Censorship In Public Schools Essay, Research Paper

Censorship in Public Schools

-A principal in a California high shcool bans five books written by Richard Brautigan because he thinks they might contain “obscenities or offensive sexual references” (Berger 59).

-A Vermont high school librarian is orced to resign because she fought the school board’s decision to remove Richard Price’s The Wanderers, and to “restrict” the use of Stephen King’s Carrie and Patrick Mann’s Dog Day Afternoon (Jones 33).

-An Indiana school board takes action that leads to the burning of many copies of a textbook that deals with drugs and the sexual behavior of teenagers (Berger 61).

These cases of censorship in public shools are not unusual and there is evidence that such challenges are increasing (Woods 2). These challenges are actually typical o the ones being leveled against school libraries today. These challenges can come from one person or a group concerned with the suitability of the material in question. In almost every case, the efort to ban books is said to be “justified by fesr of the harmful effects that the books may haave on young children” (Berger 59). The result of therse censorship attempts has been two opposing sides: one side believes that “more suitable materials can usually be found from among the wealth of materials available on most subjects (Woods 1). In the simplest terms, the debate is between censorship and the freedom to read.

The most important question when discussing censorship deals with its constitutionality; does censorship violate the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech? Censorship advocates actually use the words of the First Amendment to make their point; “the amendment reads, ‘Congress shall make no law…”, it does not say, “There shall be no law…” (Berger 69). They believe that, although the federal government is forbidden to censor, it is not unconstitutional for states and local communities to pass censorship laws (Berger 69). Also, since the US Supreme Court does not believe the First Amendment protects all froms of expression (child pornography, etc.), then proponents of censorship believe taht coensorship laws are constitutional (Berger 69). Anti-censorship has the upper-hand, constitutionally, at least, since “judges, from local courts to the Supreme Court, seem firmly on the anti-censorship side” (Berger 61). The courts have time and again ruled taht the Constitution prohibits Congress from censorship from censorship of any form.

These two opposing sides have butted heads again and again leaaving behind landmark cases for future legal actions. One of the most famous of thos ecases was Pico vs. Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26, which was the first school library censorship case to reach the Supreme Court (Jones 35). In March 1976, the Island Trees School Board in New York removed eleven books that they deemed “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy” (Berger 59) from the high school librarys helves. Among these books were Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, A hero Ain’t Nothing but a Sandwich by Alice Childress, and Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver (Jones 37). The board felt that it had “a moral obligationto protect the children in our schools from this moral danger” (Berger 60). Five students then sued the school board on grounds that their decision violated thir First Amendment rights. The suit was passed around the courts until June 1982 when the Supreme Court took up the cause and ruled that the school board would have to deend its removal of the books. The Supreme Court decided that since the library is used voluntarily, they can choose books ther freely and that, as Justice Brennan stated, “the First Amendment rights of students may be directly and sharply implicated by the removal of books from the shelves of a school library (Jones 45). The Supreme Court’s decision was that “courts may act out of concern for the First Amendment rights of those affected by school officials’ action” (Jones 45). On August 12, 1982, the school board voted to put the books back on the shelves; (special note: the librarian was told to inform the paarents of students who cheked out those books) (Berger 60).

The advocates of school library book censorship believe that adults must have control over what children read. They feel that unless responsible adults oversee what strdents are reading, students will be exposed to the wors in literature. this literature can go from simply causing ofense, to “resulting in emotional damage adn even leading to anti-social behavior” (Berger 61). Their beliefs lead them to pull the offending books from the shelves so that young readers are protected, as was the casse in Pico and as was the case when “Robin Hood was considered communistic, Tarzan wasl iving with Jane without benefit of clergy, and Huckleberry Finn was a racist” (Woods 13). Each time they use words like controversial, filthy, immoral, lascivious, lewd, obscene, sacrilegious, and violent, they are actually using only one word, censorship.

The anti-censorship group believes taht students have the same constitutional freedoms as everyone else, including the right to read whatever they want. They feel that it is only in this way “that children can develop the taste and understanding to distinguish between trash asn serious literature” (Berger 61).

And it is with this group that I make my stand against censorship. The

purpose of education remains what it has always been in a free society:

to develop a free and reasoning human being who can think for himself,

who understands his own and other cultures, who lives compassionately and

cooperatively with his fellow man, who respects both himself and others,

who has developed self-discipline and self-motivation, who can laugh at the

world, and who can successfully develop survival strategies for existence

in the world. (Jones 184)

As one who is striving to be an English teacher I know that literature has a signigicant part in the education of man. I am aware that I have responsibilities to my students, for knowing “many books from many cultures”, for “demonstrating a personal commitment to the search or truth through wide reading”,for “fespecting the unique qualities and potential of each student” and for “exhibiting the qualities of the educated man” (Jones 184). With these responsibilities, I believe that I would not be serving my students to the best of my abilities if I were not a strong advocate against the censorship fo books. As the NCTE writes, “to deny the freedom of choice in fear that it may be unwisely used is to destroy the freedom itself” (Jones 181)

As stalwart and idealistic as I am, I still unerstand that at some point in my career I will come under attack from a censorship group unhappy with my selection of curricula. The American School Board Journal gives a list of nine strategies that cona be used to help reduce the of an attack; these include “involving citizens in the book selection process”, “giving objecting parents and students and out”, and “don’t ban or remove books until they’ve been afforded a fair trial” (Woods 35). A similar list by Diane Divoky is a little more extreme but no less helpful. Her list includes hints like, “if you’re going touse a book with obscenities, check to see if there are approved books in the school library containing the same words”, and “before you take on a high-risk project, try to align yourself with a veteran staff member”, and “at the moment you suspect a problem lies down the line, call the best lawyer within your reach” (Woods 34).

As for my personal opinion as a citizen ans a reader, I have always been leery of censors. Censors of school library books never announce that it is their morality that hos been damaged. It is always “they” who will be damaged, it is always someone els’s moral fiber that is being protected. In an excerpt from possibly the most banned book of the modern era, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caufield reacts to an obscenity scrawled on a wall:

It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little

kids would see it, and how they’d wonder what the hell it meant, and then

finally some dirty kid would tell them what it meant and how they’d all think aabout it and maybe event worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kell whoever’d written it. (Salinger 165)

This phrase from Salinger’s classic novel, for me, illustrates exactly how censors react when they find anything they deem objectionable in the school. Why will people react emotionally, even violently, to certain spoken or written words, while in many cases having mild reactions to the actions described by the words? While D.H. Lawerence has seen considerable censorship due to his affinity for sexual content, Shakespeare has enjoyed realtive peace even though Othello and his lover made “the beast with two backs” (I.I, 119-120). I, myself, will continue to stuggle against the censors who seek to control written expression in our schools while waying the banner of freedom, for it is censorship that we must fear, not words, and hope that in the future, the true obscenities of the world (poverty, hunger, war) will be what we shall strive to censor.

Works Cited

Berger, Melvin. Censorship. New York: Franklin Watts, 1982.

Jones, Frances M. Defusing Censorship: The Librarian’s Guide to Handling

Censorship Conflicts. Phoenix: The Oryx Press, 1983.

Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1945.

Woods, L.B. A Decade of Censorship in America: The Threat to Classrooms and

Libraries. London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1979.