Because I chose to be a medical professional, it was demanded I hold a valid license, backed by college and clinical experiences. Unfortunately these emotional troglodytes are in positions of power. To negate the power of these fatuous cabals, a written exam testing an individual's knowledge of the myriad of disciplines grasped by 'formally' trained educators, at a MASTER'S DEGREE LEVEL seems reasonable. Anyone allowed direct access to the progeny of America must, FIRST, prove their value EMPIRICALLY.
Keep the fascists off the school board!!! In 2009, people in Wake Co, NC were caught napping, so segregationists voted their kind onto the school board to end busing based on income, which served to prevent schools from having too many poor kids, and as a benefit had greater integration getting around the racial/quota issue.
I think the language and imagery objected to is merely a pretext to remove teaching the Holocaust to 8th graders. If they had voted to replace it with another book approved by educators then it wouldn't have gotten attention. There's also the general context that this book isn't by itself, but there's that organization to remove books from libraries too. They came up with the term "cancel culture" with regard to colleges hiring offensive speakers; but now they've decided to use it for their own means.
I, to this day, remember a book that I read in the 8th grade. It was titled “Hitler and Nazism”. It was on the bookshelf in our classroom, which was a parochial school. I have never forgotten that book. It opened my eyes to cruelty, evil, racism, and mistreatment of others. This book included photographs of piles of nude bodies after being killed in the gas chambers. These bodies were emaciated as well. I thought nothing of the nudity, but the horror of seeing and reading about the holocaust has stayed with me. I am now 70 years old and I never want to see anything like this happen again. Children should learn about the evils that people inflict on others so it never happens again. These stories need to be told to generations!
No doubt they don't approve of Schindler's List for the same reason. I think there's a difference between 5th grade and 8th grade where the former might have difficulty with naked corpses.
If these stories aren't told, then you can have people like the young man who said that there was no WW2 and that is was a "movie." Anyone who believes that these books don't need to be read by their children are doing their children a heinous disservice.
"Knowledge is no burden to carry.....Ignorance is a weight, you can't lift!" TN. McMinn County Board of Education: "Making Ignorance a Duty and Knowledge a Crime."
Did you know that the south never required any of its white children to go to school... public school was never established until the north started building them during reconstruction. Many confederate soldiers were illiterate, many more than their northern white counterparts. You need them stupid to make sure they stay racist. They have to be incredibly stupid to send their sons to die so that a few white men could keep their labor force.
@@maxwellsimoes238 I am at a loss as to what "rebbirich" means. Google certainly doesn't seem to have a clue. You should probably explain that one. And someone claiming something as anti-Semitic as "Zionist lobby are controling [sic] education" has no claim to even the comprehension of what good manners are.
For fun consider this, last year a teacher shared on Reddit that he was teaching a history class on world war II, and wanted to explore the implications of what would happen if Japan had developed nuclear weapons first. The teacher then shared that a 16-year-old student asked why does this matter, when asked to clarify the student explained that world war II never happened it was just a movie. This was a student who spent most of his time being taught in the state of Texas. To me this gives me an idea of just how screwed our education system is at the moment.
I’m still surprised no one talks about how the Japanese nearly 2xed the holocaust in terms of deaths and it’s almost never taught. Not only that but after their defeat some of their leaders were not held responsible.
I read MAUS as a child on my own out of curiosity even though none of our schools taught anything about the Holocaust at all. Same goes for the laws of our land concerning civil rights. It was not an important part of school in the 1970s and 1980s. Then I went to college where it was important. So many kids are shocked at the information that parents, teachers, schools, principals, and politicians don’t want us to know. It’s intellectual mothballling. The education is not theirs. It’s the kids’. And they’re robbing and stealing in order to pretend that they own their children. They don’t have the right to their children’s intellectual property.
I read _Lies My Teacher Told Me,_ revised edition, a dozen years ago, which lamented the poor state of history education, where students have to be re-educated in college history classes. Nothing had changed between editions: Texas rules.
Thank you for your comments, I agree with you. The sad thing is that the "banners" children will be affected in a very negative way if they don't understand the history of the world and of America.
@Jo Painting “… how uneducated the parents are …” and how they are thus complicit in poor decision making. This is how Repubs are behaving in their efforts to eliminate the 1/6 Commission and dummy-down the 1/6 insurrection.
@@lindahoganson8721 on my msn feed this morning there was a story about drumpfh rewinding "high lights" of the J6 attack. he was delighted with the chaos.
He books are conspiring against freedoom education. Branzely liar. Let people thinks is principles education. Books are undermines education demogracy.
He's wearing the vest from the comic lol. In all serious though, this man is a legend and Maus is one of the greatest contribution to the whole graphic medium.
Librarian here. All our copies of Maus are checked out, and at least one person has gone through interlibrary loan to get a copy from another library system. This always happens when books or movies are targeted: months-long waiting lists for items that may not have circulated in years.
Some young people might find a way to read it but many others will never experience it because their parents agree with the banning or because their parents aren't really paying attention or because their children will only enter school years later when the controversy has waned... It is great that, for now, people are going to loan it from libraries or that it is on Amazon's Best Sellers list again but the nature of the removal is much insidious, don't forget.
Depicting WW2 with talking animals IS a kinder, gentler telling of the holocaust. It takes a difficult subject and makes it accessible to younger readers.
I read Maus as a teen and Maus II as maybe a twenty-year-old. Re-reading it this week, I imagined the animal-head characters as people, and it was more upsetting in some ways at age fifty. Of course there's been _Schindler's List_ and other films to bring images to mind.
I read animal farm at 12 and it horrified me. The way those in power treated those without power in USSR under Stalin was powerful even disguised as pig and other animals. But it gave me a clear picture of how frightening the fall of communism into totalitarianism was
"After I have said all this, I am sure you are still ready to respond, in effect, “Yes, yes- but it still remains our right and our responsibility to decide what books our children are going to be made to read in our community.” This is surely so. But it is also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call you bad citizens and fools. Even your own children are entitled to call you that." -- Kurt Vonnegut
“Moms for Liberty” sounds like a cynical dystopian terminology designed to gaslight. Reminds me of the fascistic mission of “Daughters of the Confederacy” We shouldn't be ignoring this.
How about Moms Against the Commodification of Our Children? Or Moms Who Listen to Ratings Systems? I bet all their kids have been playing GTA for years...but Maus is the problem.
It's part of the Culture Wars. They called it Cancel Culture when students objected to colleges paying speakers to come and tell lies and offensive content. But then they seized on doing it themselves, except they're stopping truth.
"Maus" becoming a best seller after being banned reminds me of the summer of 1957 when the Catholic Church proclaimed it a mortal sin to see the movie "Baby Doll." I was thirteen that year and my family lived two blocks from the movie theater. The line to buy a ticket stretched those two blocks and around the corner. (Thank you, Art Spiegelman, for writing such an incredible book!)
@@maxwellsimoes238 dude... first of all : your english is awful... next time use Google translator or something alike. Second : you clearly do not have the slightest understanding of what the Gestapo was. What you wrote in your crippled english is just stupid from front to end. Gestapo (german shortage for "GEheime STAatsPOlizei"; or secret state police in english) was an executing organ of the state like for example the FBI. What you were maybe looking for was the word "Staats Propaganda Ministerium". The name itself does say it... "ministry of propaganda". And before you even start to try to respond. I AM GERMAN!!! And I know german history!
@@opinionsvary first of all. Maus ban are Anti demogratic. Secound. Maus are rubbish giberish. Trird. Zionist lobby in American undermines American freedoom when Zionist perverse self esteem works upon American Rights.
And now we have books describing the CIA removal of the democratically elected leaders of Iran (Operation Ajax 1953) and Guatemala (Operation PBSuccess 1954) by Eisenhower, in violation of International Law and the UN Charter
@@kevinjenner9502 Ike also warned about the power of the MIC. Presidents have bosses too. General Butler wrote War is a Racket telling the truth about his own actions. nothing is simple.
@@jessebianchi2631 He quite liked the CIA, small, non bureaucratic, and deniable. CIA coups removing democratically elected leaders around the world, as commissioned by sitting US Presidents, in violation of International Law and the UN Charter. Iran (1953, Guatemala (1954) Congo (1960) Dominican Republic (1961) S. Vietnam (1963) Brazil (1964) Chile (1973) etc.
if anything, the book was more tame than the actual holocaust. my senior year we read this book, and we were more than capable to understand and cope with it.
@@joralemonvirgincreche The Bible is much more violent, including systemic bodily mutilation, genocide, and slavery, all demanded by a tyrannical God, surely, the school board and the obtuse Moms would not consider banning it, in spite of being the real basis for torture and genocide of millions in it's history. The majority of NAZIS we're either Lutheran or Catholic (Adolph Hitler was Catholic, and demanded that the Pope's birthday be a Nazi holiday).
@@phyllisneal8687 if only that were the case. They’re using this purported eroticism to ban the book for ideological reasons. If it was just a matter of nudity and community standards, maybe there could be a discussion on whether the book was appropriate, but the argument isn’t being brought in good faith. The true intention is to remove material that undermines the performative resentments of white supremacists.
I read this book a few years ago. I found it to be calm and mild in style. Leon Uris's book "Exodus" published decades ago had much more brutal descriptions of a concentration camp. I was in my early teens and I was startled but not traumatized by starting to realize how evil people could be;
The Holocaust was not tame, was not pleasant and was not nice. It was horrific. It was devestatingly tragic. If I had lived it I would have been terrified. All generations need to know that unless we want to relive it. I think anyone age 15 and up needs to be exposed to this history and what led to it.
I grew up around WW2 vets. One served with the 82nd Airborne. He helped liberate a concentration camp. My 7th grade history teacher brought in a vet to tell his story of fighting the nazis and his wife. The woman he liberated from a concentration camp.
That's one of the things kids are advised to do to learn history by the author of _Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong._
Having been an educational professional for more than forty years, banning this book is an indication of ignorance gone wild. Mother's for liberty have a failed understanding of liberty. These mother's are an example of truly missing the meaning of education. Perhaps they were asleep when learning the constitutional meaning of "freedom" with responsibility. They missed the words with responsibility. They don't understand seeing a picture and not seeing the scenery. Learning is a powerful "action" word. Hand picking foul words to protect their children does the exact opposite. That is the basic tenet of learning.
I think it's not about a few words, it's about eliminating the Holocaust from the curriculum. Re-reading Maus II, I found something he said was worth considering: "Maybe EVERYONE has to feel guilty. EVERYONE! FOREVER!" You could say that about chattel slavery too, including Blacks descended from those who survived, when many Africans died on the journey. This is totally 180° from what the banners believe: that whites shouldn't feel guilty about slavery, racism, and discrimination that happened "in the past."
The board’s foundation is hollow. The probability that an adolescent in Tennessee has not encountered nudity or “profanity” is close to zero. Art’s illustration of the discovery of his mother dying from suicide took courage and must have been extremely hard to do. I really hope these students discover his work and it’s read much more widely.
They're concerned that it's the wrong kind of nudity or "profanity", not the right kind like they and their friends and fambly from church indulge in. Please pass de strychnine, an' praise de Lawd.
They did not "ban" the book. They removed it from the 8th grade curriculum. If they have a policy against nudity or profanity, then they have to be consistent. It was a judgment call on the part of the school board. Not a big deal. Read the book at home. I don't get the hoopla about this.
@@otakurocklee One of the board members asked about several other books on the curriculum which were in violation of the criteria in question. He was told "We're not talking about that right now" (and by implication, won't be any time soon). It was fairly transparent what happened in the meeting minutes that have been made widely available.
@@DrewNorthup Spiegelman mentioned reading the minutes, so I looked it up. The educators were on the side of the book, and there was no alternative approved book available, thereby constraining the Holocaust curriculum. In this video they mention film and pictures, so it's not the _only_ part of the curriculum, but this was obviously a pretext to stop teaching the Holocaust in future.
@@sandal_thong8631 I'm not sure if you meant to reply to me specifically, but that's what I was getting at. I didn't see the point in saying it outright given the statement my comment was in reply to. Sometimes you just have to push the horse toward water and get out of the way.
I went to school in the 60s and 70s, learning mostly white-washed history. I learned with delight, along with my children and grandchildren a much more diverse history. There is no holding back information in today's modern technological age.
I also read the minutes of the school board meeting; everyone who is interested should. School board members are elected, and that means that there is no requirement that board members be educated or intelligent. In fact, here in Tennessee, judges are elected, so the elections are, basically, popularity contests, especially in rural communities.
We need to teach people how to accept / embrace uncomfortable truths. So much of our information consumption today is self-curated. Thus our assumptions and biases are more likely to be confirmed rather than disputed. We busily build our own echo chambers, rather than ever admit to learning something new.
Honestly I don’t think it’s them uncomfortable they’re not tryin to get misconstrued on what they believe in you can just mention something in history as a fact you get called a racist and a bigot online how do you live in a world where people especially in America wanna cancel for the littlest things especially facts
The thing is, that should t be a thing, right? Tons of kids experience hardships injustice and prejudice inside and outside of school.... You can't shield them from it.. idk.. ive been black, muslim. and a descendent of the missplaced Cherokee, my whole life. I never had the pleasure of being denied learning about a history of other peoples oppression because I live it. My family lived it. My foreign friends and neighbors, and their parent grandparents... all lived it. Muslim, Jewish, Christian, black, brown, lgbt.... I swear it's only the descendants of the winning side that get to forget that they ruined many peoples lives! How fukced up is it that most of white Amerikka learned about the Tulsa Massacre last year, because of a tv show?!? Who does it help if we don't talk about Miyamar, the Holocaust, chattel slavery, the slaughter of protestant Irish, Tiananmen Square, the Cherokee Trail of tears... all of these are just examples of terrible humans using race to justify selfish, evil, means. If we dont talk about it, HOW THE HELL WILL WE PREVENT IT FROM HAPPENING AGAIN!?!?!?!
Parents only have the right to have control/ "input" in *their own child's* educational needs & choices. As untrained people, they've got no right to tell trained professionals how, or what to teach.
That was my original objection to home schooling, before the pandemic. However my friend has a PhD and my cousin has a degree in education, so I think they are qualified to teach kids at home, theirs and others'.
@@JourneyWithDrBill Yesterday, I saw a video on Amanpour & Co interviewing a Mormon woman who was homeschooled and didn't know anything about slavery or civil rights until she went to BYU. The topic was affordable college.
Recently tried to buy this book and found it’s sold out almost everywhere! Have mine on back order. This is the correct response to this issue. Banned books are the best books don’t let them tell you what you can learn
I’d gladly give a week’s salary to any school board member, across this country, who can prove that they actually read any of the books that they are demanding to be removed from curriculum. These books include “Catcher in the rye” and “1984”. It appears evident that they are being directed in their outrage by some politically motivated conservative organizations, and or networks. 2 + 2 will never be 5, as long as we continue to speak truths and facts that are not negotiable!
An amazing coincidence, is George Takei said it was taking about their time in the US WWII internment camps that brought them closer as adults. His book is also a graphic novel that tells it from the point of view as a child then in terms of his adult discoveries talking to his father about his views of the same events, that informed George Takei's adult viewpoint.
I too thought it interesting that 8th grade curriculum moved on to Japanese-American internment camps after the Holocaust. I remember in 7th grade G&T we did dropping the atomic bombs, but I don't remember anything as enlightening in 8th grade.
It's a bloody PUBLIC, government administered school system, not a parents-design-the-curricula system. People who desire to be teachers must matriculate through a teacher education program and pass certification criteria in order to receive their state's accreditation, without which they cannot teach. In part, this disingenuous rationalization that "parents should have a say in what their children learn," is part of the death of expertise: A majority of Americans no longer trust formerly respected institutions and professionals. This rise of "every opinion is equal; every person an authority," leads to the phenomenon of citizens accepting medical advice from Facebook, or talk show hosts, and savaging doctors who contradict said advice. And it extends to other arenas as we witness ill-informed hyper-emotional parents harangue, threaten and excoriate school board members and teachers in often successful attempts to bend curricula to their political agenda. The survival of Democracy depends upon the extent to which its citizens value literacy, compassion and tolerance, equality as a reality, not just a slogan, the worth of harmony and community, and the ascendancy of rationality over superstition. Said citizens must possess the capacity to shuffle off the provincialism that ensnares them in partisan bubbles and renders them little capable of analytical and critical thinking. But this--and Democracy, itself--cannot occur and flourish in contexts in which tribalism, anti-intellectualism, and a disdain for expertise reign.
@@mr.horrorchild4094 Parents should take an interest in what is taught to their children outside of their home, and at home communicate their own knowledge, views, and values to their own children.
Children have a right to an education that trumps a parent's right to control curriculum. Children are not the property of their parents. Of course parents have the right to raise their children. But, their children are future citizens and we all have a stake in allowing for a well-educated citizenry.
I like what you say. When this came up last year in the VA race, and the Democratic candidate faced uproar, I was thinking of AP classes for college credit that I imagine have to conform to college-level standards, of which parents have no say.
@@zapazap We live in a democracy, so special interests, like radical parent groups, can influence the school board (or become the school board). The solution is either a court case if they've acted improperly, or the next school board election to restore Holocaust studies. Interesting to note that the Scopes Monkey Trial was in TN.
@@sandal_thong8631 Or (tbe ultimate in grass roots democracy) by parents directing the education of their own kids. That is much quicker and, in some senses, easier way for some parents to resolve the immediate issue with there own kids than to lobby to change beauracracy. Instead of (or at least prior to) trying to get a train to slow down, getting your kids off the tracks sounds to me like sage advice. Cheers! :)
@@zapazap Two of the women I know who home school: one is a PhD, the other has a degree in Education, I believe, so both are qualified to teach. Perhaps not so the average soccer mom. I just watched a video from this channel about the high cost of college; the woman speaker was home-schooled and didn't learn about slavery or Civil Rights Movement until she went to BYU.
I watched the footage of the nazi concentration camps used during the Nuremburg trials as evidence for crimes agaisnt humanity. Nothing ive ever seen can compare to the sheer brutality and hatred for a race as what i saw in those recordings. Its so awful and disgusting that it MUST be taught to stop it from ever happening again. Maus does an excellent job of teaching while not being as horrificly grusome as the actual evidence. Banning it was a terrible idea. Now if people want to see what it was really like they dont have a nice slightly distanced story to give them a feel and perspective of the events. If you're curious the Nuremberg evidence footage is on the wikepedia page of the trials themselves. Try to find another book that can explain those events accuratley without mentally scarring someone and burning those images into their brain like it did mine. I think maus was a great book to use to teach it. A good balance of reality but not going overboard with realism.
Electing school board members is the absolute scariest thing we vote on. We know nothing about these people and their agenda and there's almost no way to get information.
I’m a native of East Tennessee. This is a “shonder” and I’m so disgusted by the events taking place in my state. McMinnville IS full of idiots who think Applebee’s is fine dining…
Nudity, profanity and violence this was banned? Wow! And video games where you get points for shooting people is what again? Entertainment! Watching wrestlers and cage fighters making a living beating the crap out of people is called what? Entertainment! Watching an action flick with profanity, nudity with the woman character, blowing up cars, shooting people is called what? Entertainment! The violence of two gladiators fighting to the death was called entertainment! And THIS suddenly gets people riled? Confounding hypocrisy.
Here’s hoping kids everywhere push back against this ridiculousness. Go to the library and read the book. Don’t let these people cry freedom and then keep you from educating yourselves about the good and bad that has happened in this world.
@@mr.horrorchild4094 In the 1990's Steven Spielberg tried to gift a copy of his film "Schindler's List" to every School District. Sadly, the public school district in Mesa, Arizona (east of Phoenix) turned it down because it was too long, < 4 hours. Also perhaps because it showed lines of scrawny, shivering, naked people in the death camps herded into "sanitation shower rooms" which were really poison gas chambers.
@@mr.horrorchild4094 Like in Hotel Rwanda where someone took a risk to save people from death, Oskar Schindler was a businessman in charge of a concentration camp that worked Jewish people to death for manufacturing. He was horrified, and found a way to save a few hundred of those Jews. Glad you recognized that the film is a true story from The Holocaust in WWII since I failed to note that.
When I was in junior high school we got to watch the Holocaust, but before we were able to watch it our parents had to sign a permission slip. Have they done away with those, permission slips? I don't understand what the problem is
They could have had her sit on stage and not talk, but listen. That would be a teachable moment. Meanwhile on the other side they want to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for someone to demean Blacks with the N-word (the N-word that's not Nuclear).
the one wanting the book removed had the balls to say that the book would be the same if certain words were removed and the literally single instance of nudity in the book was taken out it would be the same book wich no no it wouldnt be by definition it would not be the same
As an Asian American, I am so appalled by all these book banning in school based on false notions and ignorance. I was fortunate enough to have visited Germany and learned about the Holocaust, the horror of the concentration camps. As human beings, we are definitely not perfect, but to ignore or even water down the terrible things that we have done to each other throughout history would be a great disservice to humanity. We need to build compassion and empathy toward each other. I am so grateful to learn about and understand the movement of Black Lives Matter. Ultimately, the movement is about freedom, justice and liberty for all humankind. With that, we should push for a more compassionate, equitable, truly democratic society.
I remember reading a banned book to my Kinders "The Rabbit's Wedding", check it out and see if you can guess the reason it was banned, Garth Williams drew one rabbit white and one back hmmmmmmmm for those of you not willing to check the book out. Same people different yet same cause
In an age-appropriate manner??? Are you kidding me? Hey school board members, how do you look a 5-year-old in the eye who is about to be shoved into a crematorium along with the entire family and tell that child in an age-appropriate manner they are about to die and why? Methinks the term 'board of education' is an oxymoron...SMDH...
Here in Wake Co, NC segregationists were voted onto the school board in 2009 (partly the pre-2010 response to Barack Obama) when no one was looking. They wanted to end school busing based on student's family's income, which kept there from being poor schools and allowed for more integration too. We found out and voted them out in a future odd-year election, and then someone (Republicans?) changed the terms to be even-year elections.
The fact that _Maus_ is not only an Amazon bestseller right now, but is also currently sold out on Amazon is a thin silver lining to this disgusting situation. I hope it gets a new reprint that sells out faster than it can be printed.
If parents were capable of properly educating their children, public schools would have never been devised. Most parents have no clue what curriculum their children should have. They should be listening to the teachers. The teachers want to keep the book in the curriculum. The school board is driven by politics. Remember Fahrenheit 451. One of the most important books ever written. Book banning is unconscionable in a literate society. I like that Spiegelman says he's a first amendment fundamentalist. That Tennessee district needs to put the book back in the curriculum.
Parents' rights is two-edged. I, personally, am offended by the idea that anyone can deny me my rights. Parents' have responsibilities. Children have rights.
Show me a person who has read a thousand books, and you give me an interesting companion. Show me a man who has read only one and you give me a dangerous enemy indeed
I'm 70 now. When l was about 9or10, l asked my mother who was Hitler and what the Holocaust was. She gave me very vague answers like he was a bad man and killed a lot of good people. By the time l was in middle school l had read the book Mien kaump and l continued to explore this subject through out my life as her answer spurned me on. I still have a difficult time trying to wrap my head heart mind soul and spirit around it. So see, by ignoring these things, doesn't make it any less of what was. Steven Spielberg felt moved to produce his masterpiece Schindler's List do that this wouldn't be ignored as a teaching tool for humanity. To ignore the truth to our future leaders is quite possible to set them up for failure. Would it be best to let them go on line and learn from anti human types such as the still Nazi society's . I don't think so but it's only my opinion. I can assertion this horrible thing happening again. It's the stuff of nightmares.
There are those who deny the Holocaust because they think it will undermine Israel's right to exist, by eliminating sympathy for survivors and their offspring. And they perhaps want a new Holocaust, too.
The school hasn't stopped teaching the Holocaust - they still have a two month module on it. They will find an alternative book to teach rather than Maus.
After reading some of these heartfelt, personal stories and observations, is it any wonder mental illness is a big problem in this sick country which I am coming to despise! Money & white male supremacy ARE NOT MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVERYTHING ELSE dammit to hell!!
💗yes Sir, education is necessary for US🇺🇸 alllll some of US do not even know what happened when the US🇺🇸 also hurt Jews, entire families all trying to get to safety when they needed help! This makes me cry. We need to l💗ve one another.
There was nothing "kind and gentle" about the Holocaust inflicted on the people of Germany and the countries that Hitler overran during WW2. As a result of the fascism which Hitler and his army and government practiced, 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust in WW2. Between 70 million and 85 million people died worldwide as a result of WW2. When I was in high school in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada; for Grade 11 and 12 (I graduated in 1960), I became friends with Johnny who was 2 years behind me. Johnny was born in Nazi, Germany, during WW2 and his parents, who were Jewish, were able to escape Germany and move to Canada after the war. Johnny's experience living with fascism had a huge negative impact on him. I find it disgraceful that a Tennessee school board would would ban "Maus." Fascism is anti-democracy and is not a pretty sight. Millions of people around the world have died as a result of living in fascist countries. We all need to do our part to ensure that the fascism that has grown in the United States of America since WW2 is eliminated. The paradox is that Americans fought WW2 to defeat fascism. President Trump engaged in insurrection and sedition against the United States of America through the attack on The Capitol on January 6, 2021. The failure of the Tennessee school Board to allow students to learn the full impact of the book "Maus" is a sad reflection on the lack of understanding that the Tennessee school Board members demonstrated by banning "Maus." Their souls and their students will pay a steep price for banning the book.
Mr. Speigelman, thank you for telling your story. I will find and read your book, just as I have gone to the Washington DC Holocaust museum once on my own and once with my then 21 year-old son (who chose that museum out of all the other historical museums for a class assignment), and listened to interviews by survivors and watched documentaries on this subject, and read many books on this subject. Trying to understand how this could have occured is a delving into the mysteries of the human mind. It cannot be understood. Knowing that it did and what led up to it, how it was perpetrated, tolerated by those not experiencing it, by either witnessing it or getting news through word of mouth, radio or tv is much more is more important. We cannot prevent the horrific events of the Holocaust from happening again without knowing what actually transpired. It is not ancient history. You can find many examples in the world right now where one group of people, defined as 'other', is being subjugated, imprisoned, 'disappeared' (and yes, abused, tortured and murdered). The way to stop it is to bring it to light, fight through opposition and hope there are enough morally conscious others who cannot ignore or deny the inhumane treatment of another human being.
I learned recently Nazis got the idea from the Jim Crow South, but their notion of 1 drop of blood was too extreme for them, so I think they said if one of your 4 grandparents were Jewish then you were an undesirable. Makes me think what if the Republicans didn't turn their back on Reconstruction and it kept going. Would there be no Holocaust?
This is _such_ an important conversation, which I really appreciate! Books have always surrounded me, and I cannot bear it when they’re banned. My mother was an elementary school librarian who never took my older brothers’ and sisters’ books away from my reach and reading, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” when I was 11 or 12 greatly upset me. But it was absolutely critical to my view of race, gender, and ethnicity issues as well as the very honest way I’ve looked at my country since then, with a strong need for justice….it was the time of Watergate, when I watched the hearings on TV, something I perhaps wouldn’t have done had I not read that incredible book. We must at times “shock” kids a bit in order for them to develop empathy and critical thinking skills, so that they perhaps can fight against hypocrisy and assaults to our freedoms.
In my opinion, in a democracy, books should never be banned. People should never stop learning. The GOP has done a great deal of damage in the past reinventing history, but this recent disrespect of teachers and of the fallen soldiers in World War ll and Vietnam claiming it never happened is unconscionable. Is it no wonder that schools are losing good teachers. Let the parents decide what is best for their children--not the rich politician, not the church, not the fundamentalist preachers.
I was 10 yrs old when I learned about racial and religious prejudice. (I'm 73 now.) I was absolutely gobsmacked! I couldn't understand why people would dislike other people because of different skin color, different religion, different nationality, different anything. I still don't understand. I don't think I ever will. (Although, to be honest, I used to say that the only people I was prejudiced against were prejudiced people.)
As a former town school committee member, in my rural New England community, I so VERY MUCH AGREE with Spiegelman that school committee candidates be required to have formal education credentials from accredited higher education institutions. To be appointed and/or elected to most other committees, such as finance & natural resources, required demonstrated competencies. NOT SO SCHOOL COMMITTEE. I was the only committee member who had been a classroom teacher and was certified. Without competency requirements, little could be done by a committee of amateurs, some of whom used it as an opening to higher town office. Others ran, and won, on a platform of reducing tax payer burdens by slashing educational support. The result was chaos with the students mostly suffering and the town diminished by families & teachers leaving the school district and going elsewhere.
Parents who want control their children’s education are free to home school. That way their warped and small minded comfort zone will only be harming their own child. Of course, they will have to be accountable to state home schooling requirements but it will give the parents the feeling of being in control. A few families might want to take it even farther by having home births and never registering that the kids exist. That would sure free things up for ultimate parental control. Locking the kids in the attic or such will guarantee they won’t know a damn thing about reality when they ultimately have to navigate the world. Right, Mr. and Mrs. Turpin? But sure, their parents can rest easy that they were able to impose their beliefs on their children, (at least for a while).
Yeah would argue that it should not be in elementary but middle school is okay suicide and other harsh subject should not be in elementary but yea it’s a good book
Excellent interview. Appreciated his insight on Whoopi Goldberg’s error too, and how we can best respond to and see positive change in people when they make such mistakes
Most kids watch, listen, and do other things far worse when not supervised outside of school; especially if it involves drugs, weapons, and other dangerous activities.
I will never forget Stephanie. She was furious with her affluent parents because they protected her from all the hard reality of life. When she left home and got out on her own she found she had no coping skills, no foreknowledge of what to expect in our sometimes ugly and violent world, no street smarts. Her parents, I am sure, would have been dismayed and confused at her rage towards them because they would have thought that they were excellent parents. Instead, in their myopia, they had knee-capped her and rendered her naive and unable to see the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that would inevitably come to her, as they do for us all. She had to learn the hard way. On her own. Reminds me of a Dylan lyric: "helpless, like a rich man's child." These parents who want to launder children's literature are not doing their children any favors. Instead of being a book-burning/banning Troglodyte, parents, how about using the harshness in the books to teach your kids (age appropriately, of course)? Or is it just easier to make a fuss, thus denying other kids the chance to learn from the books?
Overprotective and helicopter parenting usually reaps it's own reward. Suicide and drug addiction/overdose rates. Divorce often catches kids in crossfire conflicts between parents, espousing by insecure parents. Parents often don't see how they encourage or at least don't try to prevent damaging costs to their kids. Even grown kids.
My dad worked in a highschool and I read Maus while waiting for him in the library when it was probably 'age inappropriate' for me. I understood it as a child did. What do I mean by that? I accepted that the mice were people and that this happened TO PEOPLE.
Parents having say in terms of sanitizing things no they shouldn't! People use the B word a lot when they're mad at a girl. If parents want a say they sure as heck don't teach respect that should be shown to women to their kids that sons must never use the word and that their daughters must never accept it being said. Kids use profanity all the time thinking that's so cool. If parents want a say don't use profanity yourself and don't tolerate your kids using it. Nudity? We treat women as sex objects and it doesn't raise an eyebrow strangely. If parents want a say they should teach their kids that girls and women are to be respected and that daughters don't need to show nudity to attract anyone. Parents should have a say in not allowing their kids to be ignorant!
![Oasis - Oasis Live '25 [Official Trailer]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/gol_JnuEtKM/mqdefault.jpg)
Maybe someone who sees a characterized depiction of a dead woman as sexual shouldn't be anywhere near children, much less on a school board?
Good one ‼️ Bravo!
Because I chose to be a medical professional, it was demanded I hold a valid license, backed by college and clinical experiences.
Unfortunately these emotional troglodytes are in positions of power. To negate the power of these fatuous cabals, a written exam testing an individual's knowledge of the myriad of disciplines grasped by 'formally' trained educators, at a MASTER'S DEGREE LEVEL seems reasonable. Anyone allowed direct access to the progeny of America must, FIRST, prove their value EMPIRICALLY.
Excellent point! Thanks for your comment.
@@freedomfinder5196 Sorry, I don't grasp you're focus?
Keep the fascists off the school board!!! In 2009, people in Wake Co, NC were caught napping, so segregationists voted their kind onto the school board to end busing based on income, which served to prevent schools from having too many poor kids, and as a benefit had greater integration getting around the racial/quota issue.
Speigelman's point about book banners trying to deflect from the real issues is a very important point.
I think the language and imagery objected to is merely a pretext to remove teaching the Holocaust to 8th graders. If they had voted to replace it with another book approved by educators then it wouldn't have gotten attention.
There's also the general context that this book isn't by itself, but there's that organization to remove books from libraries too. They came up with the term "cancel culture" with regard to colleges hiring offensive speakers; but now they've decided to use it for their own means.
I, to this day, remember a book that I read in the 8th grade. It was titled “Hitler and Nazism”. It was on the bookshelf in our classroom, which was a parochial school. I have never forgotten that book. It opened my eyes to cruelty, evil, racism, and mistreatment of others. This book included photographs of piles of nude bodies after being killed in the gas chambers. These bodies were emaciated as well. I thought nothing of the nudity, but the horror of seeing and reading about the holocaust has stayed with me. I am now 70 years old and I never want to see anything like this happen again. Children should learn about the evils that people inflict on others so it never happens again. These stories need to be told to generations!
No doubt they don't approve of Schindler's List for the same reason. I think there's a difference between 5th grade and 8th grade where the former might have difficulty with naked corpses.
Ditto
Thank you for sharing.
If these stories aren't told, then you can have people like the young man who said that there was no WW2 and that is was a "movie." Anyone who believes that these books don't need to be read by their children are doing their children a heinous disservice.
@@sandal_thong8631 And yet, that's what people did to people.
"Knowledge is no burden to carry.....Ignorance is a weight, you can't lift!" TN. McMinn County Board of Education: "Making Ignorance a Duty and Knowledge a Crime."
Ignorance is Knowledge, hate is love, discipline is kindness, Arbeit macht frei.
Did you know that the south never required any of its white children to go to school... public school was never established until the north started building them during reconstruction. Many confederate soldiers were illiterate, many more than their northern white counterparts.
You need them stupid to make sure they stay racist. They have to be incredibly stupid to send their sons to die so that a few white men could keep their labor force.
👏👏👏👏👏
@@ludlowaloysius Yes, you are so smart and right on point💞 Bravo ‼️
What does one expect from the Bible Belt?
So refreshing to hear a SANE HUMAN BEING talking sense about this subject.
This books are two proposes. First brainswashing American efucation . Secound Zionist lobby are controling education.
@@maxwellsimoes238 If you're so worried about education, perhaps start with your own? You know - spelling and grammar basics...
Perhaps start with your own basic good manners. Good manners arent you strong suit. Stuck up. Maus is scrap book is it in your brains.
@@dontbefatuousjeffrey2494 maus rebbirich book.
@@maxwellsimoes238 I am at a loss as to what "rebbirich" means. Google certainly doesn't seem to have a clue. You should probably explain that one.
And someone claiming something as anti-Semitic as "Zionist lobby are controling [sic] education" has no claim to even the comprehension of what good manners are.
For fun consider this, last year a teacher shared on Reddit that he was teaching a history class on world war II, and wanted to explore the implications of what would happen if Japan had developed nuclear weapons first. The teacher then shared that a 16-year-old student asked why does this matter, when asked to clarify the student explained that world war II never happened it was just a movie. This was a student who spent most of his time being taught in the state of Texas. To me this gives me an idea of just how screwed our education system is at the moment.
In Texas and a lot of the south the schools suck.
The parents don't want the children to be educated because it would shine a light on how uneducated the parents are.
I’m still surprised no one talks about how the Japanese nearly 2xed the holocaust in terms of deaths and it’s almost never taught. Not only that but after their defeat some of their leaders were not held responsible.
Koniving, I went to school in TX and graduated from a state supported university. In every history class, we studied both world wars.
Koniving, I went to school in TX and graduated from a state supported university. In every history class, we studied both world wars.
I read MAUS as a child on my own out of curiosity even though none of our schools taught anything about the Holocaust at all. Same goes for the laws of our land concerning civil rights. It was not an important part of school in the 1970s and 1980s. Then I went to college where it was important. So many kids are shocked at the information that parents, teachers, schools, principals, and politicians don’t want us to know. It’s intellectual mothballling. The education is not theirs. It’s the kids’. And they’re robbing and stealing in order to pretend that they own their children. They don’t have the right to their children’s intellectual property.
Internet comment of the day ☑️☑️☑️☑️☑️
High praise 😊
Very well put! In fact, write a letter to the editor and send to many newspapers! Yes, really! You articulate an important perspective!!
I read _Lies My Teacher Told Me,_ revised edition, a dozen years ago, which lamented the poor state of history education, where students have to be re-educated in college history classes. Nothing had changed between editions: Texas rules.
Thank you for your comments, I agree with you. The sad thing is that the "banners" children will be affected in a very negative way if they don't understand the history of the world and of America.
The parents don't want the children to be educated because it would shine a light on how uneducated the parents are.
Children are to be seen and not heard. Nothing more disturbing to a small minded parent than a child that is less ignorant than they are.
@Jo Painting “… how uneducated the parents are …” and how they are thus complicit in poor decision making.
This is how Repubs are behaving in their efforts to eliminate the 1/6 Commission and dummy-down the 1/6 insurrection.
@@lindahoganson8721 on my msn feed this morning there was a story about drumpfh rewinding "high lights" of the J6 attack. he was delighted with the chaos.
@@nandayane which is why corporal punishment is so widely accepted. Smh
And then they shun God lol
Spiegelman is a great person whose great work has had a lasting effect in raising awareness of the horrors of the Holocaust and of Fascism.
He books are conspiring against freedoom education. Branzely liar. Let people thinks is principles education. Books are undermines education demogracy.
@@maxwellsimoes238 This is NOT correct English.
@@kittyday1402 this is not correct book. Book are prison mind american education system. Anti demogratic.
@@Lethah thank you but not read maus book .Strong suit arent you good manners. Learning english books good manners .
He's wearing the vest from the comic lol. In all serious though, this man is a legend and Maus is one of the greatest contribution to the whole graphic medium.
Good eye. I guess he liked that style from the age of 30 if not sooner.
Librarian here. All our copies of Maus are checked out, and at least one person has gone through interlibrary loan to get a copy from another library system. This always happens when books or movies are targeted: months-long waiting lists for items that may not have circulated in years.
I can second that as a fellow librarian! We're in the Midwest and it seems like everybody's reading Maus. 😁
Some young people might find a way to read it but many others will never experience it because their parents agree with the banning or because their parents aren't really paying attention or because their children will only enter school years later when the controversy has waned...
It is great that, for now, people are going to loan it from libraries or that it is on Amazon's Best Sellers list again but the nature of the removal is much insidious, don't forget.
Yes; Bans can _promote_ literacy.
Depicting WW2 with talking animals IS a kinder, gentler telling of the holocaust. It takes a difficult subject and makes it accessible to younger readers.
I read Maus as a teen and Maus II as maybe a twenty-year-old. Re-reading it this week, I imagined the animal-head characters as people, and it was more upsetting in some ways at age fifty. Of course there's been _Schindler's List_ and other films to bring images to mind.
I read animal farm at 12 and it horrified me. The way those in power treated those without power in USSR under Stalin was powerful even disguised as pig and other animals. But it gave me a clear picture of how frightening the fall of communism into totalitarianism was
"After I have said all this, I am sure you are still ready to respond, in effect, “Yes, yes- but it still remains our right and our responsibility to decide what books our children are going to be made to read in our community.” This is surely so. But it is also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call you bad citizens and fools. Even your own children are entitled to call you that." -- Kurt Vonnegut
“Moms for Liberty” sounds like a cynical dystopian terminology designed to gaslight. Reminds me of the fascistic mission of “Daughters of the Confederacy” We shouldn't be ignoring this.
How about Moms Against the Commodification of Our Children? Or Moms Who Listen to Ratings Systems? I bet all their kids have been playing GTA for years...but Maus is the problem.
@@christinemccrea4371 exactly 🤬
It's part of the Culture Wars. They called it Cancel Culture when students objected to colleges paying speakers to come and tell lies and offensive content. But then they seized on doing it themselves, except they're stopping truth.
Save our Children. Which had nothing to do with saving anyones children and had everything to do with The Protocols of the Elder Trump.
Lighten up, Francis.
Parents unable to reason. What a surprise- that's what you get when public education is not funded for 50 years. Two generations of ignorance
It was the _professional educators_ who ruled on this, no?
"Maus" becoming a best seller after being banned reminds me of the summer of 1957 when the Catholic Church proclaimed it a mortal sin to see the movie "Baby Doll." I was thirteen that year and my family lived two blocks from the movie theater. The line to buy a ticket stretched those two blocks and around the corner. (Thank you, Art Spiegelman, for writing such an incredible book!)
He books are mis information to intent control education system. Zionist lobby are book are brainswashing education as Gestapo.
@@maxwellsimoes238 dude... first of all : your english is awful... next time use Google translator or something alike.
Second : you clearly do not have the slightest understanding of what the Gestapo was. What you wrote in your crippled english is just stupid from front to end. Gestapo (german shortage for "GEheime STAatsPOlizei"; or secret state police in english) was an executing organ of the state like for example the FBI. What you were maybe looking for was the word "Staats Propaganda Ministerium". The name itself does say it... "ministry of propaganda".
And before you even start to try to respond. I AM GERMAN!!! And I know german history!
@@pt3800 thank you 💞
@@opinionsvary first of all. Maus ban are Anti demogratic. Secound. Maus are rubbish giberish. Trird. Zionist lobby in American undermines American freedoom when Zionist perverse self esteem works upon American Rights.
Maus are rubbish gibberish book.
"Don't join the book burners... Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book." - Dwight D. Eisenhower
And now we have books describing the CIA removal of the democratically elected leaders of Iran (Operation Ajax 1953) and Guatemala (Operation PBSuccess 1954) by Eisenhower, in violation of International Law and the UN Charter
@@kevinjenner9502 Ike also warned about the power of the MIC. Presidents have bosses too.
General Butler wrote War is a Racket telling the truth about his own actions.
nothing is simple.
@@jessebianchi2631 He quite liked the CIA, small, non bureaucratic, and deniable. CIA coups removing democratically elected leaders around the world, as commissioned by sitting US Presidents, in violation of International Law and the UN Charter. Iran (1953, Guatemala (1954) Congo (1960) Dominican Republic (1961) S. Vietnam (1963) Brazil (1964) Chile (1973) etc.
@@kevinjenner9502 nobody's perfect.
But don't feel _compelled_ to read every book. Some are just dreck.
if anything, the book was more tame than the actual holocaust. my senior year we read this book, and we were more than capable to understand and cope with it.
The book was removed from an 8th grade curriculum - not a high school curriculum.
@@joralemonvirgincreche the more you know
@@joralemonvirgincreche The Bible is much more violent, including systemic bodily mutilation, genocide, and slavery, all demanded by a tyrannical God, surely, the school board and the obtuse Moms would not consider banning it, in spite of being the real basis for torture and genocide of millions in it's history. The majority of NAZIS we're either Lutheran or Catholic (Adolph Hitler was Catholic, and demanded that the Pope's birthday be a Nazi holiday).
NOW you are controlling this books minds because you was brainswashing cowardly.
@@lex3729 yeah, OT yahweh was a was a real sob.
Just finished the book an hour ago, completely shocked that the school board wanted to banned the book just because.
They can't read. That's why they think it's a, "Nekkid lady in a BATHTUB‼️", INSTEAD of a nude woman in a bathtub of blood! IG NERNT!!
Book was not "banned". It was removed from the 8th grade curriculum. Much ado about nothing.
Without a replacement, that restricts the teachers' Holocaust curriculum.
@@phyllisneal8687 if only that were the case. They’re using this purported eroticism to ban the book for ideological reasons. If it was just a matter of nudity and community standards, maybe there could be a discussion on whether the book was appropriate, but the argument isn’t being brought in good faith. The true intention is to remove material that undermines the performative resentments of white supremacists.
@@otakurocklee FOX NZI NEWZ IS ALIVE AND WELL, IN YOU! ugh🤮
I read this book a few years ago. I found it to be calm and mild in style. Leon Uris's book "Exodus" published decades ago had much more brutal descriptions of a concentration camp. I was in my early teens and I was startled but not traumatized by starting to realize how evil people could be;
We have a great many people in in this country in power who are this evil!
I read "Exodus" shortly after it came out and often couldn't put it down. Leon Uris did a great job as author.
@@TeddyBear-cg3lz a stunning read
The Holocaust was not tame, was not pleasant and was not nice. It was horrific. It was devestatingly tragic. If I had lived it I would have been terrified. All generations need to know that unless we want to relive it. I think anyone age 15 and up needs to be exposed to this history and what led to it.
I grew up around WW2 vets. One served with the 82nd Airborne. He helped liberate a concentration camp. My 7th grade history teacher brought in a vet to tell his story of fighting the nazis and his wife. The woman he liberated from a concentration camp.
That's one of the things kids are advised to do to learn history by the author of _Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong._
Having been an educational professional for more than forty years, banning this book is an indication of ignorance gone wild. Mother's for liberty have a failed understanding of liberty. These mother's are an example of truly missing the meaning of education. Perhaps they were asleep when learning the constitutional meaning of "freedom" with responsibility. They missed the words with responsibility. They don't understand seeing a picture and not seeing the scenery. Learning is a powerful "action" word. Hand picking foul words to protect their children does the exact opposite. That is the basic tenet of learning.
I think it's not about a few words, it's about eliminating the Holocaust from the curriculum. Re-reading Maus II, I found something he said was worth considering: "Maybe EVERYONE has to feel guilty. EVERYONE! FOREVER!"
You could say that about chattel slavery too, including Blacks descended from those who survived, when many Africans died on the journey. This is totally 180° from what the banners believe: that whites shouldn't feel guilty about slavery, racism, and discrimination that happened "in the past."
Personally I as white person I have never once felt Guilty about Chatel Slavery since I have never owned Slaves
The board’s foundation is hollow. The probability that an adolescent in Tennessee has not encountered nudity or “profanity” is close to zero.
Art’s illustration of the discovery of his mother dying from suicide took courage and must have been extremely hard to do.
I really hope these students discover his work and it’s read much more widely.
They're concerned that it's the wrong kind of nudity or "profanity", not the right kind like they and their friends and fambly from church indulge in. Please pass de strychnine, an' praise de Lawd.
They did not "ban" the book. They removed it from the 8th grade curriculum. If they have a policy against nudity or profanity, then they have to be consistent. It was a judgment call on the part of the school board. Not a big deal. Read the book at home. I don't get the hoopla about this.
@@otakurocklee One of the board members asked about several other books on the curriculum which were in violation of the criteria in question. He was told "We're not talking about that right now" (and by implication, won't be any time soon). It was fairly transparent what happened in the meeting minutes that have been made widely available.
@@DrewNorthup Spiegelman mentioned reading the minutes, so I looked it up. The educators were on the side of the book, and there was no alternative approved book available, thereby constraining the Holocaust curriculum. In this video they mention film and pictures, so it's not the _only_ part of the curriculum, but this was obviously a pretext to stop teaching the Holocaust in future.
@@sandal_thong8631 I'm not sure if you meant to reply to me specifically, but that's what I was getting at. I didn't see the point in saying it outright given the statement my comment was in reply to. Sometimes you just have to push the horse toward water and get out of the way.
I went to school in the 60s and 70s, learning mostly white-washed history. I learned with delight, along with my children and grandchildren a much more diverse history. There is no holding back information in today's modern technological age.
I also read the minutes of the school board meeting; everyone who is interested should. School board members are elected, and that means that there is no requirement that board members be educated or intelligent. In fact, here in Tennessee, judges are elected, so the elections are, basically, popularity contests, especially in rural communities.
I think I read the final call was unanimous to remove it. Ignorant at best, a nasty backdoor-way to remove the Holocaust from the curriculum.
Sheltering children from the human body or form... The VERY Body they ,themselves are "encased" within. It's ridiculous.
I might shield them from some forms of the form. Cheers!
We need to teach people how to accept / embrace uncomfortable truths. So much of our information consumption today is self-curated. Thus our assumptions and biases are more likely to be confirmed rather than disputed. We busily build our own echo chambers, rather than ever admit to learning something new.
I love that - uncomfortable truths. Thank you-
Here here☀️☀️☀️
Indeed...well said!!!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Honestly I don’t think it’s them uncomfortable they’re not tryin to get misconstrued on what they believe in you can just mention something in history as a fact you get called a racist and a bigot online how do you live in a world where people especially in America wanna cancel for the littlest things especially facts
We are living in a very dangerous time. If you don't believe me, you might live long enough to see it.
When books are burned, bodies aren't far behind. And if somebody doesn't want you to know that, you have to ask why.
They seek a fascist-style takeover where loyalty to the leader is the only ethic worth standing for.
The thing is, that should t be a thing, right? Tons of kids experience hardships injustice and prejudice inside and outside of school.... You can't shield them from it.. idk.. ive been black, muslim. and a descendent of the missplaced Cherokee, my whole life. I never had the pleasure of being denied learning about a history of other peoples oppression because I live it. My family lived it. My foreign friends and neighbors, and their parent grandparents... all lived it. Muslim, Jewish, Christian, black, brown, lgbt.... I swear it's only the descendants of the winning side that get to forget that they ruined many peoples lives! How fukced up is it that most of white Amerikka learned about the Tulsa Massacre last year, because of a tv show?!? Who does it help if we don't talk about Miyamar, the Holocaust, chattel slavery, the slaughter of protestant Irish, Tiananmen Square, the Cherokee Trail of tears... all of these are just examples of terrible humans using race to justify selfish, evil, means. If we dont talk about it, HOW THE HELL WILL WE PREVENT IT FROM HAPPENING AGAIN!?!?!?!
Well said, indeed! Write letters to editors because your perspective must be heard!
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
specially not an historical tv show, a super-hero show (noir)
If schools are going to ban books due to sexual content then I'd say they need to also ban the Bible.
not for the genocides ? or infanticide ? or incest ? or slavery ?...
Parents only have the right to have control/ "input" in *their own child's* educational needs & choices. As untrained people, they've got no right to tell trained professionals how, or what to teach.
That was my original objection to home schooling, before the pandemic. However my friend has a PhD and my cousin has a degree in education, so I think they are qualified to teach kids at home, theirs and others'.
@@JourneyWithDrBill Yesterday, I saw a video on Amanpour & Co interviewing a Mormon woman who was homeschooled and didn't know anything about slavery or civil rights until she went to BYU. The topic was affordable college.
Recently tried to buy this book and found it’s sold out almost everywhere! Have mine on back order. This is the correct response to this issue.
Banned books are the best books don’t let them tell you what you can learn
not all of them, some ban are not about the content of the book but the perception, or the author, so the book themselves are not exceptional.
I’d gladly give a week’s salary to any school board member, across this country, who can prove that they actually read any of the books that they are demanding to be removed from curriculum. These books include “Catcher in the rye” and “1984”. It appears evident that they are being directed in their outrage by some politically motivated conservative organizations, and or networks. 2 + 2 will never be 5, as long as we continue to speak truths and facts that are not negotiable!
HEAR, here!
GQP doesn’t “get it” to the point that they want to try it here!! WTF?
An amazing coincidence, is George Takei said it was taking about their time in the US WWII internment camps that brought them closer as adults. His book is also a graphic novel that tells it from the point of view as a child then in terms of his adult discoveries talking to his father about his views of the same events, that informed George Takei's adult viewpoint.
I too thought it interesting that 8th grade curriculum moved on to Japanese-American internment camps after the Holocaust. I remember in 7th grade G&T we did dropping the atomic bombs, but I don't remember anything as enlightening in 8th grade.
His book is really good.
It's a bloody PUBLIC, government administered school system, not a parents-design-the-curricula system. People who desire to be teachers must matriculate through a teacher education program and pass certification criteria in order to receive their state's accreditation, without which they cannot teach.
In part, this disingenuous rationalization that "parents should have a say in what their children learn," is part of the death of
expertise: A majority of Americans no longer trust formerly respected institutions and professionals. This rise of "every opinion is equal; every person an authority," leads to the phenomenon of citizens accepting medical advice from Facebook, or talk show hosts, and savaging doctors who contradict said advice. And it extends to other arenas as we witness ill-informed hyper-emotional parents harangue, threaten and excoriate school board members and teachers in often successful attempts to bend curricula to their political agenda.
The survival of Democracy depends upon the extent to which its citizens value literacy, compassion and tolerance, equality as a reality, not just a slogan, the worth of harmony and community, and the ascendancy of rationality over superstition. Said citizens must possess the capacity to shuffle off the provincialism that ensnares them in partisan bubbles and renders them little capable of analytical and critical thinking. But this--and Democracy, itself--cannot occur and flourish in contexts in which tribalism, anti-intellectualism, and a disdain for expertise reign.
Parents should take an interest and voice their opinions about what their children are taught
@@mr.horrorchild4094 Parents should take an interest in what is taught to their children outside of their home, and at home communicate their own knowledge, views, and values to their own children.
@@judithnelson1581 That would be good
Well said.
@@mr.horrorchild4094 just like homeschooling. These parents are just perpetuating their own ignorance and prejudices.
What a brilliant speaker, and a great interviewer too.
Thank you for this interview.
Respect, Mr. Spiegelman. Respect.
Knowing History is the only way to prevent it happening again and now it is more important that children learn it.....
A much needed interview. Thank you for highlighting this story. I don't understand how a book about history can be banned. Totally tragic 💔
Children have a right to an education that trumps a parent's right to control curriculum. Children are not the property of their parents. Of course parents have the right to raise their children. But, their children are future citizens and we all have a stake in allowing for a well-educated citizenry.
I like what you say. When this came up last year in the VA race, and the Democratic candidate faced uproar, I was thinking of AP classes for college credit that I imagine have to conform to college-level standards, of which parents have no say.
Does their right trump _schools'_ rights to 'controlcurriculum'?
@@zapazap We live in a democracy, so special interests, like radical parent groups, can influence the school board (or become the school board). The solution is either a court case if they've acted improperly, or the next school board election to restore Holocaust studies.
Interesting to note that the Scopes Monkey Trial was in TN.
@@sandal_thong8631 Or (tbe ultimate in grass roots democracy) by parents directing the education of their own kids. That is much quicker and, in some senses, easier way for some parents to resolve the immediate issue with there own kids than to lobby to change beauracracy.
Instead of (or at least prior to) trying to get a train to slow down, getting your kids off the tracks sounds to me like sage advice.
Cheers! :)
@@zapazap Two of the women I know who home school: one is a PhD, the other has a degree in Education, I believe, so both are qualified to teach. Perhaps not so the average soccer mom. I just watched a video from this channel about the high cost of college; the woman speaker was home-schooled and didn't learn about slavery or Civil Rights Movement until she went to BYU.
I watched the footage of the nazi concentration camps used during the Nuremburg trials as evidence for crimes agaisnt humanity. Nothing ive ever seen can compare to the sheer brutality and hatred for a race as what i saw in those recordings. Its so awful and disgusting that it MUST be taught to stop it from ever happening again. Maus does an excellent job of teaching while not being as horrificly grusome as the actual evidence. Banning it was a terrible idea. Now if people want to see what it was really like they dont have a nice slightly distanced story to give them a feel and perspective of the events.
If you're curious the Nuremberg evidence footage is on the wikepedia page of the trials themselves. Try to find another book that can explain those events accuratley without mentally scarring someone and burning those images into their brain like it did mine. I think maus was a great book to use to teach it. A good balance of reality but not going overboard with realism.
Hardly anyone is incapable of acquiring the book outside of class, or outside of school.
Electing school board members is the absolute scariest thing we vote on.
We know nothing about these people and their agenda and there's almost no way to get information.
Yes, when books are banned, people are next. Blanking on who said that....
Heinrich Heine, Poet, *1797 in Düsseldorf „Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt...“
As Art Spiegelman said in the interview: 'first they burn the books and then next they burn the people'
Such a wise, intelligent man.
I’m a native of East Tennessee. This is a “shonder” and I’m so disgusted by the events taking place in my state. McMinnville IS full of idiots who think Applebee’s is fine dining…
Nudity, profanity and violence this was banned? Wow! And video games where you get points for shooting people is what again? Entertainment! Watching wrestlers and cage fighters making a living beating the crap out of people is called what? Entertainment! Watching an action flick with profanity, nudity with the woman character, blowing up cars, shooting people is called what? Entertainment! The violence of two gladiators fighting to the death was called entertainment! And THIS suddenly gets people riled? Confounding hypocrisy.
Here’s hoping kids everywhere push back against this ridiculousness. Go to the library and read the book. Don’t let these people cry freedom and then keep you from educating yourselves about the good and bad that has happened in this world.
Netflix should send copies of Hotel Rwanda to every classroom in the nation
@@mr.horrorchild4094 In the 1990's Steven Spielberg tried to gift a copy of his film "Schindler's List" to every School District. Sadly, the public school district in Mesa, Arizona (east of Phoenix) turned it down because it was too long, < 4 hours. Also perhaps because it showed lines of scrawny, shivering, naked people in the death camps herded into "sanitation shower rooms" which were really poison gas chambers.
@@judithnelson1581 Whoa, that sounds awful. I would call something like that the Holocaust and make sure every American teenager read Anne Frank
@@mr.horrorchild4094 Like in Hotel Rwanda where someone took a risk to save people from death, Oskar Schindler was a businessman in charge of a concentration camp that worked Jewish people to death for manufacturing. He was horrified, and found a way to save a few hundred of those Jews.
Glad you recognized that the film is a true story from The Holocaust in WWII since I failed to note that.
@@judithnelson1581 It's really not a problem to correct your oversight
Thank you Art!
When I was in junior high school we got to watch the Holocaust, but before we were able to watch it our parents had to sign a permission slip. Have they done away with those, permission slips? I don't understand what the problem is
I guess it's like sex education: you can't unlearn it.
About Whoopi:
ABC should have had a show dedicated to discussing the holocaust instead of suspending her. Let's talk, not punish.
They could have had her sit on stage and not talk, but listen. That would be a teachable moment. Meanwhile on the other side they want to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for someone to demean Blacks with the N-word (the N-word that's not Nuclear).
Kids can find worse things on the internet.
Unless it's certain Joe Rogan podcasts because those have already been removed from Spotify
What has happened to our constitution? Freedom of speech
I'm glad it's becoming more popular. it is really one of the best things I've read
the one wanting the book removed had the balls to say that the book would be the same if certain words were removed and the literally single instance of nudity in the book was taken out it would be the same book wich no no it wouldnt be by definition it would not be the same
As an Asian American, I am so appalled by all these book banning in school based on false notions and ignorance. I was fortunate enough to have visited Germany and learned about the Holocaust, the horror of the concentration camps. As human beings, we are definitely not perfect, but to ignore or even water down the terrible things that we have done to each other throughout history would be a great disservice to humanity. We need to build compassion and empathy toward each other. I am so grateful to learn about and understand the movement of Black Lives Matter. Ultimately, the movement is about freedom, justice and liberty for all humankind. With that, we should push for a more compassionate, equitable, truly democratic society.
There are people who want an opposing view taught to Black Lives Matter. But they're not saying "Black lives don't matter" even if they mean it.
I remember reading a banned book to my Kinders "The Rabbit's Wedding", check it out and see if you can guess the reason it was banned, Garth Williams drew one rabbit white and one back hmmmmmmmm for those of you not willing to check the book out. Same people different yet same cause
Good interview, as usual.
In an age-appropriate manner??? Are you kidding me? Hey school board members, how do you look a 5-year-old in the eye who is about to be shoved into a crematorium along with the entire family and tell that child in an age-appropriate manner they are about to die and why? Methinks the term 'board of education' is an oxymoron...SMDH...
Here in Wake Co, NC segregationists were voted onto the school board in 2009 (partly the pre-2010 response to Barack Obama) when no one was looking. They wanted to end school busing based on student's family's income, which kept there from being poor schools and allowed for more integration too. We found out and voted them out in a future odd-year election, and then someone (Republicans?) changed the terms to be even-year elections.
The fact that _Maus_ is not only an Amazon bestseller right now, but is also currently sold out on Amazon is a thin silver lining to this disgusting situation. I hope it gets a new reprint that sells out faster than it can be printed.
Absolutely horrifying! Almost couldn’t believe my eyes. Is this really GOP America?? Honestly? Pls answer GOP people! 🇩🇰
It's been a long time since they were ashamed of Watergate.
So ch an erudite and compassionate man... this author is truly an impressive writer & teacher.
If parents were capable of properly educating their children, public schools would have never been devised. Most parents have no clue what curriculum their children should have. They should be listening to the teachers. The teachers want to keep the book in the curriculum. The school board is driven by politics. Remember Fahrenheit 451. One of the most important books ever written. Book banning is unconscionable in a literate society. I like that Spiegelman says he's a first amendment fundamentalist. That Tennessee district needs to put the book back in the curriculum.
Your first statement is made with no argumentative support.
Cheers! :)
Parents' rights is two-edged. I, personally, am offended by the idea that anyone can deny me my rights. Parents' have responsibilities. Children have rights.
Show me a person who has read a thousand books, and you give me an interesting companion.
Show me a man who has read only one and you give me a dangerous enemy indeed
A barbarian reads no books, a fanatic reads but one.
In Pickering, Canada my daughter presented holocaust stuff that the teacher did not know. I donated that book.
I'm 70 now. When l was about 9or10, l asked my mother who was Hitler and what the Holocaust was. She gave me very vague answers like he was a bad man and killed a lot of good people. By the time l was in middle school l had read the book Mien kaump and l continued to explore this subject through out my life as her answer spurned me on. I still have a difficult time trying to wrap my head heart mind soul and spirit around it. So see, by ignoring these things, doesn't make it any less of what was. Steven Spielberg felt moved to produce his masterpiece Schindler's List do that this wouldn't be ignored as a teaching tool for humanity. To ignore the truth to our future leaders is quite possible to set them up for failure. Would it be best to let them go on line and learn from anti human types such as the still Nazi society's . I don't think so but it's only my opinion. I can assertion this horrible thing happening again. It's the stuff of nightmares.
There are those who deny the Holocaust because they think it will undermine Israel's right to exist, by eliminating sympathy for survivors and their offspring. And they perhaps want a new Holocaust, too.
You've given them all plenty to talk about at their next Mein Kampf book club meeting.
The school hasn't stopped teaching the Holocaust - they still have a two month module on it. They will find an alternative book to teach rather than Maus.
You shouldn't use Trump's favorite book in that manner.
After reading some of these heartfelt, personal stories and observations, is it any wonder mental illness is a big problem in this sick country which I am coming to despise! Money & white male supremacy ARE NOT MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVERYTHING ELSE dammit to hell!!
Banning women's studies are on the list of fascist-tactics to seize and use power.
💗yes Sir, education is necessary for US🇺🇸 alllll some of US do not even know what happened when the US🇺🇸 also hurt Jews, entire families all trying to get to safety when they needed help! This makes me cry. We need to l💗ve one another.
There was nothing "kind and gentle" about the Holocaust inflicted on the people of Germany and the countries that Hitler overran during WW2. As a result of the fascism which Hitler and his army and government practiced, 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust in WW2. Between 70 million and 85 million people died worldwide as a result of WW2.
When I was in high school in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada; for Grade 11 and 12 (I graduated in 1960), I became friends with Johnny who was 2 years behind me. Johnny was born in Nazi, Germany, during WW2 and his parents, who were Jewish, were able to escape Germany and move to Canada after the war. Johnny's experience living with fascism had a huge negative impact on him.
I find it disgraceful that a Tennessee school board would would ban "Maus." Fascism is anti-democracy and is not a pretty sight. Millions of people around the world have died as a result of living in fascist countries. We all need to do our part to ensure that the fascism that has grown in the United States of America since WW2 is eliminated. The paradox is that Americans fought WW2 to defeat fascism.
President Trump engaged in insurrection and sedition against the United States of America through the attack on The Capitol on January 6, 2021. The failure of the Tennessee school Board to allow students to learn the full impact of the book "Maus" is a sad reflection on the lack of understanding that the Tennessee school Board members demonstrated by banning "Maus." Their souls and their students will pay a steep price for banning the book.
Mr. Speigelman, thank you for telling your story. I will find and read your book, just as I have gone to the Washington DC Holocaust museum once on my own and once with my then 21 year-old son (who chose that museum out of all the other historical museums for a class assignment), and listened to interviews by survivors and watched documentaries on this subject, and read many books on this subject. Trying to understand how this could have occured is a delving into the mysteries of the human mind. It cannot be understood. Knowing that it did and what led up to it, how it was perpetrated, tolerated by those not experiencing it, by either witnessing it or getting news through word of mouth, radio or tv is much more is more important. We cannot prevent the horrific events of the Holocaust from happening again without knowing what actually transpired. It is not ancient history. You can find many examples in the world right now where one group of people, defined as 'other', is being subjugated, imprisoned, 'disappeared' (and yes, abused, tortured and murdered). The way to stop it is to bring it to light, fight through opposition and hope there are enough morally conscious others who cannot ignore or deny the inhumane treatment of another human being.
I learned recently Nazis got the idea from the Jim Crow South, but their notion of 1 drop of blood was too extreme for them, so I think they said if one of your 4 grandparents were Jewish then you were an undesirable. Makes me think what if the Republicans didn't turn their back on Reconstruction and it kept going. Would there be no Holocaust?
Great interview! Thank you.
Pride & Prejudice, 1984, Tale of Two Cities.. dictionaries & thesauruses… 📚
Don’t forget Rwandas genocide also mans humanity to man also racism
This is _such_ an important conversation, which I really appreciate! Books have always surrounded me, and I cannot bear it when they’re banned. My mother was an elementary school librarian who never took my older brothers’ and sisters’ books away from my reach and reading, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” when I was 11 or 12 greatly upset me. But it was absolutely critical to my view of race, gender, and ethnicity issues as well as the very honest way I’ve looked at my country since then, with a strong need for justice….it was the time of Watergate, when I watched the hearings on TV, something I perhaps wouldn’t have done had I not read that incredible book. We must at times “shock” kids a bit in order for them to develop empathy and critical thinking skills, so that they perhaps can fight against hypocrisy and assaults to our freedoms.
In my opinion, in a democracy, books should never be banned. People should never stop learning. The GOP has done a great deal of damage in the past reinventing history, but this recent disrespect of teachers and of the fallen soldiers in World War ll and Vietnam claiming it never happened is unconscionable. Is it no wonder that schools are losing good teachers. Let the parents decide what is best for their children--not the rich politician, not the church, not the fundamentalist preachers.
What a great, wise and compassionate man. I hope he makes a buttload of $$ off the book burners!
I was 10 yrs old when I learned about racial and religious prejudice. (I'm 73 now.) I was absolutely gobsmacked! I couldn't understand why people would dislike other people because of different skin color, different religion, different nationality, different anything. I still don't understand. I don't think I ever will. (Although, to be honest, I used to say that the only people I was prejudiced against were prejudiced people.)
Ethics and religion are really very distinct.
the maus that roared.
Maus is on back order on all sites. The more propaganda around banning books, the greater the demand for the book!
No books that describe reality ... reality! But guns ... no problem. Really?
As a former town school committee member, in my rural New England community, I so VERY MUCH AGREE with Spiegelman that school committee candidates be required to have formal education credentials from accredited higher education institutions. To be appointed and/or elected to most other committees, such as finance & natural resources, required demonstrated competencies. NOT SO SCHOOL COMMITTEE. I was the only committee member who had been a classroom teacher and was certified. Without competency requirements, little could be done by a committee of amateurs, some of whom used it as an opening to higher town office. Others ran, and won, on a platform of reducing tax payer burdens by slashing educational support. The result was chaos with the students mostly suffering and the town diminished by families & teachers leaving the school district and going elsewhere.
It’s funny the book that bothered my daughter the most was Mark Twain Huckleberry Finn
Parents who want control their children’s education are free to home school. That way their warped and small minded comfort zone will only be harming their own child.
Of course, they will have to be accountable to state home schooling requirements but it will give the parents the feeling of being in control.
A few families might want to take it even farther by having home births and never registering that the kids exist. That would sure free things up for ultimate parental control.
Locking the kids in the attic or such will guarantee they won’t know a damn thing about reality when they ultimately have to navigate the world. Right, Mr. and Mrs. Turpin?
But sure, their parents can rest easy that they were able to impose their beliefs on their children, (at least for a while).
Mothers should want their children to read this book!
How is it that people have forgotten 'Animal Farm' and 'Watership Down' which were made into animation films .. ?
If you don't understand how perilous these times are, you must live in a bubble of privilege
"We're here to scold a school district for replacing books in their curriculum"
For Gen Xs, like myself, Maus is the Holocaust novel of our time. It should be in all public school libraries.
Yeah would argue that it should not be in elementary but middle school is okay suicide and other harsh subject should not be in elementary but yea it’s a good book
Excellent interview. Appreciated his insight on Whoopi Goldberg’s error too, and how we can best respond to and see positive change in people when they make such mistakes
Most kids watch, listen, and do other things far worse when not supervised outside of school; especially if it involves drugs, weapons, and other dangerous activities.
Books are my 💚. Look at all his books 😍!
I wouldn't have thought a cartoonist would have normal-sized books, but rather art or coffee-table books like his _In the Shadow of No Towers._
I will never forget Stephanie. She was furious with her affluent parents because they protected her from all the hard reality of life. When she left home and got out on her own she found she had no coping skills, no foreknowledge of what to expect in our sometimes ugly and violent world, no street smarts. Her parents, I am sure, would have been dismayed and confused at her rage towards them because they would have thought that they were excellent parents. Instead, in their myopia, they had knee-capped her and rendered her naive and unable to see the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that would inevitably come to her, as they do for us all. She had to learn the hard way. On her own.
Reminds me of a Dylan lyric: "helpless, like a rich man's child." These parents who want to launder children's literature are not doing their children any favors. Instead of being a book-burning/banning Troglodyte, parents, how about using the harshness in the books to teach your kids (age appropriately, of course)? Or is it just easier to make a fuss, thus denying other kids the chance to learn from the books?
Overprotective and helicopter parenting usually reaps it's own reward. Suicide and drug addiction/overdose rates. Divorce often catches kids in crossfire conflicts between parents, espousing by insecure parents. Parents often don't see how they encourage or at least don't try to prevent damaging costs to their kids. Even grown kids.
My dad worked in a highschool and I read Maus while waiting for him in the library when it was probably 'age inappropriate' for me. I understood it as a child did. What do I mean by that? I accepted that the mice were people and that this happened TO PEOPLE.
Parents having say in terms of sanitizing things no they shouldn't! People use the B word a lot when they're mad at a girl. If parents want a say they sure as heck don't teach respect that should be shown to women to their kids that sons must never use the word and that their daughters must never accept it being said. Kids use profanity all the time thinking that's so cool. If parents want a say don't use profanity yourself and don't tolerate your kids using it. Nudity? We treat women as sex objects and it doesn't raise an eyebrow strangely. If parents want a say they should teach their kids that girls and women are to be respected and that daughters don't need to show nudity to attract anyone. Parents should have a say in not allowing their kids to be ignorant!