Geoff_M
DIS Veteran, DVC Member, "Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc
- Joined
- Sep 13, 2000
- Messages
- 11,961
I agree that was a flawed example. I should have put a little more thought into the example and picked one that is plausable:
My daughter loves Chemistry in high school. Say her teacher decides to try and make the subject more appealing to her class and, being a "hip" teacher, she decides to use another Classic Banned Book in her class: The Anarchist's Cookbook** (#57 on their big "Top 100" from 1990-2000). This book is truely one of the classic books for teenage boys. It contains everything your average teenage boy would go ape over: how to make homemade explosives, thermite(!), pipe bombs, b00by traps, how to bring down structures with explosives, and whole lot more. I saw it first when I was in high school and thought it was one of the coolest books I'd ever seen.
While the odds are very low that a teacher would use this book in their class, I don't think it all that far fetched given that each year we read a handful of news articles about a teacher that gets into hot water for incorporating something into the classroom that makes people think "What were they thinking!?!?!?" It was in my Chemistry class that I first read the "cookbook" when one of my classmates brought it in. Our teacher thought it was interesting and we spent some time talking about its contents.
Blowing things up in class is a time honored means to retain class interest in high school chemistry. So the teacher decided to bring in some copies of the "cookbook" and use some of the "minor" recipes in the class to let the students make some of the more benign stuff in their labs and make some small fireworks in the process.
Say my daughter comes home and reports to me about this cool stuff her teacher had her do in Chemistry class and tell me about this book they used. Having firsthand knowledge of the book, I'd suggest to her teacher that this book probably ought to not be used in her class. She and I then have a difference of opinion on the matter, so I next talk to the administration and suggest that the Anarchist's Cookbook probably shouldn't be used as part of the teacher's curriculum. They look at the book and agree that it shouldn't be used in conjunction with the class.
Per the ALA, my actions would be no different than if I had instead tried to bounce The Diary of Anne Frank out of my daughter's English class or Captain Underpants out of the the elementary library. My actions, even though not aimed at a library, would still be used to ensconce The Anarchist's Cookbook on its "celebration" list... contrary to what your local librarians think about the ALA's emphasis. To them, I would be viewed as a suppressor of Free Speech. This lack of differentiation is the main source of my discomfort with the ALA "banned book program". Writing them to encourge changes to their celebration would be useless as it would require a change to one of their core principles. It would be as fruitful as trying to get the ALCU to change their stance on School Prayer or the NRA's position on assault weapons.
** = Interesting note about this book. It's author William Powell wrote the book as a teenager as a response to this feelings about the Vietnam War. Later he renounced his views that violence as a legitimate means of political change. He attempted to halt the production of the work, only to find out that the copyright had been assigned to the publisher instead of himself. The publisher refused his request and the publication went on.
