alt Hacker NewsIt’s honestly terrifying that efforts to ban books and restrict what teachers can teach have made such a big comeback in the US. When I was in school, we always discussed banned books from the perspective of “we used to ban things that made people uncomfortable in the bad old days, but that could never happen in the 21st century”. Obviously that glossed over a lot of nuance, but it still shocks me as an adult seeing repression we discussed only from a historical perspective make its way back into the legislature.
Part of the purpose of education is exposing students to strange, uncomfortable, and even frightening ideas and giving them the tools to critically think about and even empathize with such ideas. They don’t have to even be “useful” ideas, since it’s important that students are given the tools to grow and become anything they want. It seems like a lot of groups around the country just want students to grow up to become drones working to prop up the economy. Anything that might make people question the nature of society or their role in it must be suppressed according to them.
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I deeply oppose MAGA but the idea of winning through the take over of the cultural institution - school, universities, the media - has been theorized by Gramsci followers like Marcuse and Horkheimer.
In a lot of way, what we are witnessing in a counter movement swinging opposite to the heavy push for critical theory in the public sphere. Critical theory is not neutral. It is teleological in nature.
Schools have been a battle ground for decades I fear.
In the real world each and every one of us has to function at a workplace with people from every race and religion.
So, following your logic, I assume you violently oppose restricting access to Social Media? After all, young people are, according to you, supposed to be exposed to frightening ideas. So, bring the beheadings on!!!
> It’s honestly terrifying that efforts to ban books and restrict what teachers can teach have made such a big comeback in the US. When I was in school, we always discussed banned books from the perspective of “we used to ban things that made people uncomfortable in the bad old days, but that could never happen in the 21st century”.
Except that's never gone away, and it was always happening, even when you were in school. For an obvious example: try teaching creationism in a public school and see what happens. That's more of a ban than any of these "book bans" anyone's been complaining about. On a more similar note, I don't think school libraries ever carried bodice-rippers or porno mags or all kinds of stuff, and if some librarian decided to try, the local school board would have uncontroversially have done something about it. Furthermore, they probably a lot had stuff that a 2026 liberal would look askance at (say books about owning and using guns).
This "book ban" framing is pure propaganda (dishonesty is common in politics). Communities have always made decisions about what belonged in schools and what didn't. The things that they decided wouldn't be available in school weren't banned, you just needed to get them outside of school (e.g. if you like bodice-rippers or porno mags go get them at the drug store of gas station down the street from the school).
I struggle with the federal government's power over all this. Let the states and local jurisdictions decide. Put in guardrails so that those local jurisdictions don't become corrupted, but at the same time we should empower people to place their children in education systems that don't ultimately falter to who's empowered in the fed.
You may be okay with your children reading some books. That's great, and you should be able to find the right school districts for them, and I should be able to do the same to ensure my children don't read through explicit material without any form of parental oversight.
My recollection is discussing banned books from the perspective of "people have done and still do this elsewhere in the US, but we don't do it here".