Censorship of Books in School Should people be able to deny a student’s freedom to read any book they want to at school? Every time an adult bans a book, children lose the chance to gain knowledge from it. The students’ outlook on the world becomes narrower as they lose access to an insightful piece of literature, and prohibiting books like that limits a students’ access to fantastic literary texts. Book censorship in schools limits the education of minors, and the students’ can’t receive the full knowledge inside. Book banning has a huge negative effect on how students live, at school as well as at home.
But people are blind to see the actual message of the book and instead, looking at a few words in the book that seem offensive. Books like To Kill A Mockingbird and The Giver these books are banned because of some people think it’s not good for students to read it. But some of them are just banned for the craziest reasons like just for one thing the book has one bad word in it. Some people just make up so that there kids don’t have to read it. Like they say this book is going to teach my child to jaywalk, but jaywalking happens all the time and adults do it and kids just copy it not from a book.
Then, she says that teachers believe they portray such horrific behaviors that are immoral. We live in a world in which school shootings, drugs, and alcohol are rampant; therefore, professors shouldn’t teach those books in the classroom because they don't model good behavior. On the other hand, Omanovic points out in a report called Reading at Risk from the National Endowment for Arts that school districts are banning books. Instead of reading books, they’re more interested in the internet. The reports goes on to say that as more Americans lose an interest in reading the more our nation becomes "less informed, tolerant, and independent-minded."
(Lee 30). This quote helps me to understand Atticus' point of view on how he wants his children to judge people. He is teaching Scout a very good lesson right now. He is teaching her that you can't really talk about a person unless you have been in his or her position. I think that it is a very good lesson to teach Scout because she is still a young girl and at he school she has to put up with all kinds of judgmental people, she doesn't need to add to the mix.
Not only is there a strong chance that the book will bring back the use of the word Nigger, and other racist actions, but it also serves as a strong reminder to everyone, especially Americans, of a time in their country’s history that they would rather forget. However, isn’t education the key to stopping anything similar from ever happening? According to John Finch, the principal of Pasadena Middle School where some parents are pushing to ban the book, everyone is just over-reacting. “Children, young and old, are going to be exposed to racist ideas anyway, whether their parents like it or not.” “The school teaches core values that centre around equality, justice and diversity, and we have gone through a lengthy process in which we’ve talked to parents about the presence of the ‘N’ word. … We want to make sure children learn about justice and injustice, and one way to show that is to show negative and positive examples.” Ariel McSween, a 9th grade student of Pasadena School agrees with Mr Finch.
Then, she started calling him names such as “wacko” and “hypocrite”. The teacher told her to stop and called another student to give speech. Nobody got a chance to talk about the boy’s argument about the subject. The above case was an example of an ad hominem fallacy. It is defined as a fallacy that attacks a person rather than the argument itself (Seiler & Beall, 2011, p. 330).
In the book, this was not so apparent as they introduce this in the first page and with not much emphasis on this point. This helps my understanding of the novel as a whole because these children make some childish mistakes, and their values differ throughout the novel, showing the amount of growth that the children have went through. The third and possibly most important thing I've learned from the film and documentary was that To Kill a Mockingbird is about the imperfections in peoples lives and that not everyone will get along in society. It also shows how people with different social and economic statuses, clash with each other. From Jem and Scout's eyes it seems that everyone should get along but as the Tom Robinson case goes underway, they soon realize that things don't always seem the way they
Chris Street wrote an original research article, “Expository Text and Middle School Students: Some Lessons Learned”, and tells us that middle school students face difficulty reading expository texts because they were not taught how to read in this fashion while in elementary school. While in elementary school, they read short novels and chapter books, whereas, in middle school they are expected to read content area text. According to this article, teachers can help their middle school students overcome reading deficiencies by developing a student’s former knowledge on a subject before reading it. Street provides very good strategies on how to engage students with expository text, which consists of: before reading, during reading, and after reading. Before reading strategies include developing
To Whom It May Concern: Do you want your children and students getting an extra dosage of vulgar language, sexually rated scenarios, and issues that are awful enough to cause depression? In the book The Catcher in the Rye all of these issues are present. Everything from filthy language written on walls, to the purchase of a prostitute, all of this is present in this novel. This book is not helping solve the issues that teenagers are facing in these days. That is why it should be banned from schools across the country.
A banning is the removal of those materials.” (American Library Association). When the book is banned, it has been effectively removed from a school or library and is no longer available for use. Even though those who challenge and ban the book have the best intentions, they are not only hindering the learning process, but are also keeping children and young adults from creating their own opinions. There are many reasons why a book has either been banned or challenged. The top three reasons seem to be that the book is either sexually explicit, had offensive language, or unsuited to any age group.