(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

While I'd quite like to believe this (who doesn't love a story about kids fighting for the right to read what they want?) I find it hard to believe that a Roman Catholic school* would ban some of these. I mean, admittedly you might censor Paradise Lost, because its Christology is certainly very dubious, but getting upset about works on human evolution is more of a fundamentalist Protestant thing, and I can't imagine why any school that didn't have a Stalinist axe to grind would want to ban Animal Farm.

But.... Dante? I'm not buying it without considerably more substantiation.



* The OP doesn't specify what kind of 'strict private school' they attend, but states that "most of the books contained information that opposed Catholicism".

Comments

[legionseagle]

I was a trifle boggled by HHGTTG, also, on two fronts: first, there isn't anything particularly anti-Catholic in it (Oolon Colluphid is much more of a satire on a particular type of atheistic argument) and, secondly, it's the wrong generation - young kids these days (etc, etc)

[liseuse]

I wouldn't be surprised, to be honest, based on what I've heard about Catholic schools in the US (and, well, schools in the US). Also, my Catholic schools tried reasonably hard to encourage us away from certain reading materials. And I still chuckle when I remember them telling us we were Not Allowed to go and see Dogma. Which, of course, everyone then went to see.

[sir_guinglain]

I also think that someone literate would be able to spell 'Catholicism'.

[cjbanning]

I could maybe see it happening in a heavily evangelical region, where possibly certain Protestant notions creeped over into folk Catholicism?

[twistedchick]

I'd be very interested to know what flavor of Catholic school that was -- different teaching orders vary wildly in their willingness to expose students to ideas outside of Catholicism, and local diocesan schools can vary based on the diocese and the bishop's personal leanings. Franciscans (in my experience) don't care what you read as long as you learn something from it, but that's not a universal thing. However, I have heard that the old Index of Forbidden Books was starting to be updated; it included such things as The Three Musketeers because of its anti-clerical comments about Richelieu.

Also, as a reporter I have written about book-banning efforts -- and those who are most interested in banning books generally don't read them for content or context. They flip through page by page and look for the specific use of whatever words they find offensive, or concepts they find offensive, and if they find any they want the book removed. These are people who are afraid of ideas, afraid of independent though, and afraid of creativity.

[sara]

Well, my kid's school library has restricted Jeff Smith's Bone, and that's a public school. So I don't put it past any school to ban any book, frankly.

[kindkit]

Yeah, I think somebody grabbed a list of "books that have sometimes been banned" off the internet and composed this letter around it. I can't imagine what's in the Commedia that "opposes Catholicism," unless somebody's really het up about the depiction of fourteenth-century popes.

[kivrin]

I, too, found it hard to swallow, not only because of the odd selection but also because my mother teaches at a Catholic girls' school which bans no books but which would certainly crack down on unauthorized locker use and would immediately investigate anything causing as much hubbub as this post suggests is going on.

[lilacsigil]

I did in fact run a banned books locker at my Anglican high school, but the books in the locker were Dungeons and Dragons and/or fantasy-related (in the early 90s when the Satanism hysteria was high!) novels, zines, game manuals, art books etc. So while I'm a bit dubious about that booklist, it's certainly possible to run a neat little library out of a locker!

[coughingbear]

I first heard about this on Twitter, and someone quite quickly posted a link to a discussion about it being a hoax, on reddit. (I am using P's laptop, and for some reason the equals sign key is not working, so I can't embed a link, but if you google "catholic school locker banned hoax" it's one of the first few results.) Apparently the poster had asked for a list of banned books on Yahoo Answers just a few days before posting the locker library story - which originally went up a couple of years ago, and has been reposted several times since.

So yes, I think your instincts are wholly correct and it is a deeply implausible list/story. Even Antonia White's convent in Frost in May didn't ban Dante, though the play version was somewhat bowdlerised version, IIRC.