When the Right takes a book off a school reading list, it’s a “ban” and cause for despair, calumny, and outrage. When the Left does so, it’s merely a removal and passes by with hardly any mention in the media. We saw both sides of this rule at play in the last two weeks. What a wonderful natural experiment it was.
The media almost unanimously used the word “ban” to describe a Tennessee school board’s decision to remove Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus from a middle-school curriculum on the grounds that its adult content about the Holocaust is inappropriate for eighth graders. I’d argue that it’s inappropriate for eighth graders because it’s a picture book. I’m not sure at what age children should complete the transition to mastering text without pictures, but I would hope it happens before puberty arrives.
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