Censorship and Material Selection Policies

A book is a door into a new world. When someone writes, they choose their words carefully so that the story flows, makes sense, and goes along with what they are writing about. Everything from the scenery, to the way a certain character talks is thought about and brought to life by a few simple scratches on a page. Some people want to suppress the writings of geniuses just because of an image, idea, or phrase on the grounds that they are morally objectionable by the standards applied by a censor. It has been like this for ages. As long as someone has something to tell, another will be there to try and prevent them. Schools have been doing this for quite a while now and there is a need to stop it. Censorship of books in schools should not be allowed as many students will never get to experience classic literature if not exposed to it early on.

"Intellectual Freedom is the right of every individual to both seek and receive information from all points of view without restriction. It provides for free access to all expressions of ideas through which any and all sides of a question, cause or movement may be explored. Intellectual freedom encompasses the freedom to hold, receive and disseminate ideas” said at the Intellectual Freedom and Censorship Question & Answer (American Library Association). If this is the case, then we are limiting the amount of knowledge children could potentially gain by reading a novel deemed “explicit” by censors. It’s done everyday and sometimes in the most obvious ways possible. Other times, it’s barely seen, even to the person doing it as they carefully select one book and not the one just beside it to read in their classroom. Simple choices are made, but this is also censoring even though that word is ...

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Duthie, Fiona. "Libraries and the Ethics of Censorship." Australian Library Journal 59.3 (2010): 86-94. Print.

Foerstel, Herbert N. Banned in the U.S.A.: A Reference Guide to Book Censorship in Schools and Public Libraries. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994. Print.

Maxwell, Marilyn, and Marlene Berman. "To Ban or Not to Ban: Confronting the Issue of Censorship in the English Class." Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 41.2 (1997): 92. Print.

National Coalition Against Censorship. "Censorship in Schools: Learning, Speaking, and Thinking Freely: The First Amendment in Schools." Censorship in Schools: Learning, Speaking, and Thinking Freely: The First Amendment in Schools. WebJunction, 21 Mar. 2012. Web. 10 Feb. 2014.