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What are your favorite books? My two faves are To Kill a Mockingbird and Winnie the Pooh. I’ve discussed the struggles of Scout, Jem and Atticus with thousands of students over the years and never tired of the novel’s colorful language and fundamental themes. Sadly, that incredible book is on the chopping block in many schools.
Thankfully, Pooh Bear has avoided the cut.
I understand there’s a movement afoot to ban books in schools across the country, and I’m deeply disturbed by it. The free speech nonprofit, PEN America, has taken on this issue. (This esteemed organization was founded in 1922 with founding members such as Willa Cather, Eugene O’Neill, Robert Frost, Ellen Glasgow, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Benchley, and Booth Tarkington.)
In a recent study, PEN America found over 2,500 instances of book bans last year in 138 school districts across 32 states, affecting over four million students. Smithsonian Magazine published an article about their report, Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools. Apparently the most banned book last year was a memoir about a queer student. A memoir. Come on!
What are people afraid of? Who’s behind this?
According to the Smithsonian article,
PEN America identified 50 groups, some with hundreds of regional chapters, pushing for book bans across the country. The majority of those groups— 73 percent—have formed since 2021. “This is a concerted, organized, well-resourced push at censorship,” [said] Suzanne Nossel, the chief executive of PEN America.
The article also points out that over 40 percent of the banned titles address LGBTQ themes. 22 percent involve sexual content (teen pregnancy, sexual assault, and abortion), and 21 percent address race and racism. These are all important issues that young people need to understand, not ignore.
We need books, even those that challenge us. I’m a firm believer in learning about life (and yourself) through literature. Heck, I was an English teacher. Education is about teaching students the skills to survive and thrive in our modern world. They need to read, write, compute— and evaluate. If we protect them from seeing or reading anything that challenges them (or us), how will they learn to deal with these issues? Life isn’t easy, and literature is one way to experience different dimensions of the world vicariously. Let’s teach our students to THINK, not shelter them from things that might make them uncomfortable.
Huckleberry Finn is on the banned list, probably because of the repeated use of the n-word. I taught it to high school juniors for years. Many of my students struggled with Twain’s use of dialect for Huck, but they all enjoyed our final project. They were each assigned a role in a mock school board meeting where community members insisted that Huckleberry Finn be expunged from the curriculum. Students played their roles well, from the retired army major board member offended by the n-word to an intellectual housewife defending the book. What impressed me year after year was that my students took the issue seriously, considering the pros and cons. After our “school board” listened to arguments on both sides, they invariably voted to keep the book in the curriculum (as every school board should).
What these students learned through this experience was not just Huck’s story, but the historical context of the situation and the angst he felt for supporting his black friend, Jim. They also learned to think through the value of the book and its themes as well as understanding the current inappropriateness of the language. They learned to THINK and EVALUATE. They also learned about the dangers of censorship.
Before you vote in the next election, do your homework. Think carefully and evaluate the issues each candidate supports. And—fight for free speech.
Have you read Fahrenheit 451? We don’t want to go there.
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