Banned Books - Part 2

"Censorship is harmful because it results in the opposite of true education and learning. In the process of acquiring knowledge and searching for truth, students can learn to discriminate--to make decisions rationally and logically in light of the evidence. By suppressing all materials containing ideas or themes with which they do not agree, censors produce a sterile conformity and a lack of intellectual and emotional growth in students."--Censorship in the Schools: What Is It? How Do You Cope?

Banned books in school and public libraries produces a sterile conformity and a lack of intellectual and emotional growth in human beings. Do I not want to read (or keep children from reading) Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn because Mark Twain used the language of the day? Frankly offensive, racist language to us today?

No. Because it's written from his perspective during his lifetime--it's a commentary on our society as a whole, a look back at the injustices done to an entire race of people just because their skin is darker than mine. Was that right? Absolutely not. Should we ignore it or try to ban books that spotlight it?

Absolutely not.

We are what we read. I really believe that. And if we only read boring, vanilla books, that's what we'll be. Boring. Vanilla. Because these books don't make us stop and think. And isn't that--sometimes--why we read? To broaden our own horizons? To take us out of ourselves and put us in someone else's shoes for an hour or two?





"Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole. The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition." ~1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, American Association of University Professors