The growing trend of censorship and banned books has amplified over the last 3 years. Controversy on whether certain books that espouse opinions on divisive topics should be banned from the learning curriculum or banned altogether from districts but banning them contradicts freedom of expression through literature guaranteed in the 1st Amendment. Furthermore, it has affected thousands of individual titles across the US in grades K-12, one of many being the book Speak by Laurie Anderson. While Speak does address divisive topics like rape, xenophobia, and self-harm, along with many other mature topics, it should be age-restricted to middle schoolers and below for a lack of maturity but allowed in grades 9-12 due to its educational value to promote …show more content…
Pitiful. If a suicide attempt is a cry for help, then what is it? A whimper, or a peep? I draw little windowcracks of blood, etching line after line until it stops hurting. It looks like I arm-wrestled a rosebush.” However, it’s imperative to acknowledge how Speak lends a hand in promoting awareness and comprehension of issues like sexual assault, discrimination, and mental health challenges depicted. Therefore, it’s better to age-restrict it and instead ban it altogether, as banning is also neglectful of the negative impact it has on young minds. Because when students are never given the opportunity to read titles that address critical issues, they’re denied the chance to learn and grow. Despite the content Speak contains, it offers an opportunity for students to delve into complex topics in a safe environment. By reading the experiences of others, allows them to develop empathy for them and gain an understanding of the importance of standing against these issues for the benefit of society, both domestically and …show more content…
Nevertheless, there is no reason for the “increase of 28 percent compared to the prior six months, January – June 2022”. In those six months alone 800 individual titles were banned which is equivalent to 100 titles stripped from the reach of students each month. Not only is this detrimental to students, but to future authors as their right to express their ideas on topics is threatened, as is students' ability to see different perspectives. Another question raised is how the bans get passed when “over 70% of parents oppose book banning”, how does the minority make decisions over the majority? Lastly, and most importantly, by incorporating discussions on consent, healthy relationships, and seeking help in relation to the themes portrayed in Speak, educators can create a supportive environment for middle and high school students to navigate topics like sexual assault and mental
Due to the mains character Melinda’s story about her journey of recovery from rape and sexual assault, it was wrongly banned for small parts of the book that was taken out of context. Speak teaches the reader about rape and sexual assault and helps any survivors reading Speak. Rape and sexual assault is something that should be discussed because of how much of a problem it has become. Rape and sexual assault needs be taught in school and everyone should push hard towards educating the youth about important situations such as these so the children can grow up with safer lives then they have now. Speak should be read by many because of the extremely strong lessons. Everyone and anyone needs to be educated on these dire
Trelease, Jim. "Book Banning Violates Children and Young Adult Freedoms." Book Banning. Ed. Ronnie D. Lankford. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2007. At Issue. Rpt. from "Censorship and Children's Books." Trelease-on-Reading.com. 2006.Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 31 Mar. 2014.
From the years 2000 to 2009, 5,099 books were challenged in school libraries, classrooms, and public libraries. Most of the books on this list were banned because of objectionable content such as sexual references, profanity, violence, and the fact that the book was considered “unsuited to age group” (American Library Association). Even prior to the year 2000, censorship and banned books had become an issue for schools in particular all across the country for these very reasons. While the The Color Purple by Alice Walker does contain the objectionable content mentioned prior, it should not be banned because objectionable content found in the book is accessible through the internet and social media, one person’s complaint should not determine another’s choice, and high school students should be mature enough to handle the adult content.
Banning Books “It’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written, the books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers” (Blume 1999). Judy Blume can not explain the problem of book censorship any clearer.
Banning books from public schools and public libraries is wrong. It’s irrational to have a parent or school board member’s opinion determine what a school district should be reading. Books including and not limited to, The Scarlet Letter, The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Lord of the Flies, and Animal Farm all have one thing in common. They have all at one time or another been subject to banishment. These literary classics have been around for a long time and proved to be vital to the education of many, especially children and adolescents. These novels teach values and educate children about world affairs that can not come from an everyday experience. These controversial novels encompass the materials that ultimately boost our educational wealth. Banning books infringe
Writing is an art form, and one that should not be restricted to fit the whims of a few delusional parents and adults. Censorship of books in the United States dates back to Puritan New England in 1650, when William Pynchon’s The Meritorious Price of Redemption was banned from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The novel discussed a viewpoint that was against what Puritan ministers usually taught, which naturally made this book labeled as heretical. He then moved back to England because he thought New England had little religious freedom. Clearly, Pynchon understood that a piece of writing should not be banned for a town solely because it challenged some social norms in his highly-religious society. The Catcher in the Rye currently ranks at nineteen on the American Library Association’s list of the 100 most banned books in the United States. Although this is the case, The Catcher in the Rye should not be banned from schools. This is not just because the censorship of novels is morally wrong, but because the students reading it can relate to the main character’s, Holden’s, “inappropriate” scenes, can learn to form the relationships that Holden desperately lacks, and can learn that they are not alone in their feelings.
Imagine you have a child. This child loves to read books on their own. They read so much you finally tell them to get their books from the library. Then, one day, your child asks you what does this word mean, you are horrified to see that the child is pointing to a curse word. From that point on the child gets in trouble with teachers and other adults for saying that word. This is why book banning is necessary to keep children from finding themselves in that situation and others. Book banning is required because a child may be taught bad habits, lose the magical innocence of childhood, and because children may not be mature enough to decide what materials to read.
Has your school ever banned any books due to them having inappropriate content for your age group? How did it affect you or your peers? Many schools and public libraries have started banning books because of it having unsuitable content in them. I believe that certain books should be banned from libraries because some include racial slurs, others contain a blasphemous dialogue in them and usually kids shouldn’t be exposed to these types of books because of their age, lastly other books encourage children of unsuitable lifestyles that are considered dangerous or inappropriate in this world and it’s unacceptable for many parents to have their child read such topics at such a young and innocent age.
It is challenging to choose what types of books are appropriate for children to read. Now in days the choice is even more challenging then it was a couple of centuries ago. There are books that feature violence, sexual content, offensive language or all. These subjects question concern parents because it can teach young children about several subjects that are usually avoided. Times have changed and so have books and what they contain, which makes banned books an important subject. Books can be a great source to learn from whether it history or just a folk tale, but parents and teachers must take into consideration the ages of the audience. Maturity is not achieved until a later time and some children may have difficulty reaching that point.
Every day well meaning parents, concerned members of society, and Christian activist groups across the country fight to censor the literature that is being taught in high school classrooms. The word censorship carries all types of implications and angles; it involve s a denial of an author's right to guaranteed freedoms of expression. However, as it relates to education, this issue goes a great deal deeper than the standard First Amendment argument. In attempting to ban certain types of literature from the classroom, censors are taking away the rights of teachers to prepare students for a reality that their parents do not seem to think will ever affect them. They likewise deny students the chance to learn how to rationally make their own decisions and instead try to keep that control for themselves. Censorship is preventing intelligent, thoughtful teachers from pushing students to reach past what is just on the page. Whatever their motives may be, those who seek to repress the use of certain materials are doing more harm than good.
Walt Whitman once said, “The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.” Between the years 2000 and 2009 a total of 3200 books were challenged in school libraries in an attempt to expurgate, or censor, the content in books provided to students. Today the trend of censorship continues as popular novels such as The Hunger Games, The Fault in Our Stars, and Captain Underpants are censored from schools across the nation (Challenges by Reason).Censorship in regards to literature refers to the examination and suppressing of a book because of objectionable material. The process of censorship in school libraries often begins with an outspoken parent, teacher, student, or administrator and ends in the banning or abridgement of a novel deemed inadmissible. Censorship is protecting many students from controversial, immoral, and potentially unsuitable content; however, this is not always the case. Students, parents, teachers, and administrators with different backgrounds, beliefs, and morals are not creating a library pleasing to everyone because of the variety of opinion. Censorship in school is not justifiable, because it restricts discussion and knowledge of new, controversial, and necessary ideas, allows a handful of people to make decisions for a larger group based on opinion, and undermines democratic ideals.
As it is inevitable that children will grow up to be exposed to the world's evils, which are shown in novels like Fahrenheit 451, teaching the context and meaning of those evils in a learning environment allows for more of a educated understanding and a fuller grasp on the issues within. By reading controversial novels in schools, students in middle and high school will benefit tremendously by being exposed to them in a learning environment. Although teachers and parents have control as to what the students are exposed to at a young age, Fahrenheit 451 should not be banned from middle and high schools as it depicts the effects of censorship on a dystopian society through use of controversial material which doubles as
Censorship in Schools There has recently been a renewed interest and passion in the issue of censorship. In the realm of the censorship of books in schools alone, several hundred cases have surfaced each year for nearly the past decade. Controversies over which books to include in the high school English curriculum present a clash of values between teachers, school systems, and parents over what is appropriate for and meaningful to students. It is important to strike a balance between English that is meaningful to students by relating to their lives and representing diversity and satisfying worries about the appropriateness of what is read.
The history of scientific misconduct already started long time ago, where Ptolemy used data from Hipparchos without acknowledging him; Galileo Galilei, the founder of the scientific method but appears to have relied more on thought experiments rather than performing empirical experiments (Werner-Felmayer, 2010). In the modern world, the integrity of scientist and scientific research is jeopardized when the discovery of scientific misconduct made headline news. Headline such as “Korean scientist said to admit fabrication in a cloning study” (Wade, 2005), “Dutch university sacks social psychologist over faked data” (Enserink, 2011), “Harvard psychology researcher committed fraud, U.S investigation concludes” (Carpenter, 2012) and “Top Canadian scientist and award-winning student caught in ‘blatant plagiarism’ of text” (Munro, 2012) really makes we think, why they committed such fraud? Before we go into factors that may contribute to scientific misconduct, we have to understand what is the definition of it and also types of misconduct.
One can read books to gain knowledge and increase their level of reading but not to come across offensive language and words. Especially in school, children are censored from these books that are controversial in the classroom. Parents are the ones who have a hard time letting their children read these books because they use curse words or have morals that differ from personal values. As a parent it is their right to fight the banning of books that use language such as the “n-word” or characters depicted negatively. Presently in the classroom, “race matters in these books. It’s a matter of how you express that in the 21st century” (Schultz). When children read these novels they may think that it is acceptable for them to a...