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Deutschmeister's avatar

How many of the parents who so eagerly push for book bans, ostensibly to protect their offspring from inappropriate content, are monitoring their social media access -- what they view, when and where they view it, how they interact with their peers, and what they do with that information when not supervised?

Who is watching and caring for their kids when they are not at home?

And how much time are those parents actually spending with their children even in the home environment, building up value systems and educational approaches that encourage critical thinking, diversity of perspectives, and the development of other such skills that will be useful later in life, as opposed to creating the expectation that you can simply wish away whatever you don't want for them to see and use?

Asking for a friend. And for myself. And for everyone who feels that parental oversight is less about treating their children as a piece of property ("my kids") and more about preparing them to be literate, aware citizens who are emotionally and intellectually ready to deal with important aspects of daily life such as differences of opinion and shared solutions to public issues.

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Kate Fall's avatar

The War on Public Libraries was inevitable and foreseen by most of the commenters here. It's the last free space in most communities. The last place people could gather without being gatekeeped or charged money. You bet it's a target.

If you want to kill off the last remnants of American community feeling, first you better close the libraries. And then you need to get online to complain that people just aren't civil or civic minded any more, as if you didn't create that situation yourself. And then monetize your complaints, of course.

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