Banning Books Should Be Banned

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“If there is a possibility that something might be controversial, then why not eliminate it” (“Display Ideas for Banned Books Week”); that was one of the reasons behind banning the book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown at an American high school. Book banning and censoring books has been occurring since as early as 399 BC when it was recorded that Socrates was forced to drink poison for spreading his ideas to his many students (Gould). Since then, book banning has been a continued form of censorship, and has often been supported by strict leaders and large institutions, such as the Catholic Church, which had a list of banned books all the way until 1966. Although books are banned in many places, the most books are banned in schools …show more content…
While talking about how many books are challenged for a good reason, Erin Manning says that she, along with many other parents, believe that “there was a time when we could trust schools and libraries to support, for the most part, the same values we ourselves held, and to abide by community standards of morality and decency”. While some parents may want schools to share their values, the fact of the matter is, that is not the job of the schools. Public schools are not designed to teach students about the values that their parents want them to have, they are supposed to help students learn and expand their horizons. Therefore, by parents trying to restrict certain books from classrooms and school libraries, they are trying to take away the schools resources that they use to teach the students, whether it is intentional or not. Even if parents do want to “protect” their children from the ideas in a certain book, there are other options to consider before they try to get the book completely removed from the school. One option to consider is to talk to the teacher, or even the principal about having their child not read a particular book. Another option is to switch to a private school, especially if their reasons for banning the book(s) have strong catholic values behind them, because there are many private catholic schools across America. The problem is not people trying to protect their own children, it is them trying to protect all the students in a school. As Don Gallo articulately states about a book challenge in Connecticut, “[the mother] does have the legal obligation to protect her children and so has the right to restrict what they read. But… the concern of this mother did not stop with her children. She wanted those literary works removed from the curriculum so that no eighth grader would be required to read them… That’s pretty much how book
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