timepiececlock | books and censors and secularism

Ok, this cracks my shit up:

I have to write a paper for my english class, and the subject I chose was cenorship in American school textbooks.

I've aquired three of the only four books on this topic in my campus library, and spent a while looking over them while I waited in line and walked to my car.

What amuses me so much is that one of the books is so old (1967) as to barely be applicable to current education system, and the other two books are written by conservative right-wingers whose chief complaint seems to be that God, religionm, traditional portrayals of male & female roles are being cut out of books, in favor of secularism, feminism, atheism, and liberal/Democratic views.

Since all those latter ideas are my prerred opinions, this cracks me up.

One of the books (the most recent of 1983--I'm going to ahve to do more finding of material, for sure), when listing the things ommitted from or wrongly portrayed in textbooks examined, stated this as an example of the problem:

"
-Agressive feminist themes were prominent in many of the texts."

...

...

::snert::

That pretty much killed my ability to take that book seriously. The other very conservative-minded book was better, and though there's a outright slant in the writng as to whether certain cenorships match up with "good Christian values for America" (again, actual quote), it neverhteless has a lot of information about popular literature that has been banned and various cases over the whole country. At least this one I'll be able to use for facts (though not for opinions, as both of these books refer to secualrism as "anti-God" and more.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I read a great book called "Lies My Teacher Told Me" that deals with this exact topic. It's by James W. Loewen and you'll find more info here.

Read 'Backlash' and 'Shortchanging Girls' for a very interesting take on the whole thing. INteresting that the most recent book was published during the Reagan years, huh? Don't get me started.

Thanks for the book recs. I'll see if my local library has them. I have to turn in my bibliography tomorrow (slacker!), but the actual paper isn't due for a week so I can always add to it.

Interesting subject and I'd be interesting to see what you find out. As an education major, my biggest complaint with some history textbooks is that there is such a focus on including all viewpoints and stressing all viewpoints, that key factual information is being downplayed, given less overall text, or downright ignored. And I'm talking framing of the constitution, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, etc. I don't think that other cultural viewpoints shouldn't be included, but I'm not for one at the expense of the other.

Also, I'm never a big fan of using history textbooks to teach anyway. I pretty much hate them. I would blame poorly written, above grade reading level, boring textbooks, as one of the main reasons kids don't like history! Give them an interesting historical fiction work or a biography and they may not even realize they're learning history.

Anyway... just some random thoughts. I'm not one for censorship. Librarian. Freedom of information proponent. You know. ;)

(I feel like there was kind of a Spike 'Vampire. Evil.' effect on that last line... cute.)

Librarian. Freedom of information proponent.

...there was kind of a Spike 'Vampire. Evil.' effect...

Definitely. I think anyone in bookstores or libraries probably has to love books to be there in the first place, and pretty much any booklover, no matter what their politics, is for freedom of speech. It's a thing you get from reading constantly. Maybe it's morals/values... or maybe it's just a deep-seated fear that if they burn the books you'll run out of things to read before you go to bed. Either way, freedom of information is the key. :)

or maybe it's just a deep-seated fear that if they burn the books you'll run out of things to read before you go to bed.

I like that! Yeah, I don't know what I'd do if I ran out of books to read before I went to bed. On a censorship note, I just read an interesting book for my YA lit class The Last Safe Place on Earth by Richard Peck which deals with censorship and it was pretty interesting. And of course there's the classic Farenheit 451...

I've got F-451. Great books. But I'm afraid it's a non-fiction researchy thing, rather than a yummy philosphical analyzing thing.

You could always write a paper analyzing he books on censorship themselves. I did this once for an Anthro paper. I got a bunch of old Anthropology texts and examined the cultural biases of the authors. (Got an A. The teacher had a sense of humor.)

ohh... hey, that's an idea. I'll check that out-- see how it goes with what other books I find. It actually wouldn't be too far a jump from my original topic.

Early morning. not had tea yet. So I will just say...

Censorship always wrong, books goood. Responisibilty the key.

Hmm, that wasn't so bad.

Good luck with essay

books and censors and secularism

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Agh... I have this thing about history textbooks!

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