Banning Books

1167 Words3 Pages

Books help us to understand ourselves, to find out who we are.” (National Children’s Book and Literature Association). Literature has been important to human development since the first script was ever written. Whether it is Shakespeare, or The Cat in the Hat, young brains have continued to flourish with the help of books. Books give you a way to escape your reality, live through the twists and turns of your imagined fantasy world, and help you find a sense of your true self within the story. Children, especially, need to have a clear sense of themselves as a person and have role models in their lives to look up to, whether that is in real life, or even in their favorite book. This is why the action of banning books in schools is problematic …show more content…

Everything that a child reads can influence their actions and their way of thinking. For example, the quote “Scenes full of character dialogue show children effective – and ineffective – ways to handle conflict in a variety of situations. It allows children to experience a range of moods and emotions they aren’t likely to experience in everyday life.” (education-connection.org) This quote shows how greatly books can impact a child. Many of the books that are being banned due to “inappropriate content,” are really books that contain ideas that can instruct children about the world around them. Ideas that can help children feel confident in themselves and how they treat others. Ideas that will help them throughout their lives. That is why books are so important for children’s thinking, as they are huge influences on their outlooks in life. Another piece of evidence that supports this is “The article further argues that literary fiction can “support and teach us values about social behavior, such as the importance of understanding those who are different from ourselves”.”(readingpartners.org) This is an example of how books can affect children’s empathy and their thoughts of others, as if they are reading about people who are different than them, they are more likely to understand and feel sympathy for …show more content…

That is both harmful to not only that child, but to the other people around them. If children are able to read diverse books with somewhat controversial topics, at least they will get an idea of understanding of these topics and start to provide their own thinking on the subjects. The more learning a child can do about many different lives, the more understanding that child will have. That is why books are effective in increasing children’s empathy and improving their social interactions with other people. While you could argue that banning books from schools is beneficial because it keeps out inappropriate topics such as gender, violence, drug use, racism, and LGBTQ content, you would be overlooking the fact that these book bans diminish the quality of education students have access to. While some of these topics are questionable to expose to young children, they are beneficial for older children to learn about as they are exposed to these ideas everyday and they need to know how to think for

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