The school board in McMinn County, Tennessee, voted 10-0 to ban the Pulitzer-Prize winning graphic novel Maus from its schools. Board members complained about unacceptable language (“God damn”) and nudity (nude mice). The book by Art Spiegelman is about his father’s brutal experiences during the Holocaust. Presumably, the board wants the story of genocide told in a pleasant, inoffensive way.
Teachers in the district testified on behalf of the book.
The members of the school board heard from English language arts instructional supervisors about why the book was being used in the curriculum, the meeting minutes show.
Board member Tony Allman took issue with how the content would be redacted, and added, “We don’t need to enable or somewhat promote this stuff. It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids, why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff? It is not wise or healthy,” according to the meeting minutes.
In response, instructional supervisor Julie Goodin countered, “I was a history teacher, and there is nothing pretty about the Holocaust, and, for me, this was a great way to depict a horrific time in history,” the meeting minutes say.
“Mr. Spiegelman did his very best to depict his mother passing away, and we are almost 80 years away. It’s hard for this generation. These kids don’t even know 9/11. They were not even born. For me, this was his way to convey the message,” Goodin continued.Black parents say movement to ban critical race theory is ruining their children’s education
Melasawn Knight, another instructional supervisor, echoed Goodin’s stance that the graphic novel depicts history as it happened, the meeting minutes indicate.
“People did hang from trees, people did commit suicide and people were killed, over six million were murdered,” Knight said.
“I think the author is portraying that because it is a true story about his father that lived through that. He is trying to portray that the best he can with the language that he chooses that would relate to that time, maybe to help people who haven’t been in that aspect in time to actually relate to the horrors of it.
“Is the language objectionable? Sure. I think that is how he uses that language to portray that,” Knight said.
It is not possible to teach the history of the Holocaust without acknowledging organize brutality, savagery, mass murder, and sadism. Teaching the history honestly is no doubt offensive to Nazis, but one imagines they are not a significant bloc in McMinn County. If the school board wants to protect students against the reality of the Holocaust, what are teachers allowed to say about slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, and the KKK?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Let’s just rename the country Moronica and be done with it …
yup
Another apt sum up of this, by writer Neil Gaiman:
“There’s only one kind of people who would vote to ban Maus, whatever they are calling themselves these days.”
Nude mice! Heavens to Betsy DeVos! What’s next? A requirement that microorganisms in science texts be portrayed wearing tuxedos and hoop skirts?
It’s been decades since I’ve read Maus. But I’d bet the Cross pen I received for a bar-mitzvah present 54 years ago that these rodents represent Jews marching toward or already locked in the gas chamber.
Heavens to Betsy DeVos!
ROFL!!!
You remind me of an event in the early 1960s. I was just out of college and working for a small magazine. One day we received a press release from an animal rights organization. It announced a campaign against animal nudity and denounced the sight of dogs and horses boldly walking the streets of NYC without a stitch of clothing. Shocking! Their private parts were exposed! The organization planned a press conference. It was a hoax.
Here’s the full sentence in the book that the Tennessee school board objected to “God damned Holocaust deniers.”
Geez oh Pete. Equal time for Holocaust deniers! I wonder what if any action the school board would take with a book containing the sentence “God damned the Jews who killed Christ.”
It wouldn’t if the word “the” were moved to beginning of the sentence.
It wouldn’t if the word “the” were moved to the beginning of the sentence.
They should be forced to watch this:
And obviously people who swear profusely are more articulate.
Anyone who has ever worked construction knows that the most articulate people in America are the ones who can say everything they need to say with just one effing word (which serves as noun, verb, adjective, adverb and every other part of speech)
And BTW, “damn” is not the word.
Everything I need to know about English I learned the first day working construction.
I remember a guy who used to modify every noun with &&”!!#%}¥¥€?, a lengthening string of unsavory words generally directed at the wood stacked in the lumberyard where he worked.
I thought often of this fellow reading Roberts book on grammar where he comments on excessive use of the vernacular. Cursing, he suggested, is generally so over used as to become “linguistic sawdust.” Given the guy at the lumberyard one could not argue the point
On this we shall have to agree to disagree, Roy. But you are in good company. Diane also isn’t a fan of salty language. Despite this failing on her part, she still tops my list of favorite humans.
With regard to thi4s business of cursing, I would say, with Hamlet, ” in thy orisons be all my sins remember’d,” but that’s too great a burden to place on anyone!
Touché, GregB.
Reading about the horrors of the Holocaust in the form of a graphic novel allegory is far less offensive than the historical events of this nightmare. I believe the right wildly underestimates the capacity children have to understand injustice and violence. Even children in third grade understand man’s inhumanity toward man as some of my ELLs had lived through unspeakable violence themselves. Even younger children understand violence, but they have a harder time processing and talking about it. Helping students understand the errors of the past may help to prevent them in the future. We are not asking children to live through or be traumatized by these events Simply reading and understanding that this occurred and that this must never happen again is enough.
From the King James Version of the You-Know-What:
“That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” (2 Thessalonians 2:12)
“And he that doubteth shall be damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” (Romans 14:23)
“He that believeth and is baptized is saved; but he that believeth shall not be damned.” (Mark 16:16)
Very important to burn books that contain these words, with their profoundly dark, magical powers, because, of course, doing so protects young people from ever encountering them. Fortunately, these never occur in the hip-hop music that kids listen to.
If I were still teaching, this would be a great opportunity for me to write on the white board: “Students! Do not under any circumstances read Art Spiegelman’s Maus because it contains bad words. And naked mice.”
That might get me in a Trump-load of trouble, but it would be worth it.
When I taught, I had a magnificent old room with long blackboards on two walls, which was way more than I would ever use. So in the far corner, the running gag was putting up words or phrases that we heard or read that would make great rock band names. The only two I can remember are Impending Doom and Toxic Grasshoppers. Today I think I’d encourage my students to fill that board with banned words and phrases. It would trick them into reading and researching.
A few years back, I wrote a short story called “Grrls Aren’t Like Us” about teenaged boys at a Death Metal festival. I had great fun inventing the band names for this: Blowfly, Miss December, Pustule, Ragnowrath, Autopsy, Suck-U-Bus, Evisceration Nation.
I suspect that this story won’t make the reading list in McMiniMind County.
A warning. Anyone who is offended by “bad” language (“Go to your room, language!”) should avoid this story. I tried, in it, to capture how the high-school boys I taught actually spoke to one another.
So, our response to the Holocaust should be, “Golly gee, Mr. Heydrich”? “Gee whiz, Mr. Himmler”?
SDP, you’ve got to be able to do something with Bob’s suggestion above and mine below.
Consider it a commission. Payment will be determined at a future date to be determined by future generations.
Trump’s Favorite Things
Gassing protestors and gaslighting journalists
Running fake charities, displaying artlessness,
Imagining having, with my daughter, flings.
These are a few of my favorite things!
When the law bites,
When the truth stings,
When I’m feeling sad,
I simply recall I’m my favorite thing,
And then I don’t feel so bad.
Please have those future generations send my payment to the McMinn Co. Home for Cognitively Challenged School Board Members
Classical Latin, alas, lacked the rich wellsprings of curse words that we speakers of English can draw upon. The Romans had to resort to graffiti to express their feelings.
For example, they didn’t have expressions like, “Same Trump, different day,” “Up Trump creek without a paddle,” or “What a Trumphole country that is!”
cx: “What a Trumphole county that is!”
The McMinn County school board has Trump for brains.
No Trump Sherlock!
clearly so
Copied and pasted from elsewhere:
“oh no, you say your child read a book with the word “damn” in it during the break between active shooter drills? Is he okay?”
perfect
If ignorance were painful, there would be millions moaning all over.
Ironically, most of the parents need not worry. Few children read anything because few parents read anything. When they do, they read snippets of language that either support their own view of life or drown themselves in the innocuous.
The same dangerous moronic MAGA fascists behind banning books like these are also the same people that will repeat the Holocaust in the US by organizing brutality, savagery, mass murder, and sadism. All it will take is Traitor Trump or one of the other GOP idiots competing for his MAGA voter block to end up in the White House and succeed in pulling off a coup.
If the traitor does not end up in prison for his failed coup, that will empower other fascists to follow in his footsteps thinking they won’t make the same mistakes because they think they are smarter than Dummy Donald.
“Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, has denounced a question asked by a member of his audience over when Republicans should use guns and ‘kill these people’ over false election fraud claims.”
https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-guns-kill-people-election-fraud-1642588
You gotta see it to believe it. A legislator cuts off another legislator from discussing censorship about the Holocaust–which we know to be a fact in the great state of Tennessee and elsewhere:
And if you do nothing else today, watch this impassioned statement by Florida Rep. Ramon Alexander:
https://crooksandliars.com/2022/01/must-watch-speech-black-florida-rep-over
Even if you are not ready for day, it cannot always be night. That is the hard home run.