So, why do school boards choose to keep such books away from children when hundreds of other people say that these books have academic value? William Faulkner, for example, is an author whose books have appeared on the banned books list and have been challenged by a number of school districts. Yet, in most advanced placement classes his works are a required read. What is it that makes books such as his cause people to ban them? The novel As I Lay Dying is one of William Faulkner’s more famous works.
Dear Editor: Censorship in public libraries is inconsiderable, unreasonable, and absurd. It must be eliminated from the minds of our town council. If a book is not acceptable for patrons under eighteen, I feel either the patron’s parents or the patron himself should decide so. The town council and the public library have no idea whether a patron is responsible enough to read a book with possible adult themes. Censorship is also ridiculous because most classic novels involve questionable language, or somewhat violent material.
One of the most important reasons to why library censorship is unacceptable is that it limits our information resources. In other words, we will not have the right to receive and source our assignments with quotes and information from banned books, nor will we have the right to read certain books from some of our favorite authors. There are many books that are banned from people or more likely students under the age of 17 (Koss 29). One of these books is
William Barnard WR 121 Essay 1.2 10/18/10 Censorship in Schools: Ignoring The First Amendment Since 1980 Judy Blume, famous author of multiple “banned” books, once wrote, regarding how one feels when a piece of their work gets censored, “Chilling. It’s easy to become discouraged, to second- guess everything you write.”* Blume wrote this in the introduction of a book she edited about censorship. Blume, having experienced the feeling of having her work censored many times is an expert on this subject. Censorship in schools is bad for not only does it discourage writers, it limits what students can read, write, and most importantly, learn about. Books should not be banned in schools, because they teach valuable life lessons that students should learn before adulthood.
They want a change in the education system so that children can prosper and be able to boost our declining economy. Children have always dreaded going to school because of boring classes and monotone teachers, but children are not only noticing this but so are influential adults. Robinson describes the school system as a factory forming students into what we want and banishing out the ones that do not reform into the model student. Moore agrees that the school system is suppressive when he says, “As soon as I entered high school-the public school system…I was walking the halls of a two-thousand-plus –inmate holding pen” (134). Moore felt trapped and earlier revealed that he dropped out of school sophomore year because he disliked school from first grade.
Dear whomever this may concern, I’ve recently discovered that one of my favorite books, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, is banned in several states including Illinois, and it is listed in the TOP 100 most challenged and banned books in the United States. Claims say that it is ranked there because of sexual content, drug use, and mild violence and touches on suicide, self-harm, masturbation, and domestic abuse in relationships. In my opinion, people should stop banning books as a result of sexual content, because if kids aren’t reading it at that age, they’ll just read it, or see it, or do it somewhere else eventually. Sheltering kids from everything you think is a “sin” or “uncalled for” or “just inappropriate” is absurd, because then, they’ll just find it somewhere else. Sex is the reason we’re here, so we should at least teach our kids about it to keep them informed or, at the very least, let them read a little bit about it.
Darkness is part of our everyday lives; while every child will react differently to “dark” stories they should not be protected from the realities of life; they should be exposed and educated about those realities. Encyclopedia.com defines censorship as the “official restriction of any expression believed to threaten the political, social, or moral order.” Because books often present controversial ideas or challenge the status quo, they are frequent targets of censorship. Book censorship can happen at many levels; nationally or locally at the community level. As a result, books can be removed from schools or libraries. Some groups also turn to book burning as a manner of censorship.
Books are constantly being banned from all different places for all different reasons as well as from all age groups. Books are usually banned because of content such as profanity, sexual situations, or even witchcraft. But should they be banned to everyone just for these reasons? Books should not be banned to high school students and older. Student in high school are exposed to many different things, good and bad, as a part of growing up and maturing.
Suspension and Expulsion are not of use to improve our schools! Suspensions and expulsions are both disciplines that are given to students for their disruptive behaviors and actions. Even our own principal in our school disagrees; suspension and expulsion should be used. (Dale) Suspension and expulsion are not the solution to the problem because too much of these two can lead to dropout rates, it causes negative behavior to students, suspension and expulsion can stop future crimes and learn from their actions and students are not learning properly and not gaining any benefit from their education. Suspension and expulsion is not an effective tool and solution in our schools because it can lead to dropout rates and other violent crimes in the future.
Programs that help children to read are often cut by the schools due to so-called funding issues. The schools believe the reading is not critical compared with other subjects, such as writing, biology and math. Thus the schools’ ignorance causes the reading scores to drastically decline. Moreover, TV programs are full of commerce, politics or