Books being removed fron Canadian libraries include...

[Nearly Sane]

Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Handmaid's Tale!!!!


https://www.cambridgetoday.ca/local-news/books-deemed-harmful-to-staff-and-students-are-being-removed-from-regions-public-school-libraries-4551859

[ad_orientem]

Fucking idiots.

[Aruntraveller]

Fucking idiots.

Indeed. No other words seem necessary.

[ProfessorDavey]

Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Handmaid's Tale!!!!


https://www.cambridgetoday.ca/local-news/books-deemed-harmful-to-staff-and-students-are-being-removed-from-regions-public-school-libraries-4551859

I agree nonsense ... if true.

However I suspect this may be a case of fabricated outrage of the type so often seen in the 'political correctness gone mad' brigade.

If you read carefully the reality doesn't quite equate to the headline. A quick skim-read would suggest that Lord of the Flies, To Kill A Mockingbird and The Handmaid’s Tale had been or were being removed from school libraries. However that isn't actually what the article says. What it actually says is that one school board had removed Lord of the Flies from its curriculum, note curriculum not library. And that To Kill A Mockingbird and The Handmaid’s Tale were removed from school libraries and/or curriculums, again this may just be curriculum.

There are only a small number of the countless titles that are on a curriculum and I have no issue with those books being regularly changed, updated etc to make them more relevant, interesting and accessible to students. So I've no issue with Lord of the Flies, To Kill A Mockingbird and The Handmaid’s Tale once being on the curriculum but not now - so what. Actually I'm rather frustrated by how outdated the books on the GCSE English Lit curriculum are - my daughter is studying Jeckell & Hyde, Macbeth, An inspector calls and some largely 19thC and early 20thC poetry. Seems really narrow to me, likely to put off many students and could do with a bit of a refresh in my opinion.

That is entirely different from removing them from the library, which the article kind of implies but doesn't actually provide any evidence for.

[jeremyp]

If you read carefully the reality doesn't quite equate to the headline. A quick skim-read would suggest that Lord of the Flies, To Kill A Mockingbird and The Handmaid’s Tale had been or were being removed from school libraries. However that isn't actually what the article says. What it actually says is that one school board had removed Lord of the Flies from its curriculum, note curriculum not library. And that To Kill A Mockingbird and The Handmaid’s Tale were removed from school libraries and/or curriculums, again this may just be curriculum.

Unfortunately, the article has a correction at the top, which may have appeared since you read it. It says:

This article has been corrected. An earlier version stated that the Ottawa Carleton District School Board had removed the book The Lord of the Flies from its curriculum. A school board spokesperson says the book remains available within the board for study.

On the other hand - and I think this was always in the article - the person in charge of the censorship has said that "the effort is specific to library collections and doesn’t consider materials or literature taught in classrooms".

The article also contains this:

Other books recently removed from Canadian school libraries and/or curriculums in response to complaints about racist, homophobic, or misogynistic language and themes, include Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid’s Tale.

I really think you should have done more than "a quick skim read". You may not have got this one quite so wrong.

There are only a small number of the countless titles that are on a curriculum and I have no issue with those books being regularly changed, updated etc to make them more relevant, interesting and accessible to students. So I've no issue with Lord of the Flies, To Kill A Mockingbird and The Handmaid’s Tale once being on the curriculum but not now - so what. Actually I'm rather frustrated by how outdated the books on the GCSE English Lit curriculum are - my daughter is studying Jeckell & Hyde, Macbeth, An inspector calls and some largely 19thC and early 20thC poetry. Seems really narrow to me, likely to put off many students and could do with a bit of a refresh in my opinion.

The thing about great literature is that it is timeless. The idea that Shakespeare is outdated merely because it was written 500 years ago is a little bit bizarre.

[Spud]

The thing about great literature is that it is timeless. The idea that Shakespeare is outdated merely because it was written 500 years ago is a little bit bizarre.

A bit off-topic, but this is how I feel about hymns from the last few centuries. Some churches feel the need to ruin (in my opinion) hymns by changing the wording to make it more modern, and in some cases stop singing them altogether.

[ProfessorDavey]

Unfortunately, the article has a correction at the top, which may have appeared since you read it.

Yes - seen the correction which wasn't there when I posted. This rather devalues the article when one of their main claims turns out not to be true.

The article also contains this:

Other books recently removed from Canadian school libraries and/or curriculums in response to complaints about racist, homophobic, or misogynistic language and themes, include Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid’s Tale.

I really think you should have done more than "a quick skim read". You may not have got this one quite so wrong.

Yes I did read this bit and I didn't skim read it - indeed I picked out one carefully used word/phrase, namely:

'and/or'

My point (which I clearly didn't explain very well) is as follows:

Specifically removing books from libraries is potentially a big issue in terms of censorship. On the other hand removing a book from what is usually a handful of set texts on a curriculum happens all the time and needs to happen or we end up with a tiny number of books studied that are ossified in time. So the two parts of the 'and/or' are very different in terms of their significance. But of course using 'and/or' means that the article may be true (albeit they seem to have got stuff wrong) even if all that has happened is that To Kill A Mockingbird and The Handmaid’s Tale were once set texts on the curriculum and now aren't, which isn't a big issue as far as I'm concerned.

So the overall point is that the OP and the article implies that books are being removed from school libraries, yet the article provides no evidence that this has happened, and even on removal from being a set text on the curriculum on of the claims they've made turns out to be false. If these books had been removed from libraries (a much more significant claim than no longer being a set text on the curriculum) then why didn't they make that actual claim rather than couch it in the ambiguity of 'and/or'.

And I can say with absolute certainty that the following statement is correct (albeit actually not what you might read into it):

Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird has been removed from school libraries and/or curriculums in English schools

How do I know this to be true - well because I studied To Kill A Mockingbird for O-level English and it was therefore on the curriculum in the 1980s - it isn't on the GCSE English curriculum now so at some point it has been removed from the curriculum. A rather liked the book and maybe you studied it too but despite that statement being true I hardly think either you or me would find this to be evidence of some kind of censorship, merely that the curriculum and the small number of set texts had been refreshed at some point between the early 80s and the present day.

[ProfessorDavey]

The thing about great literature is that it is timeless. The idea that Shakespeare is outdated merely because it was written 500 years ago is a little bit bizarre.

Actually I wasn't really referring to the Shakespeare, although I'll come back to that later.

The reason why I feel the curriculum is narrow is that of the four set texts, none is more recent than 75 years ago, and more significantly three of the four are from a narrow 70 year period from late 19thC to mid 20thC. If you were studying this period in depth, e.g. at A-level or degree level then fine, but this is GCSE and I think that the four set texts should be a bit broader.

I also have an issue in that there is just one novel and half the set texts are plays (including of course Macbeth). Realistically plays are written to be seen, and indeed to be seen live. Reading a play and studying it in the classroom is really quite challenging and not all students will have the opportunity to actually see the play live for critical context. So at most I think there should only be one play.