Thoughts on Book Censorship

There is not a specific policy in our district. However there has been a lot of media lately about a book being challenged. It appears that if a parent has an issue with a book they can start a petition and/or contact the superintendent. It is then taken under advisement. I am glad that we do not have a policy in place, because that tells me that books do not get challenged in our district very often.

This is the recent newspaper article about a book being restricted in the district I teach in:

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_23746405/national-group-urges-adams-12-school-district-reject

I thought this was a really great excerpt from the newspaper article:

"We do understand this book has themes and content that are really challenging, but that's why it should be taught," foundation spokesman Drew Courtney said. "An important role of classrooms is to help students and young adults deal with that, to have those conversations in an intelligent way in the classrooms. Offering an alternative assignment is appropriate, but banning a prize-winning novel isn't prudence. It's censorship."

Censorship

The Harry Potter series is often challenged or banned from schools. I’m pretty sure it is banned because of the content including witchcraft. I can see where the “good intentions” behind banning these books came from: parents don’t want their kids believing this world of Harry Potter is real or investigating Wicca and witchcraft. But I think that as long as parents and teachers are talking to kids and explaining to them the difference between fact and fiction there is not a problem. Parents need to be involved with their kids’ education regardless of anything else. A trend I see in banned books is adults not wanting their kids exposed to certain content. But we cannot shield kids from the world. We have to introduce them to new things while simultaneously talking to our kids about the world around us.

I definitely think there is such a thing as a content appropriate book for children. For instance, I wouldn’t allow my third graders to read the Twilight books. I think the content isn’t appropriate for them. I believe that I as a teacher have a right to make that decision for my students. My students’ parents and my students themselves also have the right to make those decisions. But some adult in another state that doesn’t know my kids should not be able to ban a book and make that decision for them. I have not had any issues with banned books in my community or school. In fact, last week was banned books week and our library had a whole display of challenged books for kids to read. So we celebrated our freedom to read whatever we wanted.