Sunday, September 15, 2013

Banned Books

Books in a high school curriculum often contain some amount of inappropriate content that is banned or challenged. Parents, schools, and libraries most frequently challenge books with offensive language, sexuality, or content not suited for an age group.

The groups challenging these books want to protect a child from some of the ideas that might incite racism, perversion, or profanity. These are all legitimate concerns due to a teenager's easily impressible nature. However, a high schooler faces many of these problems on a day to day basis even without these books. Shouldn't parents, schools, libraries, and anyone else challenging these controversial books be focused on eradicating the problems in pop culture (which have a much greater influence on high schoolers)? However, removing the issues in pop culture would be a gargantuas task and, therefore, these problems will remain in the world. This is why keeping these issues in a high school curriculum is a wise idea. When youth are sent out into the world, it will be beneficial to have some understanding of the world's views on certain issues like those presented in the books in a high school curriculum. Also, these books (mostly classics) present these problems to high schoolers in a more sophisticated way, making the audience view them negatively. Books can adequately and accurately break down stereotypes and bias. Often times, stereotypes and bias are incorrect, unrealiable, and have little thought put into them. However, books can help expose people to the truths of cultures and societies helping to reduce predjudice.

Controversial books should remain in high school curriculum because they provide views and ideas that the reader will benefit from in the real world.

http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/statistics

http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks

No comments:

Post a Comment