Censorship is an ugly word that one only thinks of when they think about countries like North Korea, Nazi Germany, and Communist Russia. Yet, every single day censorship, predominantly of books, occurs in our great country in high schools across the map is doing anything about it. Quite frankly, there are more people lobbying to have more books taken out of high schools than put in them. Some of the reasons are due to “explicit material” or “offensive language.” To me, this is utterly atrocious.
Recently a story was posted on the news website, “RawStory,” about an Illinois high school and their removal of books due to parent outcry. I’ll get to the parent outcry in a minute, but what was most appalling was the books that were the “problem”: The Lovely Bones, The God of Small Things, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
The fact that I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was recommended to be banned alone leaves me disgusted. Maya Angelou wrote this book is an American literary classic about overcoming racism and trauma. Yes, the subject matter can get violent and suggestive at times, but that should not matter. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a book about REAL events, and things that happened every day back in the time of the book, and it involves issues that live on to this day.
If parents are to try and coddle their children by complaining to the school board that a book has a little sexual and violent material in it, then I want to have absolutely nothing to do with that school district. Kids in high school, and they are on the cusp of adulthood. If kids aren’t allowed to read books like Maya Angelou’s classic, then why should they read books like Brave New World, which is all about drugs? Or why should they read In Cold Blood, which is about a grisly murder? I read these books and many others like them in high school, and they prepared me for what the real world is like. Coddling high school kids and forcing them not to read books that could potentially change their outlook on the world on a subject matter that is in dire need of change is, quite frankly, criminal.
On the Matter of Parents, they have absolutely no reason to be sticking their opinions to the school board and causing problems. I for one unequivocally hate a parent’s own personal beliefs make it so an entire school full of kids with their own beliefs cannot decide for themselves. America is founded on the basis of freedom of the press, where anything can be said and printed. Censorship is strongly opposed in our country, and we have fought very hard for many years so we can live in a country where we can read whatever we want, know whatever knowledge we seek, and not be questioned because of it.
The mother in the story from “RawStory” was quoted as saying “The sexual content is too much for their young minds to process. As an adult, yes, we can process that, but as a 14-, 15-, 16-year-old, I don’t think they have the neurological (power) to process that.” High school is the first time that kids around the country are asked to start thinking for themselves and making their own decisions. High schools are the place where kids of those ages gain the ability to process information of that nature, and banning books effectively dampers their ability to do so. Banning books like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings goes against everything high schools should stand for, and its banning is just another way that children are being forced to think and act a certain way.
Censorship in high schools is a thing that should not exist by any means. If some parents truly do not want their children to read certain books, then perhaps schools should treat books like movies; send out “permission slips” that require a parents signature to read the book and see the movie. This way, one parent’s ridiculous views doesn’t have to ruin the proper education that the rest of the school is getting.
Kids in high schools have every right to know about our country’s deep-rooted prejudices and our efforts to overcome them. Kids have every right to know about the struggles of all walks of life, because it is exactly that: real life. Books in high school get kids ready for the problems of the real world because, guess what: mommy is not going to hold your hand forever, and kids will be in for a rude awakening if they are not ready. It is the kids who were coddled in school and who were given everything without even trying that end up being the entitled little problems that we currently deal with today. It is the kids that have no idea what the real world has in store that are not able to comprehend the issues of the day and are unable to make a real difference until they learn about them.
There are always going to books that have very serious and violent subject matters, and schools are always going to want to teach them. A child being denied the right to read a book in school due to sexual or violent content is inexcusable, and the parents that have voted to remove I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, among many others, should be downright ashamed.
