The top three reasons seem to be that the book is either sexually explicit, had offensive language, or unsuited to any age group. Others are deemed oppressive, racially insensitive, violent, or just plain obscene and controversial. Despite the good parents and school officials believe they are doing for their children, they are essentially keeping them from the knowledge they need and deserve to become an intelligent part of society. Let the
Intro Censorship is defined as the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable. Fahrenheit 451 is not only a book based on censorship, but it is also a widely censored book itself! The main character, or “Montag” as he is called, was once a book burner, but converted into a lover of literature who challenged censorship in the end. Basically, books are banned if they are thought to have a negative impact on the reader, or are deemed unacceptable for school, children, or whatever the setting may be. The book I read “A Wrinkle in Time” by Madeleine L'Engle is another example of a censored 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."
Today, children view school as a “place of danger”, and their main focus is to avoid danger as much as possible (Holt 360). This danger comes in the form of mistakes on tests, quizzes, and homework assignments in which the children earn grades based on what they are able to remember at that time, instead of making a long-term connection between the educational content and the children’s own distinct method of learning. Teachers, despite their best intentions, diminish the children’s will to read when they conform to these “conventional” methods of teaching. These methods have made a game, between the teachers and students, out of learning to read; a game in which the students are to guess what the teachers want to hear and to agree with the conclusions the teachers draw. This gives children the impression that reading is dangerous, because they don’t want to make mistakes and lose the game.
Parents should definitely have a right to say what their children can and cannot read, but they do not have the freedom to say what other children can or cannot read. Once a parent complains to a school, the school can’t do anything except pull the book out of the curriculum, and that is not equitable to anyone. There are plenty of reasons that people have come up with to justify banning a book. For example: “they teach children to spy” or “it encourages children to break dishes so they
Although censorship is needed with issues concerning children, majority of censorship is a violation of our rights because what one person may find offensive and obscene does not necessarily represent that all citizens. The freedom to read is essential to the democratic way of life. But today, that freedom is under attack. The government is working to remove both books and periodicals from sale, to exclude certain books from public schools, to censor and silence magazines and newspapers, and to limit "controversial" books and periodicals to the general public. The overthrow of reading materials is defeat of creative thought.
The Language Police: CH 4 In chapter 4 of Diane Ravitch’s, The Language Police, she explains how political pressure groups have imposed censorship on textbook publishers. Publishing companies do not only exclude questions that are believed to be biased, but exclude questions that exemplify any form of controversy. The book states, “It is better to be bland than to be controversial” (Ravitch). Workers of publishing companies go on to say that anything that might make a student uncomfortable should be left out of the question. History is going to make people uncomfortable no matter what.
The Sadker’s open their “Hidden Lessons” work by stating that “it is difficult to detect sexism unless you know precisely how to observe it” (Sadker, and Sadker 55). It is clear that the authors feel that sexism and biasing are current issues and happening but being left unattended by school administrators across the country. The article uses the uneven distribution of time that the teachers give the male students over the female students as their prime example of favoritism. They formed their conclusions after sampling classroom activities in a leading Washington D.C. private school and used a statistical system as a model to hypothesize outcomes in other areas of the country. In addition to the Sadker’s sampling evidence and their conclusions; they also expose asymmetric teacher-pupil interaction instances where teachers use female students as props while the boys are allowed to dominate the lecture discussion.
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.
Not only is this a horrible solution to hate speech but it is completely violating students’ right to free speech. Students must think twice before making a statement that may not even be offensive to anyone but with the speech code in effect the student may be facing punishment because of it. In the passage by Alan Charles Kors titled, “The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses”, the author gives an example of unfair punishment due to the speech code enforced at Carnegie Mellon University. Kors wrote, “At Carnegie Mellon University, a student called his female opponent in an election for the Graduate Student Organization a ‘megalomaniac’. He was charged with sexual harassment” (Kors paragraph 4).