[fifeboy]

Public_Domain Public_Domain:

The topic of specific episodes of book-burning just continue to remind me that many libraries around the world burn books simply because it is the most economical choice, rather than any tangible or slightly respectable reason like hatred or suppression of an enemy society.

I don't know which I find more disturbing. That a library in Mali was burnt down by extremists and we get to hear about it, or that the library down the street is secretly burning classics simply because of capitalist economics that go unquestioned.

Interesting topic there dude. My Mom, who was a librarian and back when I lived in the U.S. which would put it around 1965 or so, worked at a school library. They did a book cull, removing old, partly defaced books from circulation. They were stacked up in the corner of the office when a young teacher who originated in some coal town in Appalachia asked if she could have the books to send to her old school, which had few. The librarians all agreed and boxed the books up. The principal found them at it and asked what they were doing. He thought it was such a good idea he called the school board to tell them about it so other schools could do the same. Word came back to stop. What they said was "these are our books to do with as we please, and we want them destroyed." So my mom suggested they be put down by the dumpsters, in boxes and the teacher who wanted them could just come by and say "oh, look, books being tossed, I'll take them." So they did and just as they got them down there they were ordered to bring them back and deface them so they couldn't be used again. Idiots come in all colours.

[Strutz]

fifeboy fifeboy:

Interesting topic there dude. My Mom, who was a librarian and back when I lived in the U.S. which would put it around 1965 or so, worked at a school library. They did a book cull, removing old, partly defaced books from circulation. They were stacked up in the corner of the office when a young teacher who originated in some coal town in Appalachia asked if she could have the books to send to her old school, which had few. The librarians all agreed and boxed the books up. The principal found them at it and asked what they were doing. He thought it was such a good idea he called the school board to tell them about it so other schools could do the same. Word came back to stop. What they said was "these are our books to do with as we please, and we want them destroyed." So my mom suggested they be put down by the dumpsters, in boxes and the teacher who wanted them could just come by and say "oh, look, books being tossed, I'll take them." So they did and just as they got them down there they were ordered to bring them back and deface them so they couldn't be used again. Idiots come in all colours.

That's terrible!

[Public_Domain]

[BartSimpson]

Strutz Strutz:

fifeboy fifeboy:

Interesting topic there dude. My Mom, who was a librarian and back when I lived in the U.S. which would put it around 1965 or so, worked at a school library. They did a book cull, removing old, partly defaced books from circulation. They were stacked up in the corner of the office when a young teacher who originated in some coal town in Appalachia asked if she could have the books to send to her old school, which had few. The librarians all agreed and boxed the books up. The principal found them at it and asked what they were doing. He thought it was such a good idea he called the school board to tell them about it so other schools could do the same. Word came back to stop. What they said was "these are our books to do with as we please, and we want them destroyed." So my mom suggested they be put down by the dumpsters, in boxes and the teacher who wanted them could just come by and say "oh, look, books being tossed, I'll take them." So they did and just as they got them down there they were ordered to bring them back and deface them so they couldn't be used again. Idiots come in all colours.

That's terrible!

I've heard similar stories from that time and then again from the late 1970's and early 1980's.

Seems that it wasn't just the books that the High and Mighty 'Educators' wanted destroyed, it was the 'outdated' ideas in the books that they wanted destroyed.

In the 1960's they went after books that instilled patriotism or that spoke of the Founders as heroic. In the 1970's and 1980's they went after the books that had racial content or that were critical of concepts that were loved by the liberals who predominated in the schools.

Thus we come to today when the works of Mark Twain are banned from many school libraries, most college and university libraries do not have copies of the Federalist Papers on their shelves, and classic children's stories such as Ivanhoe are absent from the school libraries.

Ironically, an awful lot of schools also do not allow copies of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 to be shelved in their schools. The irony is that Bradbury wrote the book as an indictment of conservative censorship and today it would be seen in a different context altogether.