Book Banning

Supporters of banning say profanity can negatively influence the actions and thoughts of readers, especially younger readers that may not have heard or read many corrupt words. Huckleberry Finn, a book commonly inveighed for its use of contentious racial language, is commonly challenged for that reason. For USA Today, Martha Moore wrote, “When the younger reader is staring at that word five times on a given page and the instructor is saying, 'Mark Twain didn't mean this and you have to read it with an appreciation of irony,' you're asking a lot of a younger reader”. Granted, foul vocabulary is a challenge that academies need to address, but not through barring novels. Besides, if the reader is sufficiently mature for the book, they can still learn from it. For instance, some racial characterizations do not intentionally persecute people, but show the contrasting tensions between them, conforming to the time period. Again, the article “Huck Finn Navigating Choppy Waters Again” revealed, “The word is there for a reason… The word is terrible, it's hurtful, but it's there for a reason” (Moore). The racial epithets used in that book convey the attitude of Missouri in the 1840s when friction between African Americans and white people was rising. Additionally, banning a book due to concerns about the language is not beneficial to pupils because it prevents them from learning from other components of the book. “Often the organizations or schools that ban these books fail to see the book as a whole; they often center on the one page, the one scene or even the one word containing the offensive language or meaning and judge the whole book based on that one aspect,” according to an article by Adriana Lopez. She makes a sound point. A book contains a whole plot with themes that

Books are made for people to enjoy and learn from. Then why are people deciding that a book can’t be available to certain people based on certain parts of their content? This is happening all around the world and this is called book banning or censorship. Many books have been challenged and said to be too gruesome or too dark for readers and one very controversial section of censorship is the young adult section. People are saying that young adults should not be exposed to some topics and so they take the ‘dangerous’ books away. For example, a novel called Of Mice and Men, written by John Steinbeck, has been banned in libraries all across America. However, the novel Of Mice and Men should not be censored from teens because it gives information about history, it challenges readers to think in many different ways, and includes complex themes that can teach a lot to young adults.

The idea to ban certain books from schools and libraries is preposterous due to the manner in which the people trying to enforce these bans try to do so in. Banning books doesn’t help with the already present problem that our youth’s intelligence levels are already declining, and neither does allowing the freedom to all books. Banning certain books due to their constant use of inappropriate language, sexually explicit nature, and all around mature content has a respectfully reasonable reason to be inaccessible to younger audiences such as minors and teens; not young adults. The banning of books in libraries is outright inexcusable, unless the material is directly racist, subjective religious content, and all around hatred for a certain race or ethnicity; not if it’s used for fictional writing, in a softer manner mid you, to express the conflict in a story and/or to show real world problems, same go for non-fictional writing that expresses ideals in a manner of which isn’t disrespectful to other ideals and that do so in a manner of which isn’t so subjectively and deliberately showing hate for a certain race or ethnicity, especially

Books are a gateway to a world of imagination, but some schools are trying to shut those gates off by banning them. Books are some of the best teachers left, it's not up to a school to decide what a child should or should not read. Banning books can deprive a child of the opportunity to think. Books should not be banned because of the lessons they can teach, the fact that a school should not even be able to ban them, and it can deprive a child of the opportunity to think.

The main argument for why certain books are banned in schools is because the students need to be protected from the content within the books. For example, 13 Reasons Why, a novel about a teenager who commits suicide and leaves behind thirteen tapes containing her reasons has been banned from schools such as the Colorado School District, and some Canadian schools. The book was deemed as “negative portrayals of helping professionals.” and according to Lora Strum writer of the article “Banning books like ’13 Reasons Why’ makes it harder for teens to open up to adults, the author says”, “the book glamorized suicide”. As a whole, the school districts either took

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank was banned in Wise County, Virginia because of “objections to sexually offensive passages” (American Library Assiciation). The natural changes that women go through in life were belligerent to these people, even though it was only the honest opinion of a young girl. In cities in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Virginia and Texas banned Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain because it was considered “dangerous with its objectionable language and ‘racist’ terms and content” (American Library Association). That all happened at one point or another and to move on we must learn to accept the racism of the past not hide it from children. The same with another classic banned from cities in New York, Illinois, Missouri, and in Warren Township Schools, Indiana, this book is one of my favorite books in the world, and to think that it could be banned because of because of “profanity and [the] undermining of race relations” is depressing (American Library Association). This book is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Without these books much of the children would be ignorant of the past, only learning what history sees

People are thinking to ban books which I think is really bad. Everywhere and everyday people are saying that some books need to be banned because some use the “n” liberally word in a different meaning and if you erase the book well you are kind of erasing history.

Throughout time, countless great children’s books have been published and then loved by many. To name a few, Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling, Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. What do these three books have in common? They were all published as children’s books, then kept out of their hands for numerous reasons. Parents and teachers claimed these books were unfit for children’s reading. They either introduced topics that were not open to them yet or went against their lifestyle. All around the world, great books are being kept from children for doltish reasons. They are being censored, then banned from their eyes. Taking this literature from them is ruining their childhood; it is preventing children from learning about the world and being ready for it. Censoring in children’s books needs to become less harsh or else they are going to grow up in a sealed world.

Banning books seems like a great idea, but in reality people are going to read, and do, whatever they want to. A lot of books have explicit language, violence, and sexual content. Most kids know about all of those things, even though they shouldn’t know about those things. Banning them from reading a book that includes those explicit things, at school, doesn’t mean they won’t go and read it at home, or at a friends house. Schools, and public libraries, have been trying to ban certain books with, what they see as, inappropriate content for many years now. Everyone has a different opinion on what is appropriate and what is not. Kids going to public schools are going to hear, and learn, explicit language, see violence, and probably even see people doing sexual things, or at least hear about it. Authors are going to write about whatever they want, it is their right to express how they are feeling, or what they are thinking. The Bible was also on the banned book list, and most people would argue that anyone who is reading The Bible is a Christian. It shouldn’t matter what content is in The Bible, if that’s not your religion you have no sense reading that book. Banning books is not going to keep kids from learning things, that in reality, they shouldn’t be learning. Banning books, in the end, is really hurting the author more than anyone.

A famous educator and historian by the name Alfred Whitney Griswold once said, “Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail… the only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas” (Webster’s). This can be seen in Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, by showing us that even though a whole community does not question the ethics of banning books, if one person begins to understand the idea of the communities ignorance the whole situation could change drastically.

In addition, “protecting” children from the difficulties of the world through censorship isn’t teaching them anything. They are just becoming more narrow-minded, shallow, and even less human. The information in books does not injure young people, they just open up their minds to new things and new ways. Such as in Fahrenheit 451, the people were not protected by censorship, but in the end they were hurt by it. I think that it is up to the parents to educate their children that just because they say it in a book, does not mean he or she should do or feel the same. Think about this, if we got rid of everything people object to, there would be nothing left in the world. Also with censorship, children are not being exposed to the “real world,”

“Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance”. – Laurie Henderson. By banning books, it can deprive children the information or the mental nourishment they will need for life.

It is my belief that since by the time the child is required to read such literature in school, they are at an age where they can distinguish between things that should and should not be said and it is the job of the parents to educate the child that just because they say it in a book does not mean he or she should.Another subject common to banned and censored books is sexuality.

“Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance” (Laurie Halse Anderson - Speak and Chains). Banning books that teach important values and educate children on real world situations is only hurting them in the long run. For Huck Finn in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, growing up in times of racial injustice allows readers to see the value of not ignoring history’s real world problems and how they are portrayed in controversial American literature.

Some people do not realize that they affect the education of their children by banning certain books. The banning of books is banning the author's right to free speech which can hinder the education of Americans. In schools teachers have to worry about what readings they present to their students because they could have any parent coming after them for exposing their children to “heinous” or “bad” things when all it truly is, is literature used to broaden