Thursday, August 27, 2009

Geography of Ignorance


My last posting was about sin, so ignorance seems to be a logical next step. Those who try to ban books seek to reinforce their own ignorance and to share it with others. Almost anything written that is at all interesting will be offensive to someone. Rather than grapple with the offensive ideas, some prefer to bury them.
This map represents recent challenges in the U.S. To be honest, the pattern is not what I expected. Except for Southern California, it is rather representative of the distribution of population. This should not have suprised me, as efforts to ban books come from both the left and the right, the blue and the red.

Thanks to my favorite librarian for this link and thanks to ALA and ACLU for helping this country to live up to its ideals of liberty, which is often unpopular.

2 comments:

  1. Iam not saying we should banned books. I feel we as parents should have the write to know what are children will be required to read. If we are not happy with the selection, I feel we should have a choose of another book. As a christian parent, I know we can not keep our children from evil, as we see it, but I want to protect my child in any shape or form I can. Iam sick of how everything is offensive to everyone well get over it. I have had to, by taking God and the Bible out of the schools that has offended me. We are a world full of different back grounds, But what is offensive for me is not for others. I do not think banning books is right, by all means I do not care for alot of Lititure out there, Iam just trying to protect my spot on this earth,My child and my Home. I will turn into a Mama Bear if Iam not happy with how my child is being taught, but so far we have never had to come to that. I would just love to give a shout out to our wonderful school here in Mulvane Kansas, Munson primary. Bella has been through pre-k and is now in all day kindegarten, Iam very pleased. To all the wonderful partents out there. Just take time to be apart of your childs education and make sure your teachers are leading your children how you want them to. Try to caught it before there older, and you see something you do not like, trust me sometimes it can be a stepping stone. Thanks for listing to all my rambulings. Brenda Bohanan

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you, Brenda, for your thoughts on this. One of the great things about librarians -- in addition to defending our freedom to read -- is that they can help readers and parents identify what books will be most (or least) suited to their tastes and values.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for your comment and your interest in my blog. I will approve your comment as soon as possible. I had to activate comment moderation because of commercial spam; I welcome debate of any ideas I present, but this will not be a platform for dubious commercial messages.

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