Literary Censorship In American Schools

While the unconstitutional nature of literary censorship in American schools is often recognised in Court, less attention is paid to the consequences of removing certain books, authors or topics from the classroom. One of the effects of literary censorship schools and school libraries does not influence teachers or students at a direct level, but instead challenges the publishing industry because of the self-censorship that it causes. Julia Mickenberg and Philip Nel, advocates of children’s literature, show how authors of children’s literature as well as publishers rather avoid controversial topics in their books in order to avoid critiques and the censorship of their books. Literary agent George Nicholson (qtd. in Mickenberg & Nel 446) claims

According to the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), “censorship based on individual sensitivities and concerns”, such as exposing children and young adults to profanity, sexual content and violence, “restricts the world of knowledge available to students” and thereby restricting their ability to “stretch their intellectual capacities and become critical thinkers” ("The First Amendment In Schools: Censorship"). Henry Reichman, in his book Censorship and Selection: Issues and Answers for Schools also stresses the harmful consequences of censorship, claiming that it “undermines […] democratic values of tolerance and intellectual freedom” (Reichman 4). He adds that it sets a wrong example for students, who are expected to develop and express their own opinions. During this development students naturally come across controversial ideas, but by supressing these materials, Reichman claims that censors “produce a sterile conformity and a lack of intellectual and emotional growth in students”

This literature study shows that the purpose of the censorship of books in American schools is to protect children from ideas and values that are in conflict with the ideas and values of the censor. In order to resolve the problem of censorship, and to offer students the freedom to choose what they prefer to read, it is necessary for schools to balance the right for freedom and the right to protect children. Legal scholar Mark Yudof notes that indoctrination is a large part of education and therefore schools are not “value neutral”. Instead, it is necessary to devise a system which “prepare[s] children for adult life without simultaneously sacrificing their ability to reflect upon the ends for which they are being prepared” (Yudof, qtd. in Reichman 4). In addition to this, Yudof believes this system should not be “indoctrinating them to unbridled allegiance to the status quo or to the rightness of current institutional arrangements”, by which he implies that students’ opinions should not be conform to the opinions of the school, but they should be challenged and stimulated to form their own opinions. In order to do so, many teachers facing censorship have devised methods in which the schools’ and parents’ need to protect and convey their values to the students is combined with the students’ ability to choose what they want to read (Yudof, qtd. in Reichman 5). High School teacher Bobbi