Know Thy Enemy
Feb. 17th, 2005 01:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsI've held onto this web page all day, debating whether I should post about it. When that happens, usually the answer is in the affirmative. Citizens for Class Standards in Schools is a group dedicated to dictating what books teachers may assign to students in schools. They have a limited charter right now, you can bet that boards like this will be popping up nationwide soon. With the reflective and amplificative properties of the Internet, you can also bet that groups like this will assemble enormous arsenals of material in the name of their cause. That's the nature of the Internet: instead of isolated islands each creating their own petitions, we're now allowed a natural selection process by which the ineffective petitions get weeded out to be replaced with effective mutants from the district next door.
Read their material carefully: one of their objectives is to get books "rated" the way movies and video games are rated. The Honor Harrington and Vorkosigan series will get a T (teens) for violence and suggestive content, and will not be available to children under the age of 13; much of Heinlein would be T, with later stuff being M (Mature) or AO (Adults Only). Right now our music, video games, television, and movies are rated this way; do you really want the next novel you buy to have a "recommended for all ages" sticker on it?
Read their material carefully: one of their objectives is to get books "rated" the way movies and video games are rated. The Honor Harrington and Vorkosigan series will get a T (teens) for violence and suggestive content, and will not be available to children under the age of 13; much of Heinlein would be T, with later stuff being M (Mature) or AO (Adults Only). Right now our music, video games, television, and movies are rated this way; do you really want the next novel you buy to have a "recommended for all ages" sticker on it?
