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Caitlin Gurtner
Ms. Gardner
English 10 Period 0
1 May 2015
Save the Books
In the last ten years, over 5,000 challenges were made to the Office of Intellectual
Freedom; of those, nearly 4,000 affected the reading material available to high school students
(ala.org). Every year, books are being pulled from school libraries because they are deemed
inappropriate, whether it be because of sexual content, bad language, or religious beliefs. This
means that every year, students are being denied the chance to read, enjoy, and learn from
these books. Therefore, high schools should stop censoring their libraries because it takes away
education, characters, and choices.
The main goal of censorship is to protect young people from content that may harm
them mentally or encourage them to form bad habits. For example, someone might not want
their 14-year- old to be reading 50 Shades of Grey. Along with sexual content, there are many
books that discuss things that go against certain religious beliefs. Some people dont even see
censorship as a real problem. In his article Banned Books Week: What a Bunch of Hype,
Jonah Goldberg, an author himself, says, ...the real scandal might be that so few books are
"banned or challenged." Even so, there are still plenty of cases where book banning has gotten
out of hand. For example, one school in Arizona went through a large ordeal because of a
biology textbook that contained information on a drug used for abortion. The school eventually
decided to remove the material from the curriculum, despite the fact that it doesnt promote
abortion, merely provides information on it (Rojas).Over all, adults believe that exposing
teenagers to certain materials can be harmful to their psyche. Although this could be true in
some cases, students face much more harm if literature is taken away from them.

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Although it is understandable that a parent wouldnt want their young child reading
anything close to sexual content, once that child hits high school, theyre no longer a child.
Theyre becoming a young adult. One of the classes that all freshman are required to take is
Sex Ed. In this class you learn all about the physical elements of growing up. However, you
learn very little about the emotional aspect of it, arguably the most important thing to be learning
as a teenager. Unfortunately, the best way to get the emotional part of the education is to read
about it in context, and that is frowned upon by adults who see it as inappropriate. One of the
real problems with parents is that, as Jake Rich says in his article Can Book Censorship Help
Our Children and Their Innocence?, More often than not, the act of banning a book is an
exaggerated reaction to an avoidable problem. Because of this overcompensation, many very
important, educational, and enjoyable books are getting pulled. Rich gives an excellent
example:

This drive for censorship came about due to an entry in Frank's diary where she
discusses her own bodily exploration, and the ponderance of how somebody
could have sex or give birth. Not unlike Frank's diary, the sexuality expressed in Green's
novel [A Fault in Our Stars] falls far from the mark of exploitation.
Nothing written in these books is unseen or unattainable in a multitude of other places. Most of
the sexual content in books such as A Fault in Our Stars pales even to our own imagination, so
why take it away? Censoring books has nearly no effect, if any, when you take into account the
thousands of other places where young people are exposed to the same things.
Part of why people take so much away from novels is because they get invested in a
character. They start to understand what these people are going through, start to feel their joy or
their pain. Literature makes it so that the reader can live through a life that isnt their own, to
learn from others mistakes and not deal with the consequences. This is a unique tool that is
perfect for growing teenagers. Theyre learning about how the world works and what to do in it,

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and they can use all the direction they can get. Even so, parents and teachers have a hard time
seeing this connection when it comes to certain subjects. For example, I spoke to Galen Rose,
the author of A Place to Rest My Heart, a story revolving around a very strong and independent
woman dealing with the collision of her past and present. Throughout the story, the main
character, Laney, deals with abuse, the pressure of work as a security guard, and the struggle to
remember how to trust. Laney is a truly beautiful example of what a modern woman should be,
and yet the book is banned from school libraries because of adult content. Rose voiced her
disapproval of censorship as a whole, noting how censorship stunts an authors ability to fully
communicate to their readers. These kind of circumstances are also causing self-censorship in
authors. According to Jennifer Schuessler, Some 75 percent of respondents in countries
classified as "free," 84 percent in "partly free" countries, and 80 percent in countries that were
"not free" said that they were "very" or "somewhat" worried about government surveillance in
their countries. This means that there are thousands of characters that the world doesnt get to
meet, thousands of teachers not teaching or friends not made. Think if you had never read your
favourite book. Would you be the same person you are today? The characters we love will
never cease to teach us about life, about the world, and about ourselves.
It is the responsibility of the student to listen to the teacher, to remember and to think
about the information given. Likewise, it is the responsibility of the reader to take something
away from each story, each character. It is their responsibility to choose what to believe, which
points to agree with, whose point of view to see the story from, and yet, adults seem to be
taking this responsibility away from teenagers, frightened that theyll make the wrong decision.
However, the adults cannot decide what is right and wrong. Teenagers have reached the age
where they need to start making their own decisions. Parents hope that they have brought up
their children right, that they go to church or volunteer at the animal shelter or have table
manners, but what they should really be hoping for in their child is the ability to be an individual.
Children get buried with opinion and fact throughout their entire childhood, being told how to act,

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what to believe, but when that child grows up, it is their job to take all of that information and
make something of it. They should be able to think critically and come to their own conclusions
and beliefs. Adults often under-estimate the intelligence and intuition of young people, and
because they are so afraid of letting their baby fall, they wont take off the training wheels.
Charles C. Haynes brilliantly summarizes the need to allow students to think for themselves,
saying, If we are serious about creating better schools, places with fewer discipline problems
and higher academic achievement, then students must have a meaningful voice in shaping the
life of the school. Haynes explains how allowing students to think for themselves results in
major growth for the students and the world around them. Students should be allowed to make
their own judgement on a book. If it goes against something they belief, then they dont have to
read it, or, better yet, they could read and gain a new perspective. If a book contains scenes that
a student is uncomfortable with, then they dont have to read, or they could skip over those
parts. In Arizona, when there was the dispute over the biology textbook, not a single student
was asked his/her opinion. The only people discussing the issue were parents and faculty
(Rojas). The real issue parents have isnt that their child will read something that makes them
uncomfortable or upset, its that theyre scared of the kids making bad decisions that result in
behaviors or ideas that the parents will find undesirable. These high school students are nearing
adulthood, and even so, their parents arent allowing them to see the world for how it is. In the
end, censorship just hurts the students because it denies them the ability to become their own
person and step out into the frightening adult world.
In conclusion, censorship harms students by taking their teachers, their favourite
characters, and their individuality. Students without access to important -and often enjoyableliterature will not be prepared to step into the real world. They could be lost and confused and
ignorant, causing mistakes that could have been avoided, questions that could have been
answered, or at least asked. So, it appears that in order to save the students, we must save the
books.

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Works Cited
"Frequently Challenged Books of the 21st Century." Ala.org. Web. 09 May 2015.
Goldberg, Jonah. "Banned Books Week: What a Bunch of Hype." Sirs.com. 6 Sept. 201q1.
Web. 21 Apr. 2015.
Haynes, Charles C. "Why Are Schools So Afraid of Press Freedom?" Sirs.com. 19 Nov. 2014.
Web. 21 Apr. 2015.
Rich, Jake. "Can Book Censorship Save Our Children and Their Innocence?" Sirs.com. 7 Oct.
2014. Web. 21 Apr. 2015.
Rojas, Rick. "In Arizona, a Textbook Fuels a Broader Dispute Over Sex Education." Sirs.com.
28 Nov. 2014. Web. 21 Apr. 2015.
Rose, Galen. Personal interview. 2 May 2015.
Schuessler, Jennifer. "Writers Say They Feel Censored by Surveillance." Sirs.com. 5 Jan. 2015.
Web. 21 Apr. 2015.