Would you ever support banning or burning books?

Nope. That said, I don’t think all books have to be taught, but there’s a huge difference between excluding bad books from the curriculum and outright banning them, let alone burning them.

Burning? No. But what’s taught in school, what’s taught about it, needs to be considered.

And what’s allowed on school (in particular, graphic pictorial pornography, and anything actually illegal) could include not allowing some things on campus.

Once again I’m a bit startled by your choice of framing a question, i.e.: “And of course on the left there has been plenty of call for books to be removed from curriculum if they’re “problematic” on race or gender or history.” – If you mean, say, history books that would whitewash American history, or science books that would say that creationism is an equally scientifically valid theory compared to geology and astronomy and so on, then while I would not “ban” such books from schools, I think the accurate, truthful and responsible thing to teach about those is that they are inaccurate disinformation by certain socio-political groups, and that’s not “the left”, it’s just not the willfully misinformed faction of the American right.

That could be objectively followed up with lessons about recent attempts to cloud what actually well-known to be true, for political reasons, and the cultivation of a culture of lies by the right-wing, etc.

Yes, I agree that what is taught in school needs to be carefully considered. The example of the Virginia school board involved removing books from the library (and from the library’s digital app). It was not about what was being taught.

But there is obviously controversy over what is being taught, with some on the right wishing to remove books like Toni Morrison’s Beloved from the curriculum (a book that I know is taught in the local district back home), for example, and I think there is also a division between, say, teaching science and history a certain way, and teaching literature.

We had a huge thing going on here in 1972 when I was in junior high school. Alice Moore wanted books banned that had language used by African Americans because it would cause white children to learn ghetto dialect. Also she didn’t want sex talked about. A reverend was involved, they burned books, boycotted schools, and bombs were planted. One elementary school was blown up. The reverend involved was found guilty of charges related to the bombs. This went on for 3 years. As one student so famously said “They are shooting people because they don’t want to see violence in books.”

NO!

Depending on the location, yes.

What @Zaku said (“Once again I’m a bit startled by your choice of framing a question”).

Also, it’s important to point out that actually burning books is objectively a huge self-own. Burning paper books is like people printing out copies of a blog post they object to and burning the copy. Humiliating. If it’s for the mere symbolism, then then why choose decidedly problematic method that is associated with nearly everything bad about human instinct?

NeverneverNEVER.

Even though the internet is already doing a better job of that than any number of bonfires at Celsius 232.778.

No, not at all ever. Not Huck Finn, not albums by NWA, not old SNL appearances by Richard Pryor, not “Heather has Two Mommies”.

Censroship in any form is antithetical to free speech and the First Amendment. Only traitors who do not want to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution favor censorship.

Of course, particularly in schools and, of course, indecent books offer no benefit so let them burn too.

Interesting. I wish you had posted the reference for it.
No, but it shows how closed minded the people that advocate doing this are.

Culturally this would not be done in forward open thinking areas of the US or the world.
History will show that this practice is wrong and that being so closed minded is very damaging.

I’m against burning books and I think school librarians should decide what books should be held in school libraries.

@Forever_Free Here’s the article about the Virginia school board. Here is one about the issue of “pornography”. I’m not convinced that a novel that contains a description of a sex act is “pornographic”, though I would agree that such novels are not appropriate for young age groups. However, the fact that this seems to be specifically targeting books with LGBT characters and descriptions of non-heterosexual sex is quite telling.

~Only the tax code.

I would never support a ban or burn ANY book. Age restrictions on some material is logical.

Since it’s Virginia, I’d bet it’s purely a ‘protect the kids’ platform.

If this was just a general question then my answer would be different.

But considering the context of this question, I’d say this has nothing to do with burning books. This is just some crazy people finding excuse to enforce their crazy agenda on the public. If is wasn’t books it would definitely be something else.

Naziesk behavior is creeping into our culture. It weirds me out.

@Mimishu1995 What would your answer be otherwise?

@filmfann I agree.

Book burning, as was done during Nazi Germany? No, thank you.

I would be totally for banning and/or burning all religious texts.

Nope. I may not agree with content of a book, but it is a viewpoint out there. Some might like it. I don’t get to dictate to others what they can and can’t like.

However, I semi-understand the idea behind it. Their thought is to help mold their society into what they want it to be. We already do that with many aspects of our lives and no one blinks an eye. You can’t do animal sacrifices, for example, and especially not human sacrifices. Those were things that used to happen and people decided they didn’t want that as part of their society so they banned them. Slavery used to be commonplace throughout the world and was the basis of some economies. But we determined it was not something we want in our society so we banned it. Banning has been done throughout our existence. Some has been very beneficial. I just feel that banning ideas in books is not a good thing for any society. You are trying to close down discussion, block opposing thoughts…it is not possible and will only bring on way more strife.