Here's another article, a somewhat amusing interview with the Bill Martin who wrote Ethical Marxism. Losty, you'll probably appreciate this.

Sheila

Where's the second article? ^^

And lol, yeah, that's half funny, half terrifying. They article said that it banned it because it held "critiques of the American system." Isn't that protected free-speech anyway?

I quote the article, "A slippery slope, indeed."

Sorry, I forgot to include the link. Here it is:

http://www.dadwagon.com/2010/02/02/qa-bill-martin-not-the-author-of-brow...

And yes, as far as I know, "critique of the American system" is explicitly built in to that system?

I actually just read that the facts have been misreported. What actually happened was that Bill Martin Jr the author was removed from the list of authors that 3rd grade kids could study for their cultural contributions in social studies. Which is still scary.

Sheila

Yeah, that's still pretty scary.

I just read the article [most of it, anyway - I bookmarked it for later] - he seems like a pretty nice, intelligent guy.

Yeah, I liked him from reading the article. It made me want to read his book.

http://www.opencourtbooks.com/books_n/ethical_marxism.htm

Here's the link. It's also on Amazon, I think. I may check it out ^^

s the Board of Education afraid that kids will read this and suddenly overthrow the government? (I think maybe that's exactly what they're afraid of).

This reminds me of what we were studing in history, sort of. According to Niccolo Machiavelli, "The end justifies the means"; which says you should do everything in your power to...well...stay in power.

Maybe the Government banning books is along those lines, they're worried people might get it into their heads to challenge their power.

(*cough* Not that Michiavelli is an awesome Assassin and thats why I paid attention in class cause we were talking about the Itlian Renisassance, nooo.) :D

But, really? Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? That's just a fail. *shakes head*

Please no Texas residents take this as aimed at you, but I’m not surprised they were so ill-informed. Oklahoma would do something like this. Have they banned the Marxism book, too. This part of the country likes to (try to) ban books. Some areas around here would ban all thinking if they could. I bet the Board of Educ hasn’t read the Marxism book; they’d be afraid to. Every now & then you hear of a community or even state wanting to ban a movie they haven’t seen. I think everyone should be exposed to EVERYTHING! If your state’s/community’s/ family’s/ church’s beliefs can't stand on their merits, then you should be questioning them.

Isn’t critiquing the system one of its fundamentals? Some people only want free speech if it agrees with them. People have so little faith in their beliefs that they are afraid for their children to hear anything else. That doesn’t speak very well for those beliefs.

I haven't had to assoiciate with books being banned yet, so I really can't understand it. Nobody's forcing anybody to read anything, we can decide for ourselves if we want to read a book or not.

Amber: Gasp! Let people decide for themselves?!!? Expecially children?!?!

I enjoyed the 2nd article – haven’t read the Huffington one yet – I should read Marx for Beginners some day – I’ve been aware of it for a long time.

His book does sound like one for you, Losty.

Now I’ve read the other one – LOL! Did those banners even bother to read the children’s book they were banning? Idiots!

LOL, I should borrow this book from the library [Ethical Marxism, that is] and bring it to my school.

Ruby: Lol, you have to tell me the reactions you get, if you do that XD

Cmoon: Gasp! Let people decide for themselves?!!? Expecially children?!?! -- people in this country don't generally like that too much =P

Wow. What a fail. The funny thing is, no one seems to get that banning something makes people want to read it more XD If they had never banned this book, I doubt anyone except people already interested in Marxism would even know about it. Now everyone does XD

The other thing is just...how stupid can you be...? I mean really. The title didn't tip them off that "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" isn't a book about Marxism? Come on. -_-

All these really good books have been banned. Flowers for Algernon, To Kill a Mockingbird, heck even Harry Potter.

(interestingly enough, I don't recall Twilight ever having been challenged...)

Losty: Children must not be allowed to think! We wouldn't want our children to become more enlightened so as to be better able to lead the country when it's their turns.

Minou: Oh, that title is just a clever ruse to hide the real subversive nature of the book...

And it's true, most banned things would be pretty much ignored by most people if no one ever drew all that attention to it.

Minou: I agree completely!

Cmoon: Of course! We can't have children running around being intelligent or - God forbid - make decisions for themselves! The horror, the horror! XD
[/sarcasm]