[zzzeek]

because that would suggest something very bad is happening in the US and the HN party line is "this is nothing unusual, typical woke [1] panic attack over nothing, now please get back to your HN job of trying to win VC money"

[1] https://paulgraham.com/woke.html

[everdrive]

At least in my mind it's unfair because the books are not in any way banned. Anyone can get them. They're more available than perhaps any time in history. The school's decision not to stock them may merit criticism, but the books are hardly "banned" in the traditional sense of the word.

[tavavex]

99.99% of all books ever are not going to be available at your local library. But we don't consider those to be "banned" either. Here, the difference is that these books were selected and stocked in the past, but were removed due to political pressure - or these books weren't available, but a ruling from up above blanket banned their libraries from being able to consider them in the first place. It's frustrating to see so many people in this comment section equate these two.

Just because you can find those books online or elsewhere doesn't mean that the rulings to ban them from school libraries isn't about trying to restrict access to that information.

[seec]

Yes, there a selection, it reflected the previous political power sensibilities, now the current power doesn't like them that much, so they are not selected.

As far as I'm concerned, if we really wanted to do things right, any book in a school library should be no less than a hundred years old. This way, no current politics.

[tavavex]

> it reflected the previous political power sensibilities

It reflected the sensibilities of the people who were actually running the libraries and whose entire jobs was comprehending and choosing books based on what they know about their field. Now, it reflects the sensibilities of politicians from up above who are likely to know less than nothing about literature, but are important enough to scream "Nonono, you can't just do that!" and be obeyed. It's not exactly a fair trade.

> if we really wanted to do things right, any book in a school library should be no less than a hundred years old. This way, no current politics.

Thinking that all politics is categorically bad is a very strange viewpoint that I could never wrap my head around. It's especially prevalent in the US. Politics, the methods of organizing and running society, impacts absolutely every facet of our lives. Not understanding politics and not being exposed to it leaves one with an incomplete view of how humans work, and how to maneuver around human irrationality to get things done. What's worse is that giving people nothing but century-old books will just teach them about what was "current politics" a hundred years ago, leaving people with heaps of knowledge on how people lived and thought in a completely alien world, and no real objective information on how radically different the current day is, and why.

[seec]

The sensibilities of the people running the librairies are extremely political. One could argue that since their employment largely lies outside of market forces, they get chosen or self-select for political reasons. Having the power to chose what should be read and influence children in the direction you prefer is very much a political endeavor, a power that shouldn't be left to anyone else but the parents and whoever they chose can have that power. This should be true until people become fully formed adult, they are not properties/projects of the state, but very much the result of an alliance between two individuals, it seems that people that are pro-governement forget that a bit too easily.

Politics is the realm of feminity, it brings only chaos, bad strategies and poor decision making. Much of the western world is in a bad spot because they have embraced too much politics. It doesn't look too bad because there are still structures (business, army) that try to tone done politics as much as possible in order to be achieve their goals.

Yes, politics affect life too much and that is precisely the problem, it hilarious that you advocate for it, instead of requiring a system to become less political and more grounded in reality so that it can thrive. There is no functional system on earth that works because of politics, in fact, politics is the cancer that tries to bring down working system for power and gains to be distributed according to the sensibilites of the rulers.

Old books survive because they are ever-green content. They describe human nature and what works/fails. They are usefull precisely because if you read them carefully, you can understand all the problematic behaviors that lead to failure. Just because we are a more technologically advanced society, doesn't mean we have transcended the bad parts of human behavior. In fact, pretty much everything that makes modern life confortable, happened despite politics. And now we are falling back into the old ways, with war, unsustainable debts and all kinds of disruptions because we gave in to much into the politics.