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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023

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HISD to eliminate librarians and convert libraries into disciplinary centers at NES schools

Not worth a post as top level thread on it's own; but hilariously dystopic enough to post here. It's only one (admittedly large and important) SD, but this is the type of shit Margret Atwood would write about as a totally out there thought experiment.

Hopefully enough people get mad it stops there.

I think my contrarianism is going into overdrive.

2003: I hear this news story. "Oh no! Think of the kids!"

2013: "This is almost certainly sensational click bait."

2023: "This is a good thing"

Honestly, most schools need more discipline not less. And they don't need adults with certificates censoring and controlling the information they have access to either. Not that it matters. No one's using the library anyway.

So yeah, more discipline, fewer school librarians. I'm down for that. I'd like to thank ABC13.com for this totally worthwhile piece of journalism.

My town's local library had a Celebrate Banned Books! month sign up and I immediately thought "yeah right" and tried looking up some right wing thought crime books in the catalog and found they didn't stock any.

I don't actually want to read any myself, but how cynical do you have to be to put signs like that up when you know full well you specifically filter out books on ideological basis.

Sounds about right.

The American Library Association's "Banned Books List" is based on books that patrons have requested being removed from libraries. It therefore only includes books that are stocked by libraries, and are therefore NOT banned.

Books which are actually banned can never appear on the list by definition.

You know, if school libraries were where an 11yo would go in and pick up Plato or Nietzsche, because they were interested and it was random I would be very happy. I don't think that's how it is these days.