Unprecedented effort in 2023 to ban books

I would agree as well.

You can decide for your children, but you don't get to impose your will upon everyone else.

I can't see the sign. The link took me to a page that says "Your cart is empty."

Shoot, let me attach the picture instead.

I'm working on my masters in library science and we have been talking a lot about book challenges. I guess we should not be surprised that people are looking for any way they can to impose their values on others, but it is upsetting. On top of that, we are seeing more legislation holding librarians responsible for "inappropriate" materials (with fines and JAIL TIME).

As a longtime public librarian, I have been paying close attention to these challenges. It has never been our job to act “in loco parentis” regarding what children read or view. You get to decide what is appropriate for your family, but not what is appropriate for other families. I am very glad my library recently tightened up our book challenge policy, including a clause that says you have read/viewed the entire work you are challenging. Luckily in my state (MA), library records that identify a borrower are covered under privacy laws, and that includes children.

Censorship drives me nuts. Stay in your lane, people!

Our school district just added an "opt-out" program for their school libraries. Parents can block their children from checking out specific titles or pre-select books for them. I'm not sure if this is the district's attempt to get around all of the book banning nonsense or what. It sounds like a ton of work for librarians, though maybe they feel it protects them more from the conservative outrage.

It's only a matter of time before they have public book burning parties to please their fuhrer.

I have no memory of anyone telling me not to read any particular books. I know I went to the library alone at a fairly young age.
Maybe the librarian?

I do have to say it would be ancient history.... 70+ years is hard to remember back for details

All of these books were banned in four Utah High Schools. I was happily surprised all but Gender Queer is available to borrow through the states online ebook lending library.
ETA: Actually not all, it's a bit different, I'll find the list.

Education is the problem.... That is the goal, stop education the people. The less they know, the better!!

Thinking is the enemy of authoritarianism.

To those who have been carefully watching the GOP as they become more openly fascistic, none of this is surprising. As I wrote in December, authoritarians have long taken a dim view of the very concept of education. Even basic literacy and math skills are viewed as a threat because they open the door to critical thinking. Above all else, Republicans do not want a population armed with critical thinking skills. While it doesn't get much mainstream press coverage, conservatives have long been nurturing anger over federal education guidelines, often called "Common Core." These standards aim to give kids a real understanding of math and how it works, instead of simply memorizing multiplication tables and quitting before they get to calculus. Having people understand concepts on a deeper level terrifies the right, however. They prefer a populace that's kept ignorant because they are prone to blindly following authority.

So under such circumstances, it's not a surprise that Republicans are expanding their war on learning past schools and targeting libraries, as well. On Sunday, the Washington Post published a chilling story looking at this nationwide attack on reading through one Texas community's battle over the local public library.

The religious right in Llano, Texas has been bullying the local library to pull books deemed "pornographic filth," mostly because the books admit racism is real, that LGBTQ people exist and that human beings are naked under their clothes. If that sounds like an exaggeration, it's not: One of the books targeted is "In the Night Kitchen" by Maurice Sendak, a children's book that has a drawing of a naked child that is only "pornographic" to people who think all nudity, even children's nudity, is about sex. Another book is "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates, clearly targeted for the "pornography" of being about how racism is a real problem that affects real people.

As the Post reports, the GOP book banners, "some of whom did not even have library cards," have made incredible headway at circumventing the library's rigorous protocols against censorship. They've been working through the head chair of the governing body of Llano County, a Republican named Ron Cunningham, who simply walked right into the library and pulled the books he didn't want other people to read off the shelf.

"The board also needs to recognize that the county is not mandated by law to provide a public library," Cunningham wrote in a letter to Bonnie Wallace, a far-right activist who has been granted secretive but wide-ranging censorship powers. After the Post confronted Cunningham with this letter, which was obtained under a FOIA request, he replied with pablum about how the county is "committed to providing excellent public library services." But, of course, the true attitudes are coming out in that letter and the relentless hostility to educators and librarians in general.

Conservatives have long been nurturing anger over federal education guidelines, often called "Common Core."

As Kathryn Joyce has demonstrated through expansive reporting for Salon, once you look past the surface talk about "protecting" children and towards the actual organizers and brain trust for the right, it becomes clear that the long-term goal here is destroying public education. In some cases, the plan is to replace it with private and for-profit "schools" that teach fake right-wing science and history. Realistically, for most people who can't afford private school tuition, this GOP plan would likely mean no real education for their kids at all. This is absolutely fine by the authoritarian right, of course, which views functional literacy as a gateway drug to that dreaded "critical thinking." Plus, if poor and middle-class kids don't finish high school, that means that the children of the wealthy have fewer people to compete with for spots in elite universities.

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As Umberto Eco wrote in his fundamental examination of fascism, "All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning." To be functionally literate, instead of being incapable of reading much more than a street sign or a Donald Trump tweet, is to open the door to thinking. Thinking is the enemy of authoritarianism.

To be certain, most Americans — even most Republican voters — don't think literacy, much less math skills or scientific knowledge, are bad things. And they certainly wouldn't approve, if they found out how expansive the Republican war on education actually is. That's why these leaders dress up their hatred of education with conspiracy theories about "critical race theory" and "grooming." It's about distracting voters from what's really going on: a full-blown assault on the ability of all kids to receive a basic education.

That said, the abject terror that has been instilled in the average Republican voter of "wokeism" has opened the door to radicalizing them towards a fascist view that literacy itself is the enemy. As this battle in Llano shows, it doesn't take much to get conservatives to start taking a dim view of the mere existence of books and libraries. Take this recent propaganda video from Tucker Carlson and Fox News, an unwittingly campy portrayal of "manhood" as being a matter of throwing tires and drinking raw eggs.

I promise you are not prepared for Tucker's latest montage
***
It's a movement led by Trump, a man who is proudly illiterate and whose social media writers would deliberately inject grammatical errors and misspellings into his tweets to keep up his image as someone who can barely read. Republicans are swiftly reimagining illiteracy not as an embarrassing flaw, but as an aspiration. A child's right to education is caught directly in the crosshairs.

www.rawstory.com/republicans-ramp-up-their-mission-to-spread-ignorance/

A propoganda trick Hitler used
"Intellectuals and journalists were suspected of being Socialists or even worse, Communists!"

Also, it's us against them! We are the only one that can save you!

The GOP is the party of Fascists, but I still registered as one because districts are gerrymandered and only registered Republicans can vote in their primaries. I hope to hell Mike Lee resigns, but he's proven he has no conscience.

school librarian here.  I teach 7-9 th graders.  I am on my 2nd book challenge this year.  the first one was The absolutely True Diary of  a Part Time Indian. My committee decided to keep the book.  My challenge now is for Thirteen reasons Why, because of the sexual assault in it. As a librarian it is exhausting. In Utah  they simply claim something is pornography. Neither book is pornographic.