What with all the allegations that Sarah Palin wants to ban books (not true, by the way, according to Librarian.net), it’s worth hearing what Phillip Pullman has to say about book banning in a recent opinion piece in the U.K. Guardian:
“…They never learn. The inevitable result of trying to ban something — book, film, play, pop song, whatever — is that far more people want to get hold of it than would ever have done if it were left alone. Why don’t the censors realise this?”
Pullman’s book The Golden Compass a.k.a. Northern Lights was one of the top five books in the American Library Association’s most-challenged books of 2007 — and his experience has been that when people want to ban his books, his book sales go up.
Interestingly, Pullman points out that the American Library Association reports that people challenged or banned his books for religious reasons. Pullman goes on to say this about religion in general:
“Religion, uncontaminated by power, can be the source of a great deal of private solace, artistic inspiration, and moral wisdom. But when it gets its hands on the levers of political or social authority, it goes rotten very quickly indeed…. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.”
I think Pullman goes too far in the direction of calling for religious quietism — after all, quietist religion too often gets co-opted by authoritarian regimes which then use it to keep the masses in line. I’d put it this way:– religion should promote intellectual freedom in part by staying in a critical, adversarial relationship with civil government and civil authority. For example, from my religious point of view that adversarial relationship might well include actively promoting books that politicians might prefer went away. You know, actively promoting books like the Bible which actively challenges U.S. government policies in Iraq, because the Bible tells us to be peacemakers, which means we should not be at war in Iraq. Stuff like that.
You know, actively promoting books like the Bible which actively challenges U.S. government policies in Iraq….
You want bible studies in public schools?
Our culture is pretty coarse in the US. I have no problem letting School Boards and Library Boards apply some standards on what materials they’ll include and maybe restrictions on what they’ll lend depending on age.
Bill @ 1 — “You want bible studies in public schools?”
Well, actually, if you read the post carefully, that’s not what I’m calling for at all:– I’m calling for religious groups to be in critical, adversarial relationship with the government. In other words, I’m calling for Bible study in the church, not in the schools. I would say that churches play a key role in intellectual freedom in the U.S. by creating safe spaces for critical reading of various texts, including the Christian scriptures, the Hebrew Bible, and (in many Unitarian Universalist churches) other religious texts as well. In the context of current U.S. politics, where liberal, moderate, and conservative politicians are all trying to co-opt the Bible to their own political agendas, we will want to be especially critical of the politicians — including the local politicians who either try to put the Bible in the public schools, or keep it out of the public schools.
As far as applying standards, obviously every library applies some kind of filter to what goes on the shelves, because no library can buy and store every book published! The devil is in the details of which books get chosen, and library choices are guided by everything from ideology to matters of taste — although we all hope that libraries apply more objective standards. However, having said that, there’s a difference between local libraries shelving (or not shelving) what’s appropriate for their town, and widespread calls to ban a book from all libraries.
I’m not sure how I feel about telling libraries what they can and cannot lend depending on age — I guess I want to be sure that parents/guardians aren’t abdicating their responsibilities to oversee their children’s educations, and it’s a lot to ask of librarians who have plenty of other things to deal with. Plus it will just encourage kids to steal the books they’re not supposed to read.
A library has an elected board and if they’re doing their job as a board, they’re telling the library what to do and buy.
I’m think the internet more than books as something that should be controled, at least for kids, and also frankly for violence for adults and kids. I’d prefer not having folks in the PC room downloading snuff videos and so on.
Why do you mention the war in Iraq and not the one in Afghanistan? Why silent on that?