George Santayana in “The Life of Reason” once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This year’s Banned Book Week runs Sept. 27 through Oct. 3 and is an annual awareness campaign that celebrates the freedom to read.
All over the country, there have been instances of schools deciding to ban books from their libraries and class curriculum. Famous pieces of literature of various origins and genres, like “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger, “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck, “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, and “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker have all been banned and deemed inappropriate from an educational standing.
According to the American Library Association, these classics and many more have been taken out of the school for reasons like “to avoid controversy,” “challenged and vandalized for LGBTQIA+ content and political viewpoints,” “vulgarity and sexual overtones,” “religious viewpoints,” and some even considered just “poorly-written”.
These ironically controversial decisions have led to petitions and even banned book clubs where readers discuss the themes and ideas of those deemed inappropriate books.
Deciding what should and what should not be taught to the youth of America is no easy task. The lessons taught to students go into shaping what the society of tomorrow will look like and what we will expect from each other. Ultimately, the goal is to prepare the students for the real world; but in our already flawed school systems, this is a step further in the wrong direction.
Many ideas of philosophy and tales of oppression and facing adversity have been passed down through books. Banning literature for being controversial is not how we build a stronger nation. By instilling the idea that, if something is difficult to talk about, we should simply remove it and not talk about it goes against everything this country stands for.
Instead of removing controversy, we should teach our youth how to ethically confront it because it is a vital skill if we want students to be able to function in the actual world. If you can’t create an opinion and ethically defend it, the world will not be a nice place as school systems always attempt to be.
Some may consider this stance somewhat aggressive and that it makes an uncomfortable environment to learn in, and while we do want a safe environment for students to learn and grow, the adversity that will come in adult life should be taught and exposed through literature. How to deal with uncomfortable situations with an appropriate curriculum should be based on student grade level. To say that an upperclassman high schooler discussing and reading controversial topics is inappropriate is a reverse progressive ideology.
Whether we can agree on the curriculum or not, anyone who believes history is unimportant is quite the foolish individual, and aside from any personal bias, a decent education should be non-exclusive.
