Importance Of Censorship In The Picture Of Dorian Gray

Once upon a time, in a world not far from here, there are students who are forced to miss their annual train ride to Hogwarts, lock the wardrobe to the magical land of Narnia, and walk through the English countryside themselves instead of upon the back of Black Beauty. Why are these students deprived of those occurrences? They live in America, the land of the free- except when it comes to the books they can read. In fact, many schools across America exercise the practice of banning books. Since 1982, libraries, parents, and schools have attempted to ban 11,300 novels, according to the American Library Association. The essentially innoxious books are challenged for an assortment of reasons, including use of malapropos language, graphic or explicit

The Catcher in the Rye. The Scarlet Letter. Huckleberry Finn. Harry Potter. The Diary of Anne Frank. Animal Farm. To Kill a Mockingbird. The Da Vinci Code. The Grapes of Wrath. These literary classics have been vital to the education of many, especially children and adolescents (Banned Books). These great novels both teach important values and educate children about world affairs and classic themes. Unfortunately, each of these novels has been banned at one point in time. In a country where freedom is so adamantly advocated, it is a wonder that an issue like censorship would even come up, that such a controversy would sink its claws into the minds of states’ boards of education across the nation.

Brenyo, M. (2011). [Censored]: Book banning in the US education system. Journal of Law & Education, 40(3), 541–549.

The act of book banning could prove beneficial to the society because it could keep the students and youth of our culture away from books with a bad influence or things that would not help them in any way, shape, or form. “If a book is deemed offensive, some may argued, that it is promoting ideas which can have a detrimental influence on individuals (often children) and on society as a whole” (Aliprandini, Sprague 2016). This quote proves that those who believe that book banning is a good idea have valid reasons to believe so. Although books should not be banned, there is solid evidence that proves otherwise.

It is understood why somebody may think that books should not be banned at schools because by doing this parents are hurting their children by restrain their knowledge. When a quality book is banned, the children lose the opportunity to learn from that book. It is better supported that, some books should be banned from schools because they can introduce students to unacceptable topics and teach them bad or useless

Banned for its’ “pornographic” mention of adultery and obscenity of redemption for a sinner, The Scarlet Letter, is a novel based on a woman and her child in a town of hatred, religion, and the ugly truth.Challenged for the wrong reasons, The Scarlet Letter shows real Puritan reactions to sin and modern day feminism. A classic banned book and read by many classes just to prove the injustice of keeping the hypocrisy of the people in the book silenced. The exact reasons that this book got banned and is still up for interrogation should be the reason it’s talked about in every classroom and have a lot more credit for its’ bluntness in such a fragile state of time.

School boards and teachers have a responsibility for protecting the minds of their students and covering age appropriate material. However, does this responsibility cover the extreme act of banning books from school classrooms? Does not the teacher have a duty to introduce to their students world issues in order to better the students ability to cope with problems in the world? How does a school decide which books should be banned from the classroom, and should it be left up to the teacher to decide what is decided in his/her classroom. By banning books from the classroom, we prevent our students from learning about controversial topics in a safe environment, and we also encroach upon the student’s freedom of reading what they want in

Censors typically feel as though the subject material of controversial books in the high school English curriculum is too much for teenagers to handle (Shen, 2002).

From the very beginnings of literature, the act of banning books has long been a heated controversy. While almost everyone can say that there are definitely books that they do not want their children reading, the line between what is acceptable and what is not is much harder to define, especially in today’s world. In “How Banning Books Marginalizes Children” (2016), Paul Ringel argues that the current policy of banning books has had a negative impact on children because it has conveyed a message that rebuffs diversity and has contradicted the fact that the power to ban books should be used to “curate children’s choices with the goals of inspiring rather than obscuring new ideas.”

School boards, principals, and teachers have a responsibility for protecting the minds of their students by covering grade and age appropriate material in the classroom. However, does this given responsibility cover the act of banning books from their classrooms? As an advocate for each student, does the teacher not have a duty to introduce the students to a these words issues in order to help the student cope with the different problems in the world? How does a school decide which books should be banned and how much say does the teacher have what should be left up to the teacher? Some say that banning books from the classroom, we prevent them from learning about different controversial topics in a safe and secure environment. In this paper I reflect on my research question: Why do schools ban books in the classroom?

How many of you have heard of the book The Lord of the Rings? Or how about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone? Did you know that at one point in time for some reason or another these books were banned? They even banned a childhood classic Where The Wild things Are (TeenVogue.com). Even here in Pasco county Books like Looking for Alaska and Perks Of Being A Wallflower were banned from all school library shelves. The fact is since nineteen eighty two eleven thousand three hundred books have been banned due to violence, negativity or political bias. In my opinion banning books is detrimental to the education process. Schools should not be allowed to ban books because this takes great works of literature away from young adults. There are many

One counterpoint of the argument of the topic is that banning books hinders students from discovering new things and obtaining knowledge. According to the article, “Banning Books: An Overview”, Michael Aliprandini and Carolyn Sprague state, “The core arguments against the banning of books have been based on protecting the rights of individuals to free speech as well as to promote intellectual freedom – the rights protected by the First Amendment.” They are basically explaining how arguments of book banning connect to the idea of intellectual freedom and protecting individual rights, which are implied in the First Amendment. Censorship of books can be expressed as violating the rights and freedom of the individuals. Boyd and Bailey support this idea of intellectual freedom by presenting how banning books in schools with the quote from their journal, “Censors evoke barriers to free thought and speech when they block knowledge acquisition, intellectual development, as well as creative and critical thinking…” (Boyd and Bailey, 655). In other words, students will not be able to develop the academic skills they need in order to succeed in school if books are banned for them. Previously, there have been books banned from the school curriculum because of the

Often times when reading about a controversial topic we believe that removing the topic from schools helps create a better environment for students. The freedom to read or speak shouldn’t allow censorship or banning of books for subject surrounding the matter of vulgar language usage, violent situations or often controversial topics to be taught at schools. The removal of banned books is to help protect children and young adults from knowing about the world and the hardship that follow along with it. With banning books we decide what is seen as a good choice in books that we allow students to read for the safety of people's beliefs.

“It’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written, the books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers” (Blume 1999). Judy Blume can not explain the problem of book censorship any clearer. The children are the real losers because they are the ones that are not able to read the classic works of literature which are the backbone of classroom discussions all across the United States.

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