Textbooks Should Be Taught In Schools Essay

The legendary inventor, author, and civic activist Benjamin Franklin once said, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety", meaning that those who would risk the freedom of the people around them for safety, do not deserve neither freedom nor safety for themselves. Although some researchers have concluded that banning books is a feasible way to discard content inappropriate for certain groups of people to protect them, there is much stronger evidence explaining that the topics that people want to read about in banned books are depicted worse online than in the book, regardless of their content, books are one of the best teaching devices in the world, there is something to learn in just about every book, and due to the increase of sources of corruption as technology improves, all attempts to protect children from these, “threats”, in books are futile.

The primary group that is constantly being affected by book bans, is the high school students who can interact with or have access to books that might be inappropriate for them at school. These students are losing access to these books because of the opinions that some teachers or

parents have on the topics or language used in them, these topics range from homosexuality, to racial discrimination. Many people believe that these topics are solid reasons to ban books in schools, and they are reasonable for believing so.
What types of books are the most susceptible to bans and or challenges, contemporaries or classics? Contemporary books are modern books that are related to our time zone, usually being challenged between the years 2000 and 2010. Classics on the other hand are the very well known books that have been challenged for decades or even centuries. In a recent study of which type of book is challenged or banned the most often, 389 challenged/banned books were selected and a count of how many of them were contemporary or classic was taken.
Akers, Carly Grace. "Which Books Are Challenged More - Classics or Contemporary?" New Library World 113.7/8 (2012): 385-95. ProQuest Central. Web. 27 Oct. 2015.
Of those 389 books, a whopping 374 of those books were contemporary, this rounds out at about ninety-six percent of the books recorded being contemporary, and a measly 15 of those 389 books were classic. This shows how much books have changed over a long period of time, and how much more difficult it is to avoid these types of books. The overall most common reason for challenges within each category is for sexually explicit content.

A high rate of thirty-one percent of the classic books challenged, were challenged for racism portrayed within them, of the contemporary books only two percent of them were challenged for the same reason. Racism was obviously bigger decades ago, than it is now, which is definitely the reason why so many more classics were challenged because of racism compared to contemporaries, considering that the classic books were written decades ago.

Why is it that even those classic books that were challenged are still so much safer, content wise, than the challenged contemporary books? First off, books were not as effective at doing whatever it is they were intended back then, compared to now. So a violent classic book would not be as descriptive or exciting as a contemporary or more modern book of the same genre, another big difference between classic and contemporary books is the language. The language in classic books makes the reader feel much less included compared to language and vocabulary used now, words like thou and thee sound distant when interpreted through text and would make modern audiences feel unincluded.

Another question many people are asking is, “How come measures have not been taken to protect people from the threat that is far more dangerous than inappropriate material in books?”, online material. Even when students are on a school’s internet, there are still many other ways for them to get through to inappropriate content. There is also, an extreme surplus of the negative material on the internet compared to what is in books. Which sounds more dangerous?, a child going into a library to read, and finding a little inappropriate content in the book they picked, or a child using their phone, that they have in their pocket almost every hour of the day, to access amounts of negative information which are numbered in the millions.

Besides the slight strain on the eyes from reading too long, there really is nothing negative that can come from reading a book. All banning books is, is a way to give people excuses to not enrich their learning through them.

Some author’s projects that were very close to not being released have ended up being world renowned best selling books including, L.

Frank Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz”, a book that has been well known around the world for over a decade, also a book that has definitely opened the door for many fantasy books written recently. To think that such an important and influential piece of work was almost held back because it did not seem appropriate for that time just seems like an insane notion. The banning of that book over a decade ago could have deprived the our generation of the creation of books like, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Percy Jackson Series, and Harry Potter”, this could have changed the definition of children’s and fantasy books

forever.
Not to mention the fact that lessons learned by characters in this novel can be applied to real life and most likely have been considering the fact that children very seriously take advice from characters with authority in both novels and movies. Yet people still feel the need to ban and hold back books that might have even become more groundbreaking and influential than, “The Wizard of Oz”, itself. The question that needs to be asked is not, what in this book might cause a bad influence on its audience, but what might people learn from this book, and will it improve the behavior of its intended audience.

Another point that people need to think about is the fact that knowledge is growing for the human species, and with more knowledge comes more corruption. Technology is rapidly improving and also attracting younger audiences, with easier ways to access information, the youngest of people will always be at risk of running into things that are inappropriate for their age or level of maturity. It is pointless for us to continue to protect people from so many things that will most definitely catch up to them sooner or later.

Every year, more information is beginning to creep into younger age groups and is starting to become common knowledge among students that are many years younger than the intended age group for such information. People who feel the need to try protecting the youth from things that are impossible to protect them from are living too cautiously and are not giving the youth the credit they deserve. The largest and most important findings in history were not discovered by those being cautious, but they were discovered by people who are not afraid to take risks.

If everything was banned due to a few curse words or very graphic descriptions of mature material, then the whole world would be banned. It just isn’t possible for us to take such large precautions. Somebody who is raised without being exposed to anything that is not for them, will not be able to function in the real world when things like that happen constantly, in a school environment children will hear or see inappropriate things on a daily basis.

No child born after the 20th century will hear a curse word for the first time at an appropriate age to hear it, whether it was said on accident by a parent or seen in a movie, inappropriate things are unavoidable in today’s society.

Any parent that has raised children or taught children and kept them from hearing a curse word until they were in at least middle school should be awarded with the best parent award, no child has ever asked when to use a curse word to their parent or guardian while attending middle school, logically the furthest they might possibly get without hearing a curse word or hearing things about sexual content is around the second or third grade.

Overall what is banning books good for? Well from limiting intelligence in children to holding back their social skills there really aren’t any true benefits received from banning books, which begs the question, why do we still try to defend people from what can’t be defended against? The solution is simple, allow this knowledge to flow freely and let the youth learn what is necessary for a proper life. Maybe this is the key that will lead to the next big inventor, civic activist, or author.