Forum - View topicNEWS: Assassination Classroom Manga Removed From Florida, Wisconsin School Libraries
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Lactobacillus yogurti
 Posts: 858 Location: Latin America |
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All I'll say is... I'm glad manga isn't as mainstream in my country, to the point where people ban it anymore.
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13626 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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Certain book titles are best kept in the teen or mature section of a library or bookstore. Also, people needing to separate fiction from reality seems easier said than done at times.
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Accelerator66
Posts: 27 |
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Strange thing about this to me is that Assassination Classroom actually has good lessons in it so they would have to be removing it only based on the title.
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JohnathanEnder
 Posts: 89 |
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I understand where you're coming from, but it's a little off-the-mark. As a public librarian, I've dealt with far too many "why is this in the x section?" accusations. Truth be told, most age-ratings and sections are the products of what Bill Hicks referred to as "Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage" -- marketing! Anything and everything can be deemed "appropriate for this group only" and separating things out further does not stymie the issue and makes things more confounding. People need to have more faith in children and work towards increasing their media comprehension if they are this worried about fiction. |
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UBWT
Posts: 11 |
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This has a publisher's rating of "T+ Older Teen and recommended for ages 16 and up" , so I'm somewhat surprised that middle school and elementary school libraries purchased it to begin with, though that said I certainly think that it is a worthwhile read below the publisher's age rating (and just in general, it kind of feels like Viz internally uses stricter age-rating than Seven Seas). The nuts at Moms for Liberty seem to have done reports on 8 of the volumes (1-7 and 11) on their book rating site, and as those looking to ban books have been using that as their go to resource for finding titles to try to ban is likely why it has begun to randomly pop up all over the place the past few months before it got more attention during the past couple weeks.
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R. Kasahara
 Posts: 711 |
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I have several teachers and former teachers in my personal orbit, both within and outside my family. A lot of them happen to be in Florida. The funniest thing about this to me is that I once recommended Assassination Classroom to one of them, my sister, who is a high school teacher and anime/manga fan. I think she did pick up the first volume sometime. She was not happy about Maus being challenged, fwiw, especially since it has been part of her lesson plans in the past.
Growing up in S. Florida in the 80s and 90s, I was able to read whatever I wanted, and that includes books that have been challenged both then and now, borrowed from both school and public libraries. Kids growing up these days should have that same sort of access, but Florida is currently being run by ghouls...
That's the ironic thing, right? Beyond the assassination plot, the series is about what makes a good teacher, and what makes for a good education. Koro-sensei is kind, open-minded, and intelligent, all qualities you want in a teacher. He would condemn these removals in a heartbeat. Of course, he would also actually read the series first, in order to determine whether or not it merited removal. |
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FilthyCasual
Posts: 2416 |
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I'm surprised that middle school libraries had AssClass; it seems like more of a high school series. The 13-year-olds could handle it, but that does put it on the cusp. It's a shame that it got removed though; it's a great series.
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Descent123
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I hate the generalization of some posters here regarding my state. The biggest question here is why a book that is rated for Older Teens 16+ is in a Middle School?
I'm a big manga nut, but I don't think the book should be in Middle School IMO. I don't agree with the Mom of Liberty group but I do think they have a point here. |
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Rentwo
 Posts: 184 |
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These two situations are different, though. Books written by Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl being censored in the actual printings stage by their publisher or outrighted banned from general sales are an entirely different situation than a specific school library not wanting to carry one specific title for it's content. If this was Viz themselves stepping up and saying they were censoring AssClass to comply with American standards then us anti-censorship people would oppose that, as we often do when it's discovered companies censor manga or anime in western releases. But otherwise, this is coming down to an institution deciding what's appropriate for the age range of their students . I feel it's up to the parents to decide ultimately if their kid is mature enough to read adult rated series, and I feel a lot of these manga end up in school libraries to begin with because the librarians or donators or whoever see it as a cartoon book and automatically think it's for kids. Like when you would see R rated anime in the kids section back in the day at the video rental store because someone saw the cover of La Blue Girl and thought it was just an off brand animated kids movie like Anastasia or Ferngully. |
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Sarukah
 Posts: 160 |
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Agreed, people are really kneejerking and conflating issues here. I LOVED AssClass, but I do think the general premise of the story is not appropriate for schools, it doesnt matter what the story turns into or dives into later. Kids/families who do want to read the manga can make the choice to go literally anywhere else for it so Im not seeing the issue. |
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Artemis X
 Posts: 99 |
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Naww the largest issue we face in this world today isn't the material we view. Its the mental instability of people, specifically more attributed to the children of our generation then the adults. The unsteady state of the government who can't control a country properly, educational institutions terrible teaching tools, the ban on certain discipline so kids are not held accountable for their actions anymore and probably even the exposure of suggestive material online and flame/trolling and all amounts of hate speech that normally should not be allowed in professional or business setting. These are all in part contributing factors.
Years ago, and in past decades we had similar violent material and manga that you could read that had graphic suggestive content and implicated violence but no one shot up schools then did they not nearly at the rate that we are seeing now. Our society is just in a very delicate state right now and technological advances especially with the dark sides of the internet being viewed by anyone, social media platforms facilitating phycological disorders due to isolation and lack of healthy social interactivity, etc. |
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Wyvern
 Posts: 1604 |
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There are several colleges which offer courses in manga and many more which offer majors in comics in general. It is absolutely possible to go to college for manga.
This isn't about education, it's about control. If these parents wanted to be involved with their kids, they could sit down and actually talk to them about their reading material. But since they're too lazy to do that, they instead demand that government censors do their jobs for them. Censorship is an obstacle to education. |
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MyMasterMatthew
Posts: 185 |
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The problem is that one individual parent complaining is all it takes for a book to get shelved. Why should any ONE parent be allowed censorship power over EVERY child in the school district? Perhaps a compromise could be reached instead. Concerned parents could request that their children be added to a list of students that requires parental approval before books can be checked out. Or maybe specific book titles could be added to a separate, roped-off section of the library that requires parental permission to enter. If those ideas don't work, surely they can figure out something else, as banning library books is a bridge too far for me. Not only that, but as we've seen in Texas, where bounties can be been placed on anyone who dares assist women with their healthcare needs, it's pretty easy for outside groups to get involved with (supposedly) state and local issues. For all we know, these "concerned parents" might be financially encouraged by outside groups to complain about reading materials in their child's school district. |
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Fedora-san
 Posts: 464 |
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Kids today are pretty lucky if they actually have manga in their school libraries to begin with. That was not the case when I went to school. Ours didn't even have American comics or anything comparable. Although given the content in a lot of manga, it does seem like a double edged sword since most of it is probably inappropriate for schools unless it's for very young children. I remember previous articles about parents complaining about manga with nudity and other stuff in them being found in school libraries.
Although it's pretty easy to read any manga you want in this day and age. Kids could easily just download the Shounen Jump app on their phone and read it while sitting in the school library if they're feeling particularly rebellious. Or if they want an extra kick of anti-authority, they can just Google one of the dozens of scanlation websites and read it that way. They have a lot more resources now than we did back in the day where the best you had was sharing and downloading videos and pictures on your PSP or DS |
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Egan Loo
Posts: 1362 |
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Setting aside the ad hominem, ANN also reports when manga is removed from libraries or stores in other countries, although incidents are relatively less common in most countries. animenewsnetwork.com/news/2020-08-12/books-kinokuniya-sydney-7-manga-were-removed-due-to-ongoing-classification-by-australian-board/.162857 animenewsnetwork.com/news/2015-06-09/china-blacklists-attack-on-titan-death-note-36-more-anime-manga/.89055 animenewsnetwork.com/news/2014-03-24/barefoot-gen-manga-pulled-from-izumisano-city-school-library-shelves Last edited by Egan Loo on Wed Apr 12, 2023 7:33 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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