at this point as long as its queer or femme do it just yo piss off the fascists I don't buy that its bad for kidseven if it was I say keep it just to piss off fasch and push window

Wonder if the Xanth series is going to get caught up in this. Fun, punny adventures in a fairly unique fantasy land, lots of coming of age stories. But also varying degrees of pedo shit, never ending mysogyny, and of course the questionable bestiality (the animals are sentient so they can give consent but uh, yeah, it's questionable). My school had tons of them lol

I'm torn on this one because these books are smut, and not particularly good smut. but Porn is different, it's visual. The distinction between school libraries and public libraries is important, and school libraries cannot be infinite, so choosing to remove books like the ACOTAR series in favor of other, more relevant books for kids is fine. but in High School I had access to some gruelingly violent books in our school library, I struggle to see how violence should be considered acceptable but sex shouldn't be.

In HS, as part of the official curriculum decided on by the lit teachers in my school, I read "Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes" which contains discussions of many controversial topics, landing most of its focus on abortion. The teachers correctly understood that we were old enough to take in and have out own thoughts on the topics discussed in the book. It seems insane to try to gate keep topics that teens are definitely aware of and discussing and seeking out on their own. I'd rather my kids read stuff in text and ask questions about it and make decisions about it on their own than fully block it out so they just seek out actual porn. I think ACOTAR, which I've read the first 4 in the series, is fine for a teenager to read, and shouldn't be banned. And I think if a 5th grader tried to read it, they'd probably reject it for being a bit tough to read anyway.

Never read that book but if you consider Playboy and it's tasteful vanilla nudity section to be pornography then I feel justified in dismissing your judgement on this subject.

:popcorn:

Wish we had a nuclear block here like BlueSky. Would make it a lot better