Reading Group
This is a good week to read books that make you feel uncomfortable. Actually, any week is, but given the latest news about efforts to censor books and keep unsettling ideas out of the hands of school-age kids, this seems to be a particularly appropriate moment in history to engage in what in more rational days would be called “learning.” Tell that to the genius school board in Tennessee that is targeting Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust narrative, “Maus,” as subversive, pornographic and inappropriate for school libraries. Or to like-minded educational authorities in Texas whose purge of controversial textbook content has a chilling effect nationwide. That’s because publishers mindful of that lucrative market tend to target the lowest common denominator of tolerance about messy stories like the American genocide of indigenous peoples, the role of slavery in the making of our economy or the enduring legacy of Jim Crow and racism. In many states today, initiatives by educational administrators and legislative bodies are targeting the teaching of historical material that makes some students (read ”white students”) squirm. It’s the next logical step in the authoritarian censorship of ideas that have an edge. Having banned the teaching of a subject, Critical...Read more