Would those parents really have support in your community if they were named and shamed?

That doesn't make the school caving on the topic any more forgivable, but we can't trivialize how difficult small but dedicated groups in a local community can make things either. The community typically only shows up to worry about it after a bad decision is imminent, the small group shows up 24/7/365 pushing the issue.

I'm not saying their feelings aren't sincerely held. My point is they need community support to ban books in a public school.

What the school board did here is sneak out of the battle, which would continue long after community says "no" once.

That's where naming and shaming comes in. In a small community, there is a long-term cost to trying to game inattention.

Maybe it's not something that can be said for every community, but the same point would apply here in reverse.

The root cause is unfortunately lost in the ensuing battle between library-defending parents and library-critiquing parents, but the ultimate fault in this situation lies in the needless and self-destructive politicization of librarian training and the lack of standards for younger librarians. They seem to lack the common sense that loud politicking is not exactly befitting of a library, nor beneficial for their ulterior motive of gradual ideological persuasion. Another sad case of politicking and safe-space-signaling ideation being prioritized over preserving institutions and professional integrity.

That isn't most places, and it isn't that the majority is that extreme almost anywhere. But you can't make assumptions about people having the same point of view as you, or that otherwise reasonable good people believe things you consider only reasonable.

That class was the best kind of unstructured. We had a new teacher with little experience, but she just turned us lose on the school library and let us read whatever and then talk about it in class. I *ADORED* that class. It was getting an hour a day to basically do what I wanted to be doing anyway.

Freestyle[0] FTW! Let's Jam!

[0] https://www.freestyle-frisbee.com/index.html

Just because it doesn't require a cup or serious risk of CTE/TBI doesn't make freestyle bad, does it?

I've often thought it would be a good idea to separate academics from athletics. Have a "school district" that runs the schools in a building next to the football field run by the "athletic district." I think both are important, but you're right, North Texas public schools have fallen quite far from the academic standards they used to hold.

It’s my understanding this is what they do in much of Europe.

The issue is who is ultimately in charge of students and who is responsible for raising them (which should be the same thing, but doesn't have to be), making this ultimately a control issue.

Certain people want to use the school system to raise children based on their own moral system because they could be learning the "wrong" thing at home, and other people want the schools to defer to parents' wishes. Most people want their kid to get a good education and otherwise be left alone by teachers and administrators, but that group gets very little attention.

At the end of the day, parents are legally responsible for their children, and unless that is changed, schools play an important but secondary role in caring for and raising them. Until that is widely accepted or changed, conflict will continue.

I have completely separate views on how kids are being raised and educated and how things have changed just in my half century on this planet.

Also almost every kid had club activities in and in class all day long. Primary goal is to drill in discipline and conformity over education to be honest.

The football team makes money, why do people constantly ignore this. There's always money for ventures that have positive ROI. It has nothing to do with priorities.

At schools with top theater programs they're also always fully funded because they bring in outside revenue.

At the school where I’m familiar with the finances, the concessions stands were run by student volunteers from other after school programs. They got a cut of the profit. It was an easy way for different programs to raise money with a much larger audience than they could get anywhere else.

This school wasn’t even a “football school”. The football events were just a big excuse for everyone to come out and do activities at the school.

Also none of the people working the game are paid except for the ref (and the TV crew if you have one). It's all volunteers and students. Our principal was the announcer. The revenue from football paid for every other sport and then some.

Schools that weren't football schools had much more modest stadiums, usually just a field and a pre-fab bleacher.

> why do people constantly ignore this.

Why would he complain, in this context, about a football program that is generating income for the district?

You're always beholden to the person who pays the bills. If your football stadium is paid for by public funds, you're beholden to the voter (by way of elected representatives.) If your football stadium was paid for by the local Ford dealership who asks for a cut of concessions, well... you give them a cut of the concessions.

People in North Texas seem to trust corporations more than they trust local governments. I think that's because they're familiar with whom they elect to office. The local corporations might be run by sociopathic dorks, but at least they're SUCCESSFUL sociopathic dorks. And while it might seem that I'm dissing North Texans... I'm really not. We may be on the road to neo-feudalism, but at least they know what side their bread is buttered on.

The games I have been to recently have a medic of some kind, the coaches, band/drumline director, police officers for security, plus a bunch of teachers doing other things. They may not be getting paid extra to do it, but they're still employees and a portion of their time is being used for the game.

You're just saying football is popular and some revenue comes in, but nothing that proves football is money making for the district.

If it can't help fund things like...checks notes...libraries then it's not really an effective ROI.

Elementary school libraries are important because kids can check out books at their reading level and you don't need a huge variety.

But in high school, when I wanted a book for research or recreational reading, 99% of the time my high school library wouldn't have it anyways. You had to go to the public library anyways for decent fiction, and the local college library for non-fiction you would need to cite.

I think it's important to preserve the high school library space for working and the computer access. But I'm just not sure how relevant the actual books are. Especially since public libraries now have e-books, so you don't even have to go there in person if it's inconvenient.

Should maintaining a collection of physical library books really still be the job of high schools, when public libraries will do it better and are open to everyone, not just high schoolers?

If we wanted information or recommendations on books to read, that was definitely what our English teachers were for. The library wasn't helping with that.

Learning about a library's complete range of services is a decent idea and I encourage you to do so. If you don't want to read about it on the Wikipedia, I encourage you to engage your local librarian. Just ask them what they do. They will be delighted someone took an interest.

Here are a few examples... In the 70s, our high-school librarian was the go-to person to ask about where to find specific types of information. Before the internet, I think most people didn't know how to look up raw data in the reference stacks. My high school librarian showed me where to find state and federal data and departmental reports. I learned what "semiotics" was by asking my Jr. High School librarian about how the library was structured. When I worked for the government, we had a departmental library whose librarian was much more like a research assistant. The Seattle Public Library maintains 3-d printers they let the public use. I mean... I would not have guessed that was a thing the library would do. (Though I didn't see them the last time I was there, so maybe they're not doing that anymore.)

My previous comment wasn't intended to be patronizing, but I guess I can't control how you interpret comments from other people. Feel free to think I'm a jerk... but please ask your local librarian what services their library offers.

It sounds like you had an exceptional high school library. On the other hand, my high school "librarians" knew how to check books out and shelve them when they were returned and that was pretty much it. And this was one of the best high schools in the area, one of only two that had AP classes.

So my original comment was questioning the utility of book lending in high school libraries specifically. And specifically asking if the focus shouldn't be on public libraries instead, where they do have the funding to hire actual real librarians and put together book collections that are actually decent.

And I guess I didn't find it necessary to say most high school libraries limit their services that way because I think it's common experience? But I'm very happy for students who were lucky enough to get more. Still, like I said, English teachers were usually there if you wanted fiction recommendations at least.

Their interests were specialized and they got their books online or from larger collections not offered at a school.

It’s fine - libraries aren’t sacred. If nobody uses them we don’t need them.

The joke about football is often made but they pay for it, because people use it.

> “Disassembling the library bookcases”

I am skeptical. This is not the subject of wood working. And why would the school entangle students with a task to be performed by professional vendors.

This is not a joke. At all. There are a LOT of high schools that actively prioritize football facilities over education. I grew up in one. It's very frustrating, and that's coming from someone who DID play football.

But once again… students and community use football. They do not use high school libraries.

That's literally the problem being presented, the "joke" as you called it. This isn't something to be weirdly proud about. This is something to be extremely concerned about. Prioritizing football over education in a place dedicated to the latter is absurd. Like, Idiocracy-levels absurd.

How has it gone so far over your head?

The former is questionable. The latter is a just a waste.

Do you care about education outcomes? Or do you care about 90s symbols of education, like libraries.

That is worse. It's education, not a startup in need of a pivot.

You characterized it as outside the mission and now you're trying to say it's part of the mission. Come on.

I agree - having an after school video game time would be a better use of resources than an unused library.

It’s not even just a summer thing — a lot of districts have blanket “no public use” policies year-round. They’ll cite liability, vandalism, or “preservation of facilities” as the reason, but the result is the same: empty fields, fenced-off courts, and taxpayers staring at what they bought but can’t touch.

Sure it is, it's free wood for the woodshop. Unless the library is very new, those are probably solid planks. No shop teacher is going to say no to free wood.

The real mystery is how the woodshop survived longer than the library did. Usually woodshops are the first thing to go.

Perhaps your experience is with states whose legislatures are dominated by trial lawyers, who can hope to retire on one really good, fat personal injury judgment?

Mine is, but I hope that's not the case everywhere.

I doubt there’s a true budget crisis. It was manufactured to justify getting rid of the books for political reasons.

Why pay a vendor to do it when you can get the students to do it for free?

Also once again, this sounds like what someone would imagine they did in wood shop if they never took wood shop.

You do know what goes on in wood shop class right? Some light demolition is nothing compared to the power tools they'll be using soon.

Similar in woodshop and metal working - doing stuff to fix the schools infra/bldg.

Wonderful idea.

The purpose of education past 8th grade is to keep young people out of the job market. It also helps that it requires more teachers, so every couple years politicians can throw the teachers' unions a bone and be assured of a bump of a few percentage points at the polls. The purpose of most educators is not to educate your child, but to act as day care (or warden) while you're at work. Every now and again there is an aberration where teachers actually teach something in a public school, but in the US, why take the chance? If you can afford it, send your kids to a private school.

Looking forward to your down-votes. Instead of arguing, it's much easier to shout and jeer and press the downward facing arrow. I expect nothing less since we haven't taught critical thinking in most public schools for quite some time.

I believe that's uncalled for. If you're looking for a discussion, that's not the way to go about starting it. You're just turning it hostile before it can even begin; what sort of response do you expect from such hostility?

Ignoring the existence of well-off suburban public schools.

I don't have data on this, but it certainly SEEMS to be that way.

If not for that pesky education system we could all be hiring fully capable 14 year olds into our empty job postings!

Of course, they might have trouble getting to the workplace. Or doing anything that benefits from a high school education. Maybe shuttle them to the mines?

[As a reminder, this is a thread that is using sarcasm to advocate for a thing opposite of what is explicitly stated. Or at least I think it is.]

However, trying my best to answer sensibly:

> Every now and again there is an aberration where teachers actually teach something in a public school, but in the US, why take the chance?

You seem to be backing up your argument that a high school education doesn't have value (and shouldn't be funded) by stating that the US has an overall-poor standard of public education. That's a circular argument which doesn't even try to address the reasons that the quality of education is lacking or comment on whether a higher-quality education would have general value. I can't understand your viewpoint that the actual education of students shouldn't be funded, because the quality is already poor. You seem to be ignoring the fact that a well-funded and correctly-motivated (in terms of education, not just which high school can build the most football fields) education system can produce graduates who go on to add extra value to society.

Why should a decent high school education be reserved for the wealthy who can send their kids to private schools?

Also, I'd recommend against including statements like the one that you make in your last paragraph. Saying (paraphrasing) "I'm right, everyone who downvotes my high controversial and unpopular opinion without spending time to reply is an uneducated idiot" is starting from an unconstructive place.

That being said... there's a critique that keeps coming up that the structure of public education is largely unchanged since Victorian times. I've heard people say that the reason you get kids up in the morning and have them move from class to class every hour is to prepare them for life in the mines and mills. Certainly there is some validity to this observation. If we're trying to prepare students for the world of modern work, maybe they should be in front of a computer monitor for 8 hours a day and run to a local gym in 1 hour shifts in an effort to ensure their lives are not completely sedentary.

There's an "unschooling movement" that has made some interesting points, but still gets some of the details wrong (in my opinion.) "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" is a great read, even if you disagree with Freire's politics or semiotics.

When I say "high school is nothing more than child-care" I should probably say "I fear high school is nothing more than child-care" or "Some high schools are nothing more than child-care." I don't think low academic achievement is universal, but I also think there's a correlation between per-capita spending and academic achievement.

Most (many?) public schools in the US were set up in the post-war period to be funded with property taxes. But since the 60s / 70s many (most?) states have policies similar to California's Prop 13 that limited property taxes. [Don't have the data on this handy, point me at the data if I'm wrong.] So it seems like it's a perfect storm of decreasing teacher salaries, deferred maintenance for school district property and low academic achievement.

As a society, we can have as good a school system as we're willing to pay for.

At this point, if there's any way to supplement public school budgets with money from the football stadium... I'm all for it. I would just prefer that the money goes from the profitable football program to the general academic fund and not the other way around.

That is not at all the impression that I got reading your original comment. It seemed (and continues to seem, on a second reading), that you disagree with further funding education, because there's no point, high schools "just" day care for teenagers.

Please consider that, just because someone doesn't bother to reply to you, it doesn't mean that you're right. They may simply see no point in arguing with some stranger with whom they'll hopefully never have to interact. With this follow-up comment, it seems to me that your actual opinions are significantly different from both the words and tone in your initial message. That isn't helped by the notes about downvotes without comments (and the Latin snark in the edit).

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/per-pupil-s...

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/educational...

There's broad correlation between per-pupil spending and academic achievement. Massachusets has high per-pupil spending and high academic achievement. Florida's educational attainment is higher than I would have thought, given how little they spend on education. Maybe their graduation requirements are laxxer than Massachuset's? Maybe they're more efficient? Cost of living in rural Florida has to be less than in Mass.

I was considering commenting when I originally downvoted but thought it would detract from the core conversation.

But now that you’ve added this bit I’ll just say: a number of people (including myself) will auto-downvote any comment that complains about impending downvotes regardless of other content.

The correct response to downvotes is to think about how you could express your point in a way that people can connect with. That's the art of a good comment. The best comments on HN are ones that make a point that many in the community may have disagreed with, but it is expressed in a way that creates a pathway for people to see things in a new way, and persuades them to see the issue from the new perspective you're illustrating.

I don’t see the basis for trying to draw a connection between well funded football teams and test scores. Texas, which is obsessed with high school football, has above average test scores, and in many cases top-10 among the states: https://tlc.texas.gov/infographics/Texas%20NAEP%20scores.pdf

https://www.ecs.org/50-state-comparison-high-school-graduati...

You’re saying “educational achievement” is measured by graduation rates, not test scores.

Except for fourth graders in math last year, they do not[0].

[0] https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile/over...

And it's too late for those worthless 12th graders too eh? They're better off in prison anyway, huh?

Gotta keep those prison and prison adjacent services stocks doing well...number go up, yeh bossman!

The school district might be primarily white, it’s more clearly likely poor and rural, and the electoral college values it more than dense educated rich cities.

Also... great deflecting.

So an addict mother, having to be raised by grand-parents, having to go to the army and then use the GI Bill to study, growing up in an declining small working class town in Ohio, are not enough?

He had to be "feral and unparented" to qualify? Because that's what people mean when they talk about the working and middle class "white American struggles"? Vicorian street urchins?

In any case, by those elements alone, he knows 100x about "white American struggles" than the average champion of the poor at the Met Gala and the New Yorker.

Doesn't that kinda make his current actions worse? The "met gala" people can claim ignorance, he understands struggling and still screws over the struggling.

Are you an AI? Probably not. I think most LLMs would understand the difference between the Army and Marines.

Don't care about the distinction between them either, or their subdivisions. Most of the times I call all of it "the army" (as in armed forces) anyway, chalk it to dyslexia if you wish.

That is not conversing in good faith, and is against the rules of the forum. Please try to do better.

Not that I'm implying you're a Liar or Bullshitter, but we're all bozos on this bus and give a sinner a break.

But specifically, I am not lying when I say that some people have cast doubts as to the degree of poverty Vance lived in as a child. And if you're saying that the people who say Vance didn't live in abject poverty for most of his childhood are lying, then I don't know what to tell you. We all have to choose what we believe. Some people believe vaccines cause autism. The data supporting this assertion seems kinda thin when I look at it. But having tutored a number of pre-med students through stats classes, I'm not confident members of the AMA are the people who should be doing medical research (thankfully that is changing recently as we get more MD/PhD programs where they teach experimental design.) But I digress...

This seems like one of those "fact resistant" issues and I apologize for bringing it up. People on both sides of the "is J.D. Vance a poop-head" debate should understand there's plenty of mis-information out there and while some people may believe he's a cynical charlatan banking coin on the suffering of people in Appalachia, others believe he is bringing light to a largely under-reported pandemic of systemic under-investment in rural quarters of our country.

It's probably a good idea to examine your own beliefs and biases, and maybe this is a good touch-stone to begin that process. Why do you think Vance is a dork? Why do you think Vance is a valiant defender of social justice for an under-served community?

Texans scored highly on Texas state tests, but generally below the national average on national tests like the SAT https://legacyonlineschool.com/blog/texas-sat-score.html I don’t think Texas can be used to make the arguments either way here.

The steel man version of what you’re saying is that American kids do really well on tests, accounting for factors like the large immigrant population. And they choose to invest their significantly greater financial resources in sports rather than improving score even further. Which is a fair argument!

But the formulation of the argument made by OP is just cultural chauvinism. Being culturally open minded has little to do with reading and math scores. Utah performs similarly to states like Minnesota in reading scores, and better than almost any other state in math.

Almost every book that is available at all can be accessed within seconds on any modern digital device. You will learn how extremely valuable that is when you actually are doing research.

Students should be taught how to actually do research, not how to waste time looking things up in some small buildings which doesn't have the resources they need.

It is important that students have quiet space to study. But libraries as book storages have very little utility and seem very hard to justify.

Still, I think we should keep books as available to citizens as possible.

I agree. But it is obviously far more cost effective and useful to have that access be digital first.

Do not understand me wrong, I like physical books. But for doing research it is almost always preferable to have the books be available digitally. And students should learn to make use of that.

Great, let's pass laws that give parity rights to digital goods, including ebooks. You have a copy? You can lend that copy. Yes, forever.

But disassembling the library bookcases is hardly an appropriate woodworking project.

These challenges are more than a hundred years old! We have turned this into a national issue, made national standards and its not clear we are making that much progress. Many US states are effectively large countries. Why don't we let them decide what they want to do democratically. Whether you agree with it or not, it is what happens effectively. In the US you can move if you don't like where you live.

Any library is a nexus of knowledge and learning. They should be in schools.

It appears that today's school libraries and libraries in general have become a means for activist liberal political groups to introduce children to political/social ideas that, perhaps, those children are not yet prepared to deal with (YMMV). As a child I went to the public library for science and they had it in spades. Nowadays the science is still there but the librarians would rather you read something else.

My inclination is to de-fund any organization that pursues a political/social agenda by taking control of established institutions of government (schools, libraries, etc.). If necessary, I would de-fund the institution being abused.

I doubt that: My experience is that people who complain about books don't read them, let alone understand them enough to "question" them.

> This society has priorities which aren’t education.

Forgive me, but it's your society: You live there. It's that way because of you.

I know that sucks to hear; it's not all your fault; it seems like there is a lot of inertia; and you definitely can't overcome it all by yourself, and it is was like that before you were born; and so on,

But I urge you to take responsibility to right the ship anyway, and at risk of mixing metaphors too much stop worrying so much about who started the fire and work on putting it out. Make friends with your neighbours, and get them to help you. Stop enabling bad behaviour by referring to those other parents "questions" in their couched weasel-words and call them out for their hate and the spread of hate and ignorance.

Because literally nobody else is going to do it, and we need you.

Listen brother, if you do something, it is your choice. Nobody can make your choices for you. Not the government. Not a god. Not even your wife.

And the choice to do nothing is still a choice.

> Could I go to the school board meetings and raise and issue? Sure, but my son, who would be the recipient of any retribution, requested I not.

You are the adult: You are making this choice.

Your son is the recipient of the future you are creating whether you like it or not.

And what will happen is son's children (if they have any) will have a slightly worse version of the problem you are facing, because of the choices you are making.

> Even if I win a seat on the board, I’d be just one of 7, and nothing would change.

Nonsense. It always starts with one.

Didn't you know the first black person to sit in the front of the bus was just one person?

I bet if you try you can think of a lot of firsts that led to change.

This is what I mean: There aren't "questionable passages"

Giving their voice that credit is not necessary.

> The tweet was advocating for the school board to remove the books

People have been putting personals up in newspapers since there were ever newspapers, but a publication or channel is not a discussion forum, and you aren't required to treat it like that.

There are a lot of unwell people; Some of them it might be a literal genetic mental illness, but a lot of them probably only ever experienced joy after misery, and never saw real kindness.

I think you should treat "those" people as if they were abused and vulnerable humans with broken brains, and how you treat "those" people is how I think you will treat other abused and vulnerable humans with broken brains.