Banning Books Argument Essay

Banning Books Essay Adrian Greensmith 802 Many people starting at a young age find a way of escaping life through literature. Reading a book before you go to sleep, curling up on the couch with a novel, these are all frequently used ways to calm down. But what if a book doesn’t transport you to a happier place, a more fantastical place, but raises issues that may be too dark for some to deal with? Ideas may be opened up to the reader that they had never introduced before, and wouldn’t want to for many years to come. At a young age, school is the place where most kids find an interest in books, and look at the variety of options as they start to branch out from more simple topics and genres. The school library is often the place where children experiment, reading a bit off this and reading a bit of that, monitored up to an extent by the school staff. Lately though, there has been a movement to control what books are available for kids to read in school libraries, banning books for an assortment of different reasons. Such reasons as early exposure and graphic content are being used in the arguments of those for banning books to help restrain kids from reading certain books containing certain content. But, I believe that by doing this, children are only being kept in a bubble, a perfect world. Ignorance is never a position of strength, especially when a child is at a time of discovery and a growth of their opinions. I believe that banning books has an assortment of faults in the plan, and would end up hurting the child even more than if they had been exposed. Many books for younger children (The Lorax, Sneetches) disguise themselves as happy picture books while actually dealing with very current and dangerous problems. Some children may be able to pick up on it early on, but for many the books means something different to them as they grow older, slowly but surely presenting the child with a very real issue. But lots of young adult novels deal with real world problems in a very upfront and brutal way, putting it as it is. This extremely graphic and unsettling way of exposing children to issues through literature might not be for all, and might shock children who had never encountered such topics before, even adults who had viewed them in such great detail. For example, a Wall Street Journal article by Christopher John Warley states that, “No family is obliged to acquiesce when publishers use the vehicle of fundamental free-expression principles to try to bulldoze coarseness or misery into their children’s lives.” It’s true, such vivid description of ideas foreign to a child could be hard for them to grasp, but who’s to say that the experience of enlightenment on the subject won’t help them as they start to look at the world through their own eyes, not their parents. If a child isn’t opened up to the struggles those around them are facing, that restrains them from having an opinion, and ends up making them more fragile than need be in such a time and age. For example, children whose lives are controlled by those they look up to, end up being very similar to their role models. Unfortunately, this ends up with them never becoming an independent person, not a replica of what someone wants them to be. Also, the people banning these books are looking at the subject in the wrong way. Literature shouldn’t be the way a child is exposed to homophobia and racism, it should be through the people looking out for the child, the teachers and the parents. Blame shouldn’t be placed on the books, if anything they should be praised, praised for letting the child know where their boundaries are, how far and graphic they can go. Those who are for banning books say that graphic books can trigger reactions to past experiences in a child’s life, such as a teenager in recovery from self-mutilation reading a book about cutting, sending the reader into a possible rehabilitated phase of cutting. But, this evidence doesn’t actually seem to make sense, stating that someone who cuts would want to read a book about cutting. When growing up, reading books that make you think are the books that set your boundaries, as I stated earlier. A child, not a parent, knows what they can and cannot read and be exposed to. And some may say that a parent’s judgment about exposure is better than a growing child, but truthfully we need to make mistakes and read upsetting things to know where we stand. If those limits are set for us then we will be unable to judge what’s best for us, and only what someone thinks is best for us. For example, a Huffington Post article by Rachel Kramer states that “parents should be active and involved with what their kids are reading ─ in books, magazines, and online. But ‘active and involved’ doesn't necessarily mean dictatorial. Rather, by discussing what children are reading and seeing on television with them, helping them figure out what's fantasy and what's not, and learning that they can, in fact, get along with people who are different from them, parents would do a much greater service to their kids than by simply telling them what's ‘bad.’ ” A parent’s role in a child’s life when they are entering adolescence is to guide them through all the evil parts of the world, exposing them to real life but not throwing them into it alone, nor blinding them to it. But still, according to the library guides of SRGC libraries from 2000-2009, 2500 of the challenges made on books to be banned came from parents, an incredibly larger amount than the second contestant, administrators. Though guidance is needed, a child knows what may trigger them, and has to experience discomfort to know where their comfort level is. The reasoning behind my point of not banning books in school libraries may be hard for some to understand. The concept of exposing a child to pain and suffering to let them find a voice and set their limits is one that some may find unacceptable. Of course, why hurt a child when you can protect them from all the wrong in the world for as long as they live under your rules? Well, in reality, a child will end up more getting hurt if they are protected from needed knowledge as they grow. If the horrible truth of what happens in society is released to the child when they are starting to grow, they will grow with it, but if a child is exposed too late, they will learn to grow around it, constantly without a voice and in possible denial after being released from their fantasy world so abruptly. Works Cited "Banned Books: Censorship Statistics." Censorship Statistics. Santa Rosa Junior College, 31 Dec. 2014. Web. 06 Jan. 2015. Barnett, Bob. "Is Hand Sanitizer Toxic? - CNN.com." CNN. Cable News Network, 16 Oct. 2013. Web. 06 Jan. 2015. Bussel, Rachel Kramer. "Banning "Bad" Books Is Not the Answer." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 17 Nov. 2011. Web. 07 Jan. 2015. Farley, Christopher J. "Should Young Adult Books Explore Difficult Issues?" Speakeasy RSS. Wall Street Journal, 05 June 2011. Web. 07 Jan. 2015.