‘Maus’ is an Amazon bestseller after Tennessee school ban

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/28/maus-amazon-bestseller-after-tennessee-school-ban.html

by donsupreme • 4 years ago

78 40 4 years ago

Lammy• 4 years ago

Also available in Hypercard form! https://macintoshgarden.org/games/the-complete-maus

lnxg33k12• 4 years ago

It was a mix of hilarious and sad to read the transcript of that school meeting, like you read a book about holocaust and your concern is about a open nipple, or come up to say like "the guy used to work for playboy and it's enough to make his works banned"

I don't really like to call people idiots, usually i can justify with myself that people might be having a bad day, but if i have to describe what an idiot is to an extraterrestrial form of life i would let them read that transcript

apostacy5• 4 years ago

What if the author said something slightly problematic on Twitter 14 years ago, would that be a good justification for banning their book?

Rednecks stopped being the biggest laughing stock in this country years ago.

lnxg33k12• 4 years ago

Yeah, I mean if we want to make fun of wokes count me in. But I think the situation is different, saying something racist? sexist? As a grown adult on social requires a certain mindset and / or cultural background, that might be considered harder to change

Working for Playboy, is a bit different, there is not substantial issue working for playboy, it's not like being racist or sexist, unless you got a religious brain damage one of those who make you see invisible people in the sky

_dain_• 4 years ago

as is usual with these "bans", it was no such thing; it was merely taken off the curriculum.

rsj_hn3• 4 years ago

There was no school ban. The district was using Maus (a graphic novel) in the curriculum to teach about the holocaust, and opted to search for an actual textbook to use in its place.

That's all.

The comic book remains in the school library, and if they can't find an actual textbook they'll go back to the comic book. It was the right call.

The extreme freakout over this as well as hordes of sanctimonious diatribes that resulted is unfortunately common in our current social-media driven news cycle, where facts so often succumb to Narrative, in this case, the narrative being that a school does not want to teach the holocaust, rather than the fact that they don't want to use a comic book to do it.

I like Maus, but would not rely on it as textbook, either.

version_five2• 4 years ago

Is there something false or misleading in the above comment? A few people have posted something similar. Why is it getting modded down?

rsj_hn3• 4 years ago

All I can think of is that a lot of people enjoy outrage so when someone points out "No, the facts are different, so there is nothing to be outraged about", instead of viewing that as good news - that hey, schools are not actually censoring the holocaust and Maus was not banned anywhere - they get really angry as the legitimacy of their outrage is threatened.

It's really strange because if you tell someone who was convinced that say, a man was killed a robbery, that actually no, there was no robbery and no one was hurt, most would breathe a sigh of relief and view that as good news. But when it comes to these culture war issues, the reaction of hearing the facts is often people taking offense that their previous offense was not justified.

IMO that's a good way of determining whether something is a real issue or a culture war issue -- if it was a real issue, people would be glad to hear that a bad thing didn't happen.

danShumway4• 4 years ago

where facts so often succumb to Narrative

These kinds of confident assertions about "facts" and "narrative" are also a kind of narrative of their own; they are designed to fit into and reinforce a broad narrative about the world any social outrage is usually just the result of poor research or snap-takes rather than actual differences in ideologies or opinions, and that people's default reaction to them should be to assume everyone is just overreacting because they always do. So let's step away from that narrative as well, and instead look at something that's a bit more tangible.

For anyone who's curious about the actual reasoning, the minutes of the meeting are online (https://core-docs.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/asset/uploaded_...). So you don't need to take a secondhand opinion, you can read the parents' reasoning for yourself. That's a good factual place to start.

And from the minutes, it is very hard to conclude that the objection to Maus was that Maus isn't a textbook. The overwhelming objection was concern over several swear words and a naked image, all of them censored in the books that were to be used for the curriculum, and an objection to minor depictions of nakedness (of cartoon rats being literally marched into camps), and an objection that bringing up disturbing topics like hangings, child deaths, or the existence of swearing/sex to 8th graders was inappropriate in a conversation about the holocaust. Criticism of the board's decision isn't based on a misunderstanding of the facts or people jumping to conclusions without reading the minutes, but rather an assertion that teaching kids about the holocaust necessarily requires mentioning the parts of it that were disturbing.

In fact, far from the removal of Maus from the curriculum being about whether or not Maus is a textbook, the minutes contain criticism from a parent of other school textbooks that contain swearwords. Which should make it really clear that the issue wasn't that Maus isn't a formal text. I do not know how to read the full minutes in a way that supports the parent comment's argument. It confidently misrepresents the entire conflict with no evidence, even as it claims that everyone else is doing the same.

apostacy5• 4 years ago

A small school district removed a book because it contained some profanity that made some parents uncomfortable.

Is this supposed to be more important than the massive changes that states like California have quietly pushed through over the last year? How am I supposed to take this incident seriously?

rsj_hn3• 4 years ago

You are confusing a public hearing about a decision with the actual decision, which is usually made by administrators and then the board votes up or down. The outcome is generally known beforehand and the public hearing gives an opportunity for board members to speak.

In these hearings, board members talk about all sorts of things -- have you ever been to such a hearing in San Francisco or for the SFUSD? You'd think every school policy was about climate change and racism. You would be groaning in embarrassment at what the schoolboard is saying and you'd be shocked at their ignorance. This is not to pick on San Francisco, it's true of most public meetings at the local level, which are involve lots of politicking and posturing, when the outcome of the vote is known in advance.

I'm not saying this is bad, but it's certainly misleading to be citing the transcript of such a hearing as opposed to the actual text of the resolution being voted on when describing what a schoolboard did.

It's also misleading to say a comic book is being "banned" when it's being replaced by an actual textbook and is still available for students to read if they want to.

NikolaeVarius• 4 years ago

Minutes of the McMinn school board meeting that led to the book being banned show that while some parents said they supported the idea of teaching about the Holocaust, they had problems with some profanity in the book. They also had an issue with an image showing a nude woman, who is Spiegelman's mother. "We can teach them history and we can teach them graphic history," board member Mike Cochran said, according to minutes of the meeting. "We can tell them exactly what happened, but we don't need all the nakedness and all the other stuff."

Is this 1890?

rayiner5• 4 years ago

That’s 2021 nearly everyone outside some European countries and parts of America.

ALittleLight• 4 years ago

I do not understand how it's national news that a random school in Tennessee is changing their curriculum by substituting a book.

akvadrako• 4 years ago

It isn't that hard to become a bestseller so it probably happens to any book that gets so much media attention.

I'm not sure why people would upvote this story except to call conservative parents idiots.

version_five2• 4 years ago

Every comment in this thread (except the Hypercard one) has been modded down at the time of writing. Maybe some would like to talk about why they don't like any opinions about this story?

apostacy5• 4 years ago

After spending the last few years gleefully cheering for Republicans to be banned from every online platform, it feels pretty fake to be outraged over a single schoolboard somewhere editing their suggested reading list.

I used to see stories like this all the time in my social media feed 10 years ago, during the peak of the new atheist phenomenon. But it feels really out of place now. Especially because of people's warming to censorship.

NoraCodes2• 4 years ago

You've made essentially the same comment in three separate places in this thread. This kind of passive-voice imputation is neither productive nor intellectually honest. _Who_ has been "spending the last few years..."? Is it the same people who are now "outraged over a single schoolboard..."? Can you show that?

I suspect you can't, and that you're suggesting it only because it fits your ideological biases.

rayiner5• 4 years ago

It’s funny what “bans” we get worked about and which ones we don’t: https://ncac.org/news/blog/images-of-muhammad-banned-from-bo...

The next generation of leaders and elites will be educated at Yale. Meanwhile nobody can even find this town in Tennessee on a map.

throwaway_4ever• 4 years ago

Ya last round of book controversy making the rounds was local progressive groups banning Huckleberry Finn.

c0nducktr• 4 years ago

If you think it is important, please feel free to submit that as a post to news.ycombinator.com.

tptacek3• 4 years ago

Seems... not at all really comparable?

rayiner5• 4 years ago

It’s not. People in rural America removing a book from the curriculum because of nudity and violence is innocuous. Yale censoring political speech is important.

dragonwriter• 4 years ago

The next generation of leaders and elites will be educated at Yale.

But this isn't a decision about material that Yale will stock in libraries or allow in curriculum, but what Yale University Press will publish.

pilotneko• 4 years ago

I know it’s not the point you were making, but McMinnville is rather close to the Arnold Engineering Development Complex, which is a pretty large Air Force research facility (massive wind tunnels). There are likely a least a few bright kids at those schools that are being negatively affected by this ban.

rayiner5• 4 years ago

Nobody is being negatively affected by this ban. I learned plenty about the holocaust without having it delivered in graphic novel form.

josephcsible• 4 years ago

It wasn't banned. It's just no longer mandatory to read.

Avatars• 4 years ago

Of Maus and Man.

andrei_says_2• 4 years ago

Wait, someone decided to ban Maus, the comic describing the artist’s father’s experiences of going through the Holocaust?

What the hell?!

What are the arguments for this ban?

the_biot• 4 years ago

Didn't read the article, huh. Not even the bullet summary of the article. Just went straight into outraged commenter mode.

andrei_says_2• 4 years ago

You’re right, I did. Turns out nothing’s banned, just no longer required.

Clickbait outrage worked perfectly on me!

‘Maus’ is an Amazon bestseller after Tennessee school ban

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