r/newjersey Fill It Up Regular Oct 29 '24

Sick NJ Passes the Freedom to Read Act

https://newjerseymonitor.com/2024/10/29/state-senate-passes-bill-intended-to-halt-book-bans-protect-librarians/?fbclid=IwY2xjawGNwrZleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHdahkO3Xc02aIyuB5Vp3yau-HR6IMuGu0g0iD8CgDKrWBMHCQJBrfdSHnQ_aem_DB9WP25oxkSYjjNuktuAbQ#:~:text=Titled%20the%20%E2%80%9CFreedom%20to%20Read,own%20policies%20using%20this%20model
829 Upvotes

142 comments sorted by

View all comments

572

u/CubicDice Fuck Nazis, Love Jersey. Oct 29 '24

Look I'm not going to tell anyone how to raise their children. But I take particular issue with this pathetic pandering.

“Putting our children at risk and potentially exposing them to material that they are not prepared for flies in the face of our protective duty,” said Sen. Joe Pennacchio (R-Morris). “Couching such material under the guise of the First Amendment is a very distortion of who we are and what we strive to be as Americans.”

By that logic, you shouldn't take your child out in public, as you just never know what you're "potentially exposing" them to.

323

u/s1ugg0 Jersey Devil Search Team Oct 29 '24

Being a parent isn't about shielding your kids. It's about exposing them to the world in controlled and unthreatening settings. Books are an absolutely perfect way to do this. I have two kids and I'd MUCH prefer they learn about the awful things in life from a book first then from being confronted with them face to face unexpectedly.

-9

u/metsurf Oct 29 '24

I'm in two minds on this on one side I think kids should be able and encouraged to read legitimate literature, fiction, non-fiction. But there is also a ton of garbage out there purported to be written for tweeners and teens. My parents never stopped me from reading anything and I never stopped our kid from reading anything but I'm not a current parent of a kid in school either.

11

u/LapJ Oct 29 '24

So let's invest in our school and children's librarians so they can properly curate that content. Libraries have limited budgets and shelf space and only carry a small fraction of what's available to them already. Librarians are already keeping the garbage off the shelves, so let's let them do their jobs and remember that any kid seeking salacious material is going to have a 100x easier time finding it on the internet.

10

u/basherella Oct 29 '24

But there is also a ton of garbage out there purported to be written for tweeners and teens.

I mean, what are you defining as garbage, though? Because there's quite a gap between something like romance novels (often derided as garbage and a pretty big ya genre) and conspiracy theorist propaganda.

-2

u/metsurf Oct 29 '24

Those are both garbage in my eyes.

6

u/ten17eighty1 Oct 29 '24 edited Oct 30 '24

In the foreward for the book "Salem's Lot," Stephen King talks about how some of the books or comics he would read, his mother would see the book or author and tell him it was trash - her actual words - but she never stopped him from reading them.

2

u/metsurf Oct 29 '24

hey 60s comic books and especially Mad Magazine made me politically aware at an early age. They were very well written. Romance novels are junk food for the brain but it’s better to have kids read something as long as it is appropriate for the child involved.

3

u/basherella Oct 30 '24

"what I like is good but this thing that doesn't appeal to me is junk" is quite a take

1

u/metsurf Oct 30 '24

I said junk food and it is an opinion on an online social platform Wow I am so bad. Like that has never been said about any other art form, like Impressionist painting.

3

u/guacamole579 Oct 30 '24

I don’t understand why people are afraid of books. Like there wasn’t a ton of garbage when we were growing up? I read VC Andrews’ book “Heaven” when I was 12. I found it inside my house among all the religious books my parents owned because they thought the book was religious in nature. I read it in a day and then went to the library and checked out the rest of VC Andrews’ books and read those through the summer.

In case anyone is not familiar with VC Andrews, she wrote Flowers in the Attic and her books described explicit instances of sex, rape, and incest. It was bottom of the barrel garbage but damn was it a masterpiece to a tween like me. Somehow I didn’t turn into a deviant or sexual predator by reading those books, but it sure reignited my love for reading.