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Juliah Laemmer

Mrs. Cramer

College Composition 1

27 January 2017

The Road Less-Censored Leads to Reality

Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you. This is something

weve all heard from a parent, peer or teacher. This saying can be applied to censorship.

Censorship, as discussed in the prevalence of school libraries, is defined by Ken Petress as the

forbidding, blocking, limiting, or obstructing access to information for whatever reason

(Petress). In this perception, the sticks and stones pertain to the physical scenarios that come with

the words, which are the ideas or information in the censored material. In other words, an idea

such as violence would be the word, and the situation, or the sticks and stones, would be the

action of violence. For a student who may already have restricted resources at home, the sticks

and stones may be more harmful in that students life due to unexposed to information or

scenarios, leading to a clueless idea on how to handle the situation. Without having the harmless

rehearsal type novels that involve drugs, sex and violence scenarios a student may be faced with

a situation in real life and encounter a word that will hurt them due to limited knowledge on

how to react to the situation. Knowing the words, ideas and information wont hurt you, but not

being exposed to them might. Being exposed to too much knowledge will never have a harmful

impact. Whether that situation is as simple as knowing youre not alone in a battle with

depression, such as in the book, Try Not to Breathe, or if it involved dealing with gangs, such as

in Take Me There, the information in the books will help. Schools ban books, altering what

students may have known otherwise. They are given books on what their school perceives as
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right, making students narrow-minded. Censoring ideas, actions, and plots in literature, in turn

banning books in school libraries, leaves gaps in students education.

To begin, censorship imposes on knowledge that an individual may never learn without

the censored material, resulting in learning the hard way. Learning the hard way refers to having

to physically react to the situation, opposed to reading and avoiding an unexpected consequence.

There is more to education than just academics; learning about ethics, sex and integrity is also a

part of education. Students, such as in an urban Atlanta high school where Shanna Miles works,

dont have access to public libraries because their parents dont have a car or cant reach public

transportation (Jacobson). For these students, whatever the school censors, simply doesnt exist,

thus, making the student ignorant in that subject area. Schools ban literature about social taboos

or any material that shows that it could cause egregious damage to students, such as books that

involve drugs, sex, violence, and LGBT. For LGBT students or students that deal with violence

in their homes, the school is denying them the comfort that they are not alone in their situation.

For example, the book The Outsiders is banned in select school districts. The Outsiders banned

because it has vulgar language, drugs, and violence. This book does involve these topics of

supposed taboo, but reading and learning from the mistakes and lessons in than be faced with a

real life situation is worth more than being ignorant. In short, The Outsiders teaches a student

that judging someone bases on their social status is pointless, unwarranted, and destructive.

When kids are exposed to violence and drugs, which do exist, contrary to what the school board

wants the students to think, the taboo becomes more important than the message that could be

life changing to a student. As stated by John T. Spencer, literature can change lives, but if its

not offered, then nothing will change (Spencer). In conclusion, students are being robbed of
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knowledge and being forced to learn the hard way, or learning first hand, rather than being

exposed to a harmless book with the same material on how to handle certain situations.

Secondly, censorship takes away open mindedness because schools will only allow

children to read what they think is right, or should exist in their world. When a school board

makes the decision to ban a book, the school board sends the message that something is wrong

with the content. Also, since the book doesnt exist in the eyes of the students, they are

unknowingly ignorant of the material. For example, the Yellow Medicine East School District in

Minnesota banned the book Little House on the Prairie due to (one complaint by a parent,

because the parent argues) that it contains vulgar material about Native Americans (Petress). This

treatment of the Native Americans is simply North American history; there is nothing to be

censored about the Native Americans treatment. The facts of a nation, in this case the Unites

States, should not be hidden away as a taboo, its history should be taught as it occured. In the

book Fahrenheit 451, which is also widely banned, people live in a society where they ban

books, which mostly contain the history of the world. The censorship of all of that history

resulted in a revolting society and eventually destruction. There is nothing to be argued about

with how history occurred, but by not being educated about the worst of it, there is a higher

chance of reoccurrence due to our ignorance. The MCLU gave an exceptional argument stating,

Isnt a teachable moment in the third grade more valuable than a lifetime of ignorance?

(Petress). Students in Japan dont learn about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. A group of Japanese

students attending The University of Pittsburgh in Bradford, PA, visited the World War II

Museum close by, in Eldred, PA. There was a wall displaying where the ships were at the

devastating moment of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The Japanese students were taking selfies

with the display. They didnt know what the bombing was, nor acknowledged that they were
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being disrespectful. To sum up, its extreme censorship like this that historical ignorance and

repetition of terrible events, such as the bombing of Pearl Harbor, could happen as a result.

To summarize, censoring books leaves significant gaps in a students academic education

and education about life. The material that is censored contains ideas that may be unpleasant, but

the unpleasantness of the material shouldnt decide whether the material is real or not to the

student. Whether its the good, the bad, or the ugly, no student should be denied of a false

education due to what might hurt someones feelings. No minority should be left thinking that

theyre alone because the topic is deemed controversial. Finally, the school board should not take

away the rights of a student to be exposed to real, relatable material.

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Works Cited
Jacobson, Linda. "Unnatural Selection. (Cover Story)." School Library Journal 62.10 (2016): 20-

24. Teacher Reference Center. Web. 5 Jan. 2017

Petress, Ken. "The Role of Censorship In School" Journal Of Instructional Psychology 32.3

(2005): 248-252. Teacher Reference Center. Web. 5 Jan. 2017.

Spencer, John T.. "Don't bribe my kids to read." Kappan. Thinkstock/Ingram Publishing. Nov.

2012. Web. 17 Jan. 2017.