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Tennessee school board votes unanimously to ban book about the Holocaust

To be fair, I never learned about the holocaust via a graphic novel.

Quite frankly it seems like a poor way of learning about the holocaust.

That said I do think that it's important at the very least in high school to show the pictures of the piled bodies and the mass graves. Some shock to the system is needed when it comes to these things, otherwise it's a lot easier for people to take holocaust denial seriously.

I'm not sure about a graphic novel though.

Seems much ado about nothing really. School board isn't stopping them from learning about the holocaust, they are opposing one particular book.
Now you’re just spoiling everyone’s fun,
 

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From the Amazon blurb:

Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel.​
Acclaimed as “the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust” (Wall Street Journal)​
...and “the first masterpiece in comic book history” (The New Yorker).​

Naturally, Republicans hate it, and don't want their own or anyone's kids to see it.
 
To be fair, I never learned about the holocaust via a graphic novel.

Quite frankly it seems like a poor way of learning about the holocaust.

That said I do think that it's important at the very least in high school to show the pictures of the piled bodies and the mass graves. Some shock to the system is needed when it comes to these things, otherwise it's a lot easier for people to take holocaust denial seriously.

I'm not sure about a graphic novel though.

Seems much ado about nothing really. School board isn't stopping them from learning about the holocaust, they are opposing one particular book.
The thing is graphic novels have a big appeal to kids. Many students who wouldn't think of reading a "real" novel will spend hours reading these novels that they see as comic books. I'm sure the students learn about the holocaust from other sources as well, but don't downplay the impact a book like this can have on some kids.
 
The thing is graphic novels have a big appeal to kids. Many students who wouldn't think of reading a "real" novel will spend hours reading these novels that they see as comic books. I'm sure the students learn about the holocaust from other sources as well, but don't downplay the impact a book like this can have on some kids.

I prefer a good documentary film or a regular book.
 
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As The Atlantic points out:

“This is the next wave of voters, so the indoctrination that we see occurring right now is planting the seeds for the control of that electorate as they become voters,” Janai Nelson, the associate director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told me recently. “They are trying to manipulate power and exert their influence at both ends of the spectrum by tilting those who can cast ballots now, and by indoctrinating those who can cast ballots later.”

 
Idiots. You're dealing with religious conservatives. Of course they're going to make a big fuss about kids and language and nudity and gore and the like.

They aren't nazis or interested in defending Hitler -- they're doing what religious conservatives in the US have always done, and Tennessee is chalk full of them.

On to the next point of outrage you won't understand.
 
That's the thing to me.

2 million, 4 million, 6 million, 20 million. . . they probably didn't know the specific number, but that's not a big deal as long as they understand that MILLIONS were killed.

And with 40,000 ghettos and concentration camps. . . I could only name a few. Does that make me ignorant about the holocaust?

Try saying the same thing about slavery and see how well it goes over...
 
Parkison said two or three board members came by his office to discuss the book and its "rough, objectionable language." One board member, Tony Allman, said in the meeting that educators "don't need to enable or somewhat promote this stuff," according to the transcript, and cited the book's author's past history of creating graphics for "Playboy."

What a bunch dumfvcks
 
Idiots. You're dealing with religious conservatives. Of course they're going to make a big fuss about kids and language and nudity and gore and the like.

They aren't nazis or interested in defending Hitler -- they're doing what religious conservatives in the US have always done, and Tennessee is chalk full of them.

On to the next point of outrage you won't understand.

Fvck their religion. Their imaginary sky man shouldn't trump actual real history.
 
I'm not sure I feel like anyone needs to know how many slaves there were.

But I don't think they should minimize the horrors of slavery.

Slavery or race in America. People cited the Tulsa massacre as though it was an indication of our terrible education on the topic. But did you really need to know about that to understand the severity of the problems with slavery & race in American history?
 
Idiots. You're dealing with religious conservatives. Of course they're going to make a big fuss about kids and language and nudity and gore and the like.

They aren't nazis or interested in defending Hitler -- they're doing what religious conservatives in the US have always done, and Tennessee is chalk full of them.

On to the next point of outrage you won't understand.
So . . . a better comparison would be the Taliban?

We shouldn't need to make comparisons with vicious bigots - Nazis, Taliban, Moral Majority, or whatever - for people to see how wrong these attacks on education by Republicans are.

We should have outrage enough against these attacks on education without having to draw the obvious comparisons. But apparently we do need to do something, because these Republicans, bigots and zealots are getting away with it almost everywhere we look.
 
8 bazillion books in the world. It blows my mind that this is the only one that teaches about the holocaust. You'd think SOMEONE SOMEWHERE would have written another book on the subject.
 
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To be fair, I never learned about the holocaust via a graphic novel.

Quite frankly it seems like a poor way of learning about the holocaust.

That said I do think that it's important at the very least in high school to show the pictures of the piled bodies and the mass graves. Some shock to the system is needed when it comes to these things, otherwise it's a lot easier for people to take holocaust denial seriously.

I'm not sure about a graphic novel though.

Seems much ado about nothing really. School board isn't stopping them from learning about the holocaust, they are opposing one particular book.

How about read "Night" by Elie Weisel instead of some fiction about mouse?
It's a fantastic book, and FFS, it's not fiction. Per Wikipedia...

Maus[a] is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman. Serialized from 1980 to 1991, it depicts Spiegelman interviewing his father about his experiences as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. The work employs postmodernist techniques and represents Jews as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs, Americans as dogs, the English as fish, the French as frogs, and the Swedish as deer.

...The only thing fictionalized, that myself or most would be aware of, is the physical depictions of the characters (obviously).
 
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8 bazillion books in the world. It blows my mind that this is the only one that teaches about the holocaust. You'd think SOMEONE SOMEWHERE would have written another book on the subject.
Sure there are. How will most 8th graders react to the presentation of heaps of corpses rotting in the sun or large throngs of emaciated people teetering on death's doorway? Maus at least softens that blow a bit. It's a fantastic graphic novel rooted in an autobiographical memoir of the artist's family and their holocaust experience. Here's the thing, teachings about the Holocaust should be brutal and unedited, otherwise the shock of that reality is lost, and that's the point, we should never forget the atrocities of those times.
 
So . . . a better comparison would be the Taliban?

We shouldn't need to make comparisons with vicious bigots - Nazis, Taliban, Moral Majority, or whatever - for people to see how wrong these attacks on education by Republicans are.

We should have outrage enough against these attacks on education without having to draw the obvious comparisons. But apparently we do need to do something, because these Republicans, bigots and zealots are getting away with it almost everywhere we look.

Depends the content. And the methods for removal of content. The Maus thing is stupid to remove.

But, you know, we shouldn't exactly be turning K-12 into the ridiculous liberal cesspool that is college humanities education at this point in time.

There's a gross over-focus on criticizing America and essentializing race there. That doesn't get to spill over into K-12.
 
Knowledge of (never mind interest in) history has always struck me as disappointing.

I’ve always had a fascination with WW2, and have read extensively about (mainly on the military side, the holocaust materials I have on the shelf would be from the visit to Dachau as a kid.)
But I think I could only name about three camps - Dachau, Auschwitz, and Treblinka. I’m wondering what they mean by ‘40,000 camps and ghettos’. Are there even 10,000 cities/towns in Europe? That just seems like an absurdly high number, and I’m trying to wrap my head around what they’re counting.

Before some idiot says this is holocaust denial, it’s not, I’m just trying understand what they mean by that number. It doesn’t make sense.

All of this aside because this is at least the third thread on this subject.
The Nazis and their allies ran more than 44,000 camps, ghettos, and other sites of detention, persecution, forced labor, and murder during the Holocaust. Few people know about the breadth of the Nazi camp system and the conditions in those places—including the broad range of prisoner experiences. The Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, aims to answer basic questions about as many of those sites as possible.
 
I’ve owned this book for 20 years. It is a graphic novel and strives for a hip, edgy aesthetic. I’m not surprised it freaks out the squares.
We read this in college during a holocaust literature class. I just had my 11 year old read it for his elementary school language arts class when he was required to do a book on historical fiction.

It's based on the author's own fathers experience during the war. Jews are mice, Nazi's are cats, American's are dogs, and Polish are pigs.
 
Depends the content. And the methods for removal of content. The Maus thing is stupid to remove.

But, you know, we shouldn't exactly be turning K-12 into the ridiculous liberal cesspool that is college humanities education at this point in time.

There's a gross over-focus on criticizing America and essentializing race there. That doesn't get to spill over into K-12.
You're currently attending a K-12 institution, or just believing the BS that's been spewed regarding that? Frankly, I think you're so full of shit I could screw your head off and ladle it out of your neck hole.
 
It's a fantastic book, and FFS, it's not fiction. Per Wikipedia...

Maus[a] is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman. Serialized from 1980 to 1991, it depicts Spiegelman interviewing his father about his experiences as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. The work employs postmodernist techniques and represents Jews as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs, Americans as dogs, the English as fish, the French as frogs, and the Swedish as deer.

...The only thing fictionalized, that myself or most would be aware of, is the physical depictions of the characters (obviously).

Wait until he finds out that “Night” could be considered a slightly fictionalized account as well 😱
 
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To be fair, I never learned about the holocaust via a graphic novel.

Quite frankly it seems like a poor way of learning about the holocaust.

That said I do think that it's important at the very least in high school to show the pictures of the piled bodies and the mass graves. Some shock to the system is needed when it comes to these things, otherwise it's a lot easier for people to take holocaust denial seriously.

I'm not sure about a graphic novel though.

Seems much ado about nothing really. School board isn't stopping them from learning about the holocaust, they are opposing one particular book.
It's a fantastic way to learn. Language is easy to read and the book is the story of author's father surviving the holocaust. It doesn't pull any punches.

maus.jpg


maus.jpg
 
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I have pretty much lost hope in fellow citizens….Holocaust denial will be a mainstream position in this country within five years much like COVID/vaccine denial
 
You're currently attending a K-12 institution, or just believing the BS that's been spewed regarding that? Frankly, I think you're so full of shit I could screw your head off and ladle it out of your neck hole.

No I don't think it's everywhere. At least not yet. But if you read between the lines, I think this is what is animating a lot of this.

Conservatives like to extoll the virtues of America, hold up as a good thing. Liberals enjoy pointing out the faults. (and you have all these subtopics like race and gender and economy and whatnot) This isn't anything new, but like everything else, it has been dialed up to 11 as of late.

You see it in partisan media. You see it in the humanities. Pretty stark, often enough.

And then you see liberals, at the moment, having more sway culturally across our institutions.

I think that has led to this response on the right. And you can see it in their language in the legislation they're crafting. It's really high level, all encompassing stuff, because it sort of needs to be to try and address what they're getting at it.

Of course that creates problems...
 
On Jan. 10, the McMinn County School Board voted 10-0 to remove the graphic novel from an eighth-grade language arts curriculum, citing foul language, nudity and copyright issues.
 
Can we bring back this book, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer?

Two classic American novels have been banned from syllabuses at schools in Minnesota since 2018. The reason being a concern that racial slurs used in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, could make pupils feel “humiliated or marginalised”
 
No I don't think it's everywhere. At least not yet. But if you read between the lines, I think this is what is animating a lot of this.

Conservatives like to extoll the virtues of America, hold up as a good thing. Liberals enjoy pointing out the faults. (and you have all these subtopics like race and gender and economy and whatnot) This isn't anything new, but like everything else, it has been dialed up to 11 as of late.

You see it in partisan media. You see it in the humanities. Pretty stark, often enough.

And then you see liberals, at the moment, having more sway culturally across our institutions.

I think that has led to this response on the right. And you can see it in their language in the legislation they're crafting. It's really high level, all encompassing stuff, because it sort of needs to be to try and address what they're getting at it.

Of course that creates problems...
I can't disagree with some of your sentiments, I'm of the opinion that the further you are from a moderate position, the more certain media want to amplify your messaging, which in turn sows division and controversy in all areas of our society. It's actually quite sad. It's time for moderates to take the wheel and the far right and left to take a back seat, hopefully for good.
 
No I don't think it's everywhere. At least not yet. But if you read between the lines, I think this is what is animating a lot of this.

Conservatives like to extoll the virtues of America, hold up as a good thing. Liberals enjoy pointing out the faults. (and you have all these subtopics like race and gender and economy and whatnot) This isn't anything new, but like everything else, it has been dialed up to 11 as of late.

You see it in partisan media. You see it in the humanities. Pretty stark, often enough.

And then you see liberals, at the moment, having more sway culturally across our institutions.

I think that has led to this response on the right. And you can see it in their language in the legislation they're crafting. It's really high level, all encompassing stuff, because it sort of needs to be to try and address what they're getting at it.

Of course that creates problems...
Hey moron, the bad guys are Germans , not Americans. It’s telling that you see a book about the holocaust as somehow liberals tearing down America.
 
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