Book Banning is Not the Answer

Book Banning is Not the Answer

From the outright banishment of Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic for encouraging children to “break rather than wash” their dishes to the rise of “sensitivity readers” as an integral part of the publishing process, books have been banned, burned, and purified for many years and for even more reasons. Though such approaches, at least in school settings, intend to shelter students from, or at least reduce their exposure to, unsavory, controversial topics, such restrictions and limitations―such censorship―detriment more so than benefit students, especially when not only is a book’s original text altered, it’s blacklisted as well.

Whether it be single usages or repeated phrases, language has long been a justification for book censorship. And as evidenced in southern California’s 2010 ban, of all things, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary due to its definition of a certain phrase, clearly no text is safe from such treatment. But to ban a dictionary because of a single definition―whatever it may be―is to ban the dictionary’s other 470,000 words, ironically including “censorship” and “ludicrous” (not to mention other vulgarities and obscenities). And still, if a dictionary was kept in the classroom as it should be, whether a student flips to that particular page to that particular definition by chance or purpose, it’s likely better from a parent’s or teacher’s standpoint, that a student be first exposed to such a term from the impersonal type of a dictionary than the graphic imagery and explanations of a classmate. Which reveals another issue with removing the dictionary. Besides the fact that students just wanting to define an unfamiliar word can’t, such action may prevent wanderings to or protect students from learning a certain definition at school, but fails to address the fact that at their homes, in their own dictionaries, if students are so curiously inclined―as they likely are―they may look up the very phrase they were unable to and  “share” their findings the next morning―essentially producing the exact effect supposed to have been prevented.

As evidenced in the warranted-or-not war Venado Middle School, armed with fat, black markers, waged against Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and all its “hells” and “damns,” much more effective means of controlling access to language do in fact exist. Though it is certain that Bradbury would have preferred the novel be read in its original form―“hells” and “damns” in all―surely blacking out offensive language is a much better alternative to doing away with the book entirely. As for the aforementioned banned dictionary, following the example of Venado Middle School is the easiest solution of all considering the word is 1) alphabetized and 2) can be shaded over without detracting from the rest of the text. Though no one wants students running amok armed with an arsenal of foul language, parents and teachers should, by all means, opt for censorship with black ink over banishment with trash cans if done so for the sake of maintaining an age-appropriate environment in regard to language.

But for many books, banishment isn’t as easily undone with black markers―especially those books banned for controversial racial or sexual content. Take Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a novel which unearthed to an America on the brink of civil war the horrors and treacheries of slavery. It’s been banned for racial stereotyping and language. So has Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Fitzgerald’s masterpiece The Great Gatsby for language and mere sexual references. Walt Whitman’s poetry collection Leaves of Grass for homosexual themes. But all are American classics and all indeed captured, at one time or another, the essence of America: what America was, who Americans were, and whether or not America needed to change. The equivalent of Christians banning the Bible or Muslims the Qur’an, banning these texts deprives young Americans of the opportunity to sip the lifeblood of their country, to admire classic artifacts, to touch and hold and read history.

But not just classics deserve to be read and saved from banishment. Because similar reasons are often cited for banning contemporary books, and most recently, with a target on sexuality, as evidenced in Figure 1.

Though not one of these most challenged books, Jay Asher’s 13 Reasons Why has still aroused controversy regarding its sexual themes and approach to teen suicide and depression, especially considering its recent adaptation into a film series with a whole other set of problems. According to the New York Post, as “one of only a few school leaders in the country who has taken [13 Reasons Why] out of circulation”, though Leigh Grasso, the Mesa County Valley School District curriculum director’s intentions to suspend the book were out of respect for victims of a recent succession of teen suicides, this was, unfortunately, an inappropriate means of addressing the situation. Because in effect, by banning the book and really any conversations that may have spawned from it―the main intention of author Jay Asher―Grasso not only directed attention away from the book but from the issues of sexual misconduct and suicide themselves, when the contrary could have been much more beneficial for this community.    

In my own community, having suffered the loss of a loved and respected teacher also to suicide, though I did not know the teacher myself, rather than allowing this loss to become diluted with every passing day, I resolved to educate myself about this issue. The first place I went: 13 Reasons Why. The book, that is. Though I may have been able to circumvent a school-wide ban on this book by reading it in my cool bed with a warm light burning, it seemed much more appropriate to read it at school―in the environment in which I best learn and where I could ask my teachers questions and discuss this issue with classmates. I understand that others may have reacted differently to this story, but personally, from this novel, I not only learned about suicide and how even seemingly insignificant actions can produce drastic consequences, I realized that every story deserves to be told and read and heard. Hannah Baker’s, the seven students’ in Mesa County Valley, the teachers in my community. Because sure, the “hells” and “damns” and “f---s” of writing can be done away with, but never should the actual stories―the substance. And without that book, without the ability to read that book at a critical time, though I would not have committed suicide myself, I may never have learned what I needed to about this issue and perhaps even have gone about my own affairs without so much as a second thought.

And still, as the American Library Association determined, with 42% of book challenges initiated by concerned parents, though parents should be all means reserve the right to regulate their child’s reading, that’s really all they should be able to control: their child’s reading. Quite frankly, my parents explicitly forbade 13 Reasons Why, and considering other teenagers like myself are willing (and capable) of reading materials forbidden by parents, there is no question that the same can and will occur against the wishes of school staff and administrators. Clearly, banning books is a flawed tactic.

As evidenced, banning books does not eradicate those same books from existence nor prevent them from being read or written, but regardless, there have been unfortunate shifts to “identify potential pitfalls in a novel’s premise or execution” (Alter) by means of so-called “sensitivity readers.” Though intentions are once again well-meaning, as these readers sweep through drafts, and in some instances, through books recalled from publication, sanitizing books so that they glance by but never directly address “potentially offensive” or inflammatory issues, such censorship (as it should be called), homogenizes modern literature, and will continue to do so, until each bookshelf in America ends up something like the one in Figure 2.

Figure 2

No one wants to celebrate a week like this one.

By allowing writers to just write―to fill their canvases of blank screens and white pages with ink type and graphite streaks, to write without concerns of “purifying” their work so as not to be at the risk of controversy or banishment, only then will their audiences, especially student audiences, be able to relate to and understand their work. Because if schools become saturated with stock literature and (as shown in Figure 2), simply “bland books”, students may very well stop reading and stop learning from their reading: two consequences certainly not intended by “sensitivity readers” and school administrators alike.

Though no one wishes to find a copy of 50 Shades of Grey (or worse) anywhere in elementary or even high school classrooms, students deserve to read just as much as writers deserve to write. As soon as either of those is taken away, either through banishment or censorship, though not true in all cases, students are deprived of a primary source of societal, cultural, historical, and most importantly, personal knowledge, while writers are deprived of a primary outlet through which they can share their own societal, cultural, historical, and personal knowledge. So books, even those that stir up controversy and are found offensive, should never be banned, and ideally, not censored (except in small, non-lethal doses), because when they are, Montag and the rest of the firefighters might as well put them up in flames.