Book Censorship In Schools Essay

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Books allow authors to express their thoughts, teach generations, and entertain the world with remarkable nonfictional and fictitious stories from the past, present, and future. Each story has its own ability to expand a reader’s knowledge and create a world full of possibilities and imagination. However, there is a thin line between what books are acceptable and inappropriate in the American education system, causing many books to be challenged. Book censoring is an act that removes offensive materials from circulation, which creates confrontations and curriculum modifications in American schools. To understand the purpose of book censorship and its impact on American education, this essay will examine why books are challenged in schools and …show more content…

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has experienced all three possible outcomes of censorship in different cities in the United States. A challenge occurred in 1974 at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois. After a five-year struggle, a group of African American parents successfully removed the novel from all required reading lists on the charge that it is “morally insensitive” and “degrading and destructive to black humanity” (Hentoff 22). Another incident resulted in the removal of Huckleberry Finn from every junior high school’s curriculum in Central Bucks County School District, located in Warrington, Pennsylvania, in 1982. The parents of an African American eighth-grader challenged the novel due to their child being harassed, physically and emotionally, by peers after reading the required text (Hentoff 26). In both cases, Huckleberry Finn was removed from the school’s curriculum, but continued to be shelved in local libraries. Although the novel was still technically available to students, the texts were placed on restricted shelves or hidden from public access to avoid extensive controversy, which is a form of self-censoring (Hentoff

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