Censorship In Public High Schools Essay, Research Paper
For centuries, parents have wrestled with the question of how to raise their
children with the best moral and ethical standings. Along with this question
come others such as, "What are the right morals?" Today’s parents are
no different than they were in the past and the struggle continues. It’s
tempting to try to protect children from the perceived evils in modern society.
One such moral issue is the banning of books from high school libraries and
sometimes even classrooms, which may represent some of those aforementioned
perceived evils.
As long as humans have sought to communicate, others have sought to keep them
from doing so. Every day someone tries to restrict or control what can be said,
written, sung, or broadcast through censorship. Almost every idea ever thought
has proved offensive or worthy of objection to one person or another, and almost
everyone has sometimes felt the world would be a better place if only "so
and so" were not around or "such and such" did not exist.
Some people deem this censorship necessity, while still others claim that
these actions impose upon their First Amendment rights. Both sides have some
very worthwhile viewpoints, but lost in the shuffle, unfortunately, is what the
First Amendment stands for – that each of us are free to decide for ourselves
what to read and think. No matter how convinced some may be of the rightness of
their own views, they are not, however, entitled to impose those views on
others. We all have the right to attempt to convince others of our views, but
that doesn’t imply a right to blindfold or silence others in the process.
On the anti-censorship side sits the American Library Association along with
a number of other organizations. Part of this group’s attempt to further
awareness of censorship takes place in the last week in September. This campaign
is known as National Banned Book Week. This is a weeklong propaganda fest and
consciousness-raising extravaganza put on by the American Library Association’s
Office for Intellectual Freedom. The promoters use this week to parade a list of
books that they charge have been banned in libraries and schools across America,
talk about the importance of First Amendment Rights, and lament the rise of
censorship from what they consider to be the ill-informed enemies of freedom and
American democracy — a group that includes the usual conservatives and, of
course, a great number of parents and school officials.
First of all, quite a few Americans have serious problems with the sort of
radical libertarianism that the American Library Association (ALA) represents. A
majority of Americans don’t buy into the notion that public libraries should buy
anything no matter how pornographic, or that schools should teach anything, no
matter how controversial. Most Americans believe in community standards, and
they stubbornly insist that schools, libraries, and other social institutions
ought to support those standards. Even so, the real difficulty with the American
Library Association’s Banned Book Week isn’t its philosophy, however a number of
people may question the ALA’s anything-goes-approach to building a library
collection and managing a school’s curriculum. No, the real problem is the
dishonesty involved.
In my opinion, Banned Book Week isn’t really what it says it is. It isn’t a
model for freedom of speech, but rather the ALA has gone in for some serious
mislabeling here. It has misleadingly categorized the week — a serious charge
when you remember that librarians are supposed to be accurate catalogers and
labelers of things.
In all honesty, where do censorship and book banning really stand in America?
Well, very few — if any — books in this country are currently banned. You can
buy almost any title that you want, download a multitude of information from the
Web if you need to, and you can check out all sorts of things at your public
library. Nor is censorship dangerously on the rise, as the ALA would have you
believe.
The difference between what is true and what the week’s promoters claim stems
from their exaggerated notions of what constitutes censorship. In the eyes of
the ALA and its Office for Intellectual Freedom, any kind of challenge to a book
may be considered an effort at banning and any kind of complaint about a title
is called an attempt at unconscionable censorship. For a book to be labeled a
banned book in their mind, someone needs only question its place in a given
library’s collection, or wonder openly if a specific title belongs in the
children’s section. To be labeled a censor, one has only to suggest in public
that a book may not be appropriate in a given high school English class for any
number of reasons.
Let’s get real. Such challenges are not attempts at censorship, and such
complaints about books used in a classroom are not truly efforts to have certain
titles banned. The people involved in these controversies about what students
are required to read are merely speaking their minds, and no matter how much I
disagree with their beliefs, they have a right to argue their point. These
people should be able to speak up without fear of being branded enemies of the
Republic or being chastised as censors of great literature.
Parents who challenge the inclusion of a given text in a specific high school
class and citizens who openly protest a book’s inclusion in a library’s
collection are only speaking out about things that they believe in. It is an
American tradition and one that we should encourage as much as we can. It does
not make sense to ban free speech in the name of free speech. Let people speak
out about what they care about, without being branded a censor or labeled a book
banner.
Those who actually are out to ban books from high school libraries and
classrooms, on the other hand, are no better than the radicals on the other
side. These people second-guess those individuals that we have entrusted with
our children’s education on an almost constant basis. Teachers continuously
rethink their materials, and sometimes they do so in response to comments or
other reactions from students and parents. Perhaps if students were no longer
motivated by a particular book, or failed to relate to its message, it would
have been dropped from the curriculum long ago. But that is not usually the
case. If the book has been successfully used in a class for ten years, why
should a single parent’s complaint trigger a series of events ending in that
book’s removal?
If that is the case then out the window goes the notion that reading almost
anything – whether you like it or approve of it or agree with it – can be
instructional, if handled properly. Should children not be taught about the
Holocaust because we find it represents depraved conduct? If that is to be the
case, then pictures of lynching should also be banned simply because they are
offensive and terrifying. History can, without a doubt, be gruesome and even
disturbing, but how can we expect our children to make decisions about the
future without knowing the mistakes of the past? History is different, some
might say, because those things really happened. But fiction has equally
important lessons to convey, due to the fact that it provides us with other
perspectives on things that happen in life, or might happen. Stories can
represent the writer’s effort to make meaning out of confusing events, meet
difficult challenges, or simply entertain. As with history, one does not have to
like the message or even agree with it to learn something from it. Sometimes,
the most educational books are the ones we dislike, because we are forced to
think hard about why we think and feel the way we do.
Removing a book from the required reading list is censorship, pure and
simple. This is true even if other books could be equally good teaching tools
and even though the book will continue to be available as optional reading. The
teachers in towns where books are banned from their lists of available teaching
tools must feel professionally undermined and personally abandoned. Ironically,
the more difficult the subject matter and content of a book, the more desirable
it is that students read it under the direction of a teacher and have an
opportunity to discuss it and ask questions in an environment where they are
comfortable. Classic books are among the most frequently challenged books for
young adults, according to the American Library Association, and all of them
have serious literary themes and educational value. Regrettably, it’s the kids
in the public schools who are likely to suffer the most – what they’ll get for
required reading will be only the blandest, most conventional, books that nobody
could possibly object to. Boring.
In short, the American Library Association and their counterparts need to
lighten up. At the very least, they should rename their week. Those out to ban
and censor books from our classrooms based on completely uneducated rumors and
page scanning for cuss words and sexually explicit content should back off. I
agree that censorship in totality is wrong, but I also do not see how a group
that claims to stand for freedom of speech can attempt to silence those who
utilize the very right that they claim to stand for. As anyone can see, Banned
Book Week isn’t really about banned books. Banning books isn’t really about
protecting our children. It’s about feeling like we are in control of our
children’s lives when it should be about a few people having differing opinions
and caring enough to make those opinions known. The nation could use a lot more
of that, not less.