Essay On School Censorship

Every day, teens across America face a plethora of issues, some more obvious than others. Now, just because a problem is not well-known does not mean it is any less potent than the widely publicized issues most teens are familiar with. In fact, hidden problems are often more dangerous than those that are widely known. Amongst the ranks of the obscure issues is the censorship of books, the Internet and speech in schools; a problem that effects a large majority of the student body, often unknowingly to the students. In recent years, countless books have been removed from school libraries, an innumerable amount of websites have been blocked by school officials, and social sharing websites are regularly monitored for any activity the school deems

On a regularly occurring basis, students face the suppression of ideas via book banning or Internet monitoring and blocking of webpages. When an idea becomes suppressed, it becomes forgotten or becomes a taboo subject. In either case, teens no longer have the ability to learn from that idea. Instead, teens only have access to the ideas supported by the school board, which in turn conditions students into accepting the terrible idea that ideas can be suppressed. John Simmons believes that school boards “see non-conforming ideas as dangerous to young and impressionable minds” in his article School Censorship: No Respite in Site. Simmons’ belief is formed based on the material that is frequently suppressed, which are usually ideas that go against society and conformity. Apparently when conformity is threatened, schools make short work of the material, and institute a belief in students that ideas against conformity are bad. Of course, there are plenty of other reasons for why books and other materials are banned, but when reading materials are banned, students loose the benefit of “thinking critically about literacy texts,” and by extension, the material’s ideas (Simmons). Then there are First Amendment watchers who firmly believe the freedom of speech is under attack by the schools when they punish students who comment online. They also believe that if the problem reaches the public eye, the problem with censorship will be resolved, but unfortunately, it has not become widely known. This conditions students into accepting the loss of the freedom of speech is normal. Some courts have also sided with the schools by giving them the power to “censor and punish students for words…even though the words were written off campus, after school” (Richey). Whether or not these acts of suppression are deliberate attempts at censoring the schools or the