Blaine Foley Final Research Paper
From digmovements
[edit] The problem with Censorship in Schools
[edit] By Blaine Foley
Imagine hearing about a really good book from a friend. You go to the library with the title in mind and look around for it. For some reason you cannot find it. You ask around and find that because someone at some time was offended by the book it is no longer available to anyone. Would you not feel that you have lost something? Your freedoms in a way have been taken before you even knew they existed. It is like a friend that you will never get to know. This is what book censorship is.
Censorship in schools deals with the removal of a book in a public, k-12 school. This is for the purpose of restricting what a child can read. This has been going on in American public schools since the 1950’s, but actual book censorship has been a controversy for 1000’s of years. For this study I will only look at what has happened to book censorship from 1950 to the present. The actual danger of censorship is usually not seen until after the book has already been taken off the shelves. Once a book is successfully taken off the shelves permanently, no child can ever have the chance of experiencing what the author of that book was trying to say.
The definition of a Censor is: An official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds. But a book censor does not look to just take parts out of a book, but instead wants the entire book taken out of the school.
Lester Asheim, an author who wrote many articles in the 1950’s about censorship, broadly defines the distinction between Censorship and Selection as follows: Selection... begins with a presumption in favor of liberty of thought; Censorship, with a presumption in favor of thought control. What this would mean is that any censoring that is done on any level for any reason is in fact a disguise for thought control. The parent, teacher, or school administrator are in fact trying to tell the student exactly what to think and what not to think. It is ironic that this type of controversy arises in schools where freedom of thought is supposed to be the highest level to attain.
Since the 1950’s book censorship has risen exponentially, where only two book challenges were reported from 1951-1957 in California, to 2005, where 405 book challenges were made nationwide. This is actually good news, as this is the lowest number seen since 1990. But the large disparity between challenges from the 1950’s and current trends can easily be explained by the large number of books that had not been published yet, and also the access to books has greatly increased.
In a closer look at the statistics on the ALA website, the number of book challenges has had a varied result each year. In 1990 only 157 book challenges were recorded, but in 1995 over 762 book challenges occurred, which was the highest number to date. What this means is that more books were challenged in those years, which results in a vast number of implications for every book that is challenged. Not only are committees formed to deal with every book problem but far reaching issues are dealt with including freedom of speech, the parents’ right to teach their children what they want, and of course the rights of the children themselves.
Parents should of course have the right to see that their child is taught what they want them to learn. If a parent does not want a child to learn anything but their beliefs then they have that right. But when a parent does not want their child to read a certain book, and also does not want any of the children in that child’s class to ever read that book again, that presents a freedom of the mind issue.
In Censorship, Clear Thinking, and Bold Books for Teens the author states this about freedom of the mind: …most challenges to books used in schools and provided in libraries come from individuals and groups that do not want young people to make decisions for themselves. Comments I have heard and read from book banners suggest that they do not want their children to open their minds to new and different possibilities, do not want them to make right choices. And they do not trust educated teachers and librarians who have dedicated their lives to helping kids find the books they need for their intellectual development and emotional well being.
What this comes down to is trust between the parent and the child. It is the parent’s responsibility to raise the child, but at the same time the parent much eventually trust the child to make their own decisions. This trust is a key factor in childhood growth. If the parent does not trust the child to choose books based on their own moral beliefs that the parent has taught them, then obviously it is the parents fault and the child is doomed to idiocy.
American book challenges have historically come from the parent, but it is not limited to them at all. Librarians who have the most control over what comes into their libraries use selection for books all the time. Of course there is a difference because if a librarian does not order a book one year they can of course do it the next, but when a parent creates a controversy over a book and attempts to censor the book, they have the possibility of getting that book banned forever. In a way the parents are burning the ideas of that book with their actions. Historically book challenges have been growing in number since the 1950’s. They did reach a peak in 1995 but have gone down sense. On average they are at an all time high. Book challenges are by no means going away, and are coming from many different angles, but there is definitely no end in sight over the controversy regarding books.
Two examples of widely popular books that have been challenged since the 1950’s are: Go Ask Alice, and The Catcher in the Rye. Both of these books would be considered classics by most if not all teachers and professors, but these books for their supposed language and obscene sexual instances, have resulted in banning them from certain school districts permanently. Although there are many more books with numerous challenges, I will look at these two because they were both published after 1950.
And, frankly, I’m surprised, to say nothing of shocked, dismayed, and disappointed that these critics didn’t at least read the book before they condemned it on the basis of bad language. This was the response of Marion Smith, a columnist who wrote an article protesting the banning of the widely controversial book Go Ask Alice. He wrote that “the parents had only heard the one side of the story that dealt with specific examples out of the book.” And this is the main problem with book censorship. Whenever a censor is trying to get a book thrown out, they do not ask that you go and read the entire book, instead they present specific examples out of the book and tell you that the book is obscene. The obvious problem with this is that, considering that novels are works of art, you cannot just look at one small piece of the big picture and condemn the entire work. If someone was to go to a museum and after looking at Davinci’s Mona Lisa, found that a small aspect of it suddenly offended them, it would be absurd to think that the museum owners would take it down. One cannot be offended by a small aspect of a piece of art and expect that the entire work be treated the way they want it. A reader then must take the entire book as it is presented to them. A parent cannot just take 1-2 sentences out of one of the chapters and present the entire piece as obscene.
The solution to the Go Ask Alice controversy in that particular school district was to no longer make that book required reading. Instead of that book being on the list of books that students must read for the class, Go Ask Alice remained on the library book shelves. What then happens when a child actually wants to read the book? If a child was to randomly pick the book, take it home, and once again the parents somehow became offended by the language, what controversy would arise then?
When I was in high school there was a certain book that I had heard was controversial. This book was The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. After reading the book and discussing it in front of the entire class I felt that there was absolutely no reason that a book such as that had started so much controversy. I just did not understand it at the time. I knew that people had tried to get the book banned but for the life of me I did not understand why.
In Banned Books: Literature Suppressed on Social Grounds, the author states how this novel has long ignited disapproval, and was the most frequently banned book from 1966-1975. “Vulgar language, sexual scenes, and things concerning moral issues” were the reasons behind many parents objecting to this book over the years. Every scene that Holden endures, impacts young adults on a daily basis. Students drop out of school. Men and women both find difficulty in finding out what to do with their lives, and young men and women are insecure about how to interact with the opposite sex. If a parent wants to shield their child from the real world they of course have that right, but at some point the child is going to grow up and if they do not have some aid in difficult situations like the ones presented in this book, then they are going to make the same mistakes that Holden Caulfield made in his life.. What this book does is show any reader that not all questions are easily solved and real life problems occur all the time. This book only took place over a 48 hour period of Holden’s life, but the implications of those 48 hours were resounding for the rest if his life. It is illogical for a parent to not want their child to learn from the mistakes of others. If a parent was successful in banning this book, would they not themselves be guilty in part of some of the mistakes that their child makes in life even after they grow up?
On May 10, 1933 on the Opernplatz in Berlin, Storm Trooper and Nazi youth groups burned around 20,000 books from the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft and the Humboldt University; including works by Heinrich Heine, Thomas Mann, Karl Marx, Erich Maria Remarque, and H.G. Wells. Book burning is of course the highest level of Censorship. Instead of getting the book taken off the shelves legally, burning a book completely destroys it. This is a very logical way to secure anyone from any kind of influence the author will ever have on them, good or bad. But the problem with this is that once a book is burned it is lost forever.
In Bebelplast, the main square of Berlin, there is now a memorial dedicated to the book burning that occurred on May 10th. People look down through a glass ceiling where you see a sealed room with empty bookshelves signifying the books that were burned on that fateful day. The shelves in this memorial are empty. Although all of the books had multiple copies and of course survived, what this shows is an attempt to burn all of the information in those books at that time. Had they been successful I personally would have been affected for one of my favorite authors is H.G. Wells. Of his novels, nine have been made into big screen movies, three of which have been remade over the years. But the point is that they were trying to destroy information based on the presumption that it was not needed or that it was against their ideology.
Ray Bradbury’s introduction to the 1967 edition of Fahrenheit 451 recalls his childhood love of books and libraries: “I ate, drank, and slept books. . . . It followed then that when Hitler burned a book I felt it as keenly, please forgive me, as his killing a human, for in the long sum of history they are one and the same flesh. Mind or body, put to the oven, it is a sinful practice, and I carried that with me.”
With the Internet comes a new form of literature. This type of literature still has chapters and pages and all the ideas that are contained within a text, but the primary difference is that it is all digital. You now have the ability to download a file which contains the work of your favorite author, if you have the eyes for it you can read to your hearts content. What I have stated in this paper so far is that if a book is censored successfully the book is simply taken off the book shelves or becomes no longer required reading, but on the internet everybody has access to almost all literature simply with the click of a button. If a student finds himself in a position where a book has been taken off the shelves they are obviously going to want to see what their parents and teachers do not want them to see. This in a way completely contradicts Censorship. If a book is free online for anyone to read, then book censorship becomes obsolete. For after a book is taken off of the shelves an intrigued student can either go to another library or simply go online.
One organization that attempts to provide free books is Project Gutenberg. This non-profit organization attempts to make all books free and easily downloadable into any e-format. Started by Michael Hart in 1971 this organization claims to currently have over 24,000 books available online. Michael Hart said in 2004, "The mission of Project Gutenberg is simple: 'To encourage the creation and distribution of ebooks.'"[11][12] His goal is, "to provide as many e-books in as many formats as possible for the entire world to read in as many languages as possible."[1] Likewise, a project slogan is to "break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy"
Michael hart is in a way fighting book censorship. If a physical book, in the worst case scenario, was banned from a school and even eventually burned, then all a student needs to do is jump online and download an e-copy. Of course there are limitations, like the absence of a physically copy, which some people find impossible to read without. But the idea is that by uploading something to the internet you cannot ever censor a book or burn it. The information on the internet is in a way set in stone in which no one can ever chip away at. I believe that putting a book on the internet not only immortalizes that work but provides access to anyone who wants to experience it. Project Gutenberg truly is against book censorship.
The main point of this essay was to show the irrationality of how censoring a book and protecting a child is in fact a disguise for thought control. The parent or administrators do not want their child to be harmed in any way. They want the child to grow up in a happy, care free atmosphere where the good guy always wins and the bad guy always loses. Everything is good and nothing bad ever happens. Unfortunately the real world is nothing like this. Every adult knows this because of the experiences they witness and even endure every day. In a perfect world where crime and evil deeds were extinct maybe book censorship would be reasonable. Why write a book about something that is never going to occur? But crime does occur. People unfortunately get raped and some people even commit murder. To think that blinding a child to these aspects of the real world somehow negates the fact that they happen, or somehow makes the world a better place is stupid. You cannot cover the wound and say that it is not there. If a parent truly wants their child to grow up in a society that values free thought and freedom of expression then they should look for other ways to influence their children instead of limiting what they can read.
There was one quote that in every book or article I read continuously appeared and so I felt it was necessary to at least cite it once.
This was but a prelude; where books are burnt human-beings will be burnt in the end (Heinrich Heine, 1820)
Works Cited 1.Fiske, Marjorie Lowenthal. Book Selection and Censorship. Berkely: University of California Press, 1959.
2. Homstad, Wayne. Anatomy of a Book Controversy. Bllomington, Indiana: Phi Delta Kappa Educational foundation, 1995.
3. Sova, Dawn B. Banned Books: Literature Suppressed On Social Grounds. New York, New York; Facts On File Inc.. 1998.
4. Burress, Lee. Battle of the Books: Literary Censorship in the Public Schools. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. 1989.
5. Gallo, Don. “Censorship, Clear Thinking, and Bold Books for Teens.” English Journal (High school edition). Jan 2008: 114.
6. Wikipedia. 1 June 2008. The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. 3 June 2008 <http://www.wikipedia.org>.
