Arguments Against Censorship In Schools

Words: 1383
Pages: 6
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Jason Marin
JCC English 12
Mrs. Corbett
02/10/17
Censorship in America
As a society, we want our young people to be intellectual, thoughtful, and caring human beings; but we also attempt to control what they read, think, and care about. We feel the need to "protect" children from dangerous or disturbing ideas and information. Of course, what is dangerous or disturbing to one person or segment of society may be exciting and innovative to others. Everything is effected by this even schools, which ironically have books in libraries that would be considered “controversial” that aren’t censored.
Censorship has been prevalent since the times the great philosopher Socrates, he was sentenced to death for apparently corrupting the kids in the government's …show more content…
A teacher was fired because she assigned a book with a lesbian as a main character. A parent, Ruth Somoro, said this was being intolerant of religious beliefs, and schools aren’t supposed to promote religious beliefs. The narrow minded individuals who are religious but don’t let others express their own opinions, school is not supposed to teach religion. But at the same time the newspaper, and news also portray things questionable to religions such as gay marriage updates and terrorism in foreign countries. Censorship in today's society is arrogant, hypocritical, intolerant and unneeded in today's society. Musicians create music expressing themselves and their feelings about their own personal lives. The censorship of music is hardly constitutional, many people think it's only rap music being censored but, it is all genres of music on all radio stations. Who makes up what is obscene and what isn't? It certainly is not the people of the U.S.A but the RIAA. They are pressuring record companies to discontinue the production of obscene songs that contain drug references, not to mention these CD’s already have Parental Advisory labels on …show more content…
Many parents have attempted to challenge the book, a specific case in Minnesota led to the book being banned for a short time because of words like “Damn” and “Whore”. Another case of this book being challenged is when a black family felt disrespected by the behavior of African-Americans in the book who did the whites dirty work, they thought it provoked racism and made it more prevalent. The book also talks about rape which maybe suggestive to some audiences. Another book that was threatened by censorship "The Catcher in the Rye," which was written by J.D. Salinger, this book was prone to complaints because of its explicit language and adult actions that could influence children. This book made #10 on the list of 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-1999 by the American Library
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