Whats Really at Stake in Americas History Wars? – The Wall Street Journal

In January, McMinn County, Tenn., made international news for perhaps the first time in its history when the school board voted to remove Maus, the acclaimed graphic novel about the Holocaust, from the 8th-grade curriculum. The board stated that it made the change on account of the books use of profanity and nudity, asking school administrators to find other works that accomplish the same educational goals in a more age-appropriate fashion.

This curricular change, affecting a few hundred of the approximately 5,500 K-12 students in McMinns public schools, was quickly amplified on social media into a case of book banning with shades of Holocaust denial. The author of Maus, Art Spiegelman, said that the decision had a breath of autocracy and fascism. Theres only one kind of people who would vote to ban Maus, whatever they are calling themselves these days, tweeted the popular fantasy writer Neil Gaiman, earning more than 170,000 likes. The controversy sent the book to the top of Amazon s bestseller list.

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Whats Really at Stake in Americas History Wars? - The Wall Street Journal