Re: Books Banned in Utah.

D  <nospam@example.net> wrote:

On Thu, 8 Aug 2024, Scott Dorsey wrote:

Agreed, but the thing is all of those kids have seen hardcore porn already,
at least by the time they are 7 or 8 and have used the internet.  They don't
know what it is, they don't find it attractive, but they have seen it and
they know it exists.  So it's not worth putting a huge amount of effort into
keeping it out of libraries.

>
Is this true? Granted, I'm a technologist, so perhaps it would be easier
for me not to give any potential future children smart phones and
computers. In fact, if I had children, I would not.
>
On the other hand, I have read that many parents, instead of raising their
children, just give them a smart phone and off you go without supervision.
If that is true (I have seen a few examples myself) I can imagine that
what you say is true.

If they don't have an unattended smart phone, plenty of their friends do.
Some parents think they can keep their kids away from nasty stuff on the
net, but you can't do that without keeping your kids away from other kids.

>

Agreed, but i'd also want librarians to explain the context behind it.
The same as they should do with any other book.

>
This is sensitive to me. If I'm in the library I would definitely not have
someone review and tell me what to think about what I read. I would like
to reach my own conclusions.

If you're eight or nine years old, I think that is appropriate.  If you are
in college or beyond, it probably isn't.

How is this context explaining done in todays libraries in the US? When I
last visited a library to borrow a book, several decades ago, the process
was:

You probably weren't eight years old.  When I was six, I think, I was told
that if I liked these books, I should read Podkayne of Mars.  It was a good
call, and it made my life better.  (The library had the version with the
happy ending though.)

No lecturing, in fact, no one even cared. On the other hand... if the
library had a service where I could go and discuss the book, that would
actually be quite nice!

Oh, go to the reference desk.... there will be someone there that wants to
talk about SF and if there isn't they can probably find you someone!
Librariens are the best.  It's better in the evenings when they are not busy.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."