| May. 9th, 2005 @ 06:10 pm Intellectual Freedom, part 2 -- Info 520 Week 6 -- Drexel U. |
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Turns out that most of the books "challenged" in public libraries are written for children.
Now I'm sorry that some children are denied access to good literature, but I'm sorrier still that they are being taught that it is fine to determine to what the public ought and ought not have access. Because that's the lesson of a banned book: my mom says that we shouldn't read Harry Potter because it's a bad book that teaches us bad things. other moms must agree because it's not available in my library. it's a good thing our wise adults can keep bad things from us
On one hand that’s great – it means that the people who are worried about banning or limiting access to books aren’t that concerned with what adults read. It’s also likely that book banners don’t read adult books, which may be one of their problems to begin with. But that’s another story.
The “other hand” is that children, wee little consciousnesses in their formative states, are a) missing out on some good literature and b) learning that it is OK to limit freedoms. Most of the class discussion has concentrated on the first point: that well-written books with good morals are being kept from some children. And that is a fine point to make. For me the second point is more important. While I’m sorry that some kids won’t be able to read the Harry Potter books, in the long run they are ephemeral. More long-lasting is the lesson some parents and school boards send: some information is good to read and some is not, and that the people in charge have a right to distinguish one from the other.
What lesson does that teach children? That it is just fine for the military to limit information from the war front? That presidents have a right to limit access to information that has traditionally belonged in the public domain? Every day I see people in this country accepting both of those tenets, perhaps because they learned in school that is was indeed all right for the people in charge to determine what information we have a right to and to what information what we do not.
Losing out on some great literature? That is a pity, really. Learning that information is only as free as the people in charge determine it is? Priceless. |
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