Suh-Suh-Somethin' from the Comments
Re. my extended rant on book-banning, Brianmpei writes:
"...I can't believe you actually believe, "I realize that they are your kids. I understand that. But they are our citizens." When a book gets banned it's not a parent who does it, it's a community and a culture and sometimes a country 'looking out' for their citizens. But to suggest that a country or a community has a greater right over what my children read or don't read makes me think of some pretty, hm, heavey-handed countries of the past who would've done more than complain about a page of your book."
This is a good point, and I may have overstated my case a little. But only a little.
Brian has nicely crystallized the issue that I'm interested in: I'm not interested in whether books that may offend some people should be available to teenagers. (Of course they should). I'm interested in whether such a book can be required reading. So: Does a community have a greater right over what your children read than you do?
I basically think the answer to this question is yes. There are many facets of a child's life that are controlled by the community regardless of what parents think.
The distinction here is that you, as a parent, can force your kid (or nearly force them) to read whatever they want--that's one of your constitutional rights in America. It's just that you as a parent do not neccesarily have the right to keep your kid from reading a book.
I'm thinking of it as analagous to other classes: Many parents think their kids should not be taught evolution in public schools, but evolution is taught anyway, because it's in the public interest that evolution be taught. Some parents don't think the holocaust happened, but the holocaust should still be part of a public school curriculum.
I would argue that it should be the same in an English class. If a well-trained teacher (who has been hired by the community, after all, for precisely this purpose) thinks a certain book will help students learn to read and think critically, then that book should be taught.
But I might be wrong on this. If I am, let me know.
posted by John Green @ Thursday, March 08, 2007
22 Comments
22 Comments:
My take on this issue as it pertains to high schoolers is that the world "child" is not longer useful or accurate. I've posted elsewhere that the current American concept of a teenager and high school is only about 100 years old. Prior to that, people age 14-18 would be working on the family farm, marrying and raising children, or expected to otherwise contribute to and be full-fledged members of society.
At 18, they vote and perhaps go to college, where they're free in ways they may have never been before or never will be again. There has to be a process that occurs between 14-18 by which these young adults learn to think critically, form opinions and know how to support them logically, develop systems of thinking about the world that allow them to go forward without too much cognitive dissonance.
I'm not suggesting there should be absolutely no protection for teens, but I really think part of the problem (and what polarizes so much of the censorship debate) is the continued use of the world "child" to describe a 15 or 16 year old. "Child" is a loaded word that evokes a lot of emotion. No one wants to "harm the children."
It's true--I should be very careful about the word child. But I meant it in the sense of a parent-child relationship. (i.e., I'm an adult, but I am still my mother's child.)
I do think that when I was a teenager, I experienced myself in much the same way I experience my adult self.
But the world outside me wasn't really experiencing me as an adult yet, which I found helpful in a lot of ways and would not really want to change.
I'm going to add something on a tangent here so we can see a bright note in all this book banning and censorship. Teens actually are buying more books! See www.galleycat.com or the link below.
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/trends/teens_buying_books_more_than_ever_54563.asp
P.S. my html sucks so you may have to copy and paste. :)
I was thinking more of exclusion rather than inclusion. I suppose that our personal histories always inform how we see and hear what other people say.
I grew up with teachers who gave me brilliant stuff to read and with teachers who thought "The Outsiders" was the pinnacle of literature. Sorry, Ponyboy fans.
I've had to come up with some 'required reading' for my own kids along with what the system offered for much the same reason.
I'd at least like equal time with whoever else is telling my kids what 'good' literature is.
Brian,
I think that one of the reasons the reading lists for some English classes suck (and they do often suck) is that there's such pressure on teachers not to pick an offensive book.
So you can't teach Huck Finn. You can't teach, in some cases, Gatsby. You can't teach contemporary classics like "Song of Solomon." Cant teach "Catcher in the Rye." Can't teach Chaucer, the filthy bastard. Can't teach "Portrait of the Artist."
So you're left with Jane Eyre and Shakespeare and Charles Dickens--and, yes, The Outsiders.
Nothing against Shakespeare or Bronte or Dickens or Hinton--but things need to change.
My experience with my daughter is that teachers have gone too far the other way in order to be relevant/ teach important issues/sensitive kids to moral concerns. While she did read Dickens for an advanced project- she was also forced to read what seemed an unending stream of "problem" novels. Did she really have to read about someone being whipped when she was only 11 years old (Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry) or the book where the main character found his mother dead on the floor (the title escapes me) with an unhappy ending. My daughter is now a teen and would prefer, still, to have her reading for classes to be in the more classic (and less personally depressing vein). While I don't advocate censorship, this is another aspect to consider in choosing books that students have to read.
JG - I wasn't speaking so much to your use of the word, but the use of the word "child" in the debate and how that affects the rhetoric. Not that teens are adults, either, but in a lot of the articles and debate people continue to use the word "child" without clarifying that these are high schoolers. (Like the Brokeback Mountain thing that catalyzed the creation of AS IF - it was optional reading for 11th graders. Yet the word "child" kept getting used. Weird.)
I find the whole censorship debate very interesting and thought I'd add my 2 cents.
I think it is perfectly fine for a parent to keep their child from reading certain books. Up to a point, that is. Because while I think it is fine for a parent to have total say over what their 7, 10, or even 13 year old reads, there comes an age when they have to back off.
What if the 16 yr old daughter of a protective parent wants to read Looking for Alaska and her parents don't want her to? I think the parents have to, at that age, trust their kid to realize that this is JUST A STORY and she won't actually imitate the behavior in the book. The parent has to instill good values in his child, but then trust her to make the right choices for herself.
(note: I am using the words "child" and "kid" in the situation of a parent-offspring relationship and not speaking of the age of the person.)
but isnt the issue of censorship less about if parents can stop their own children/teenagers from reading certian books and more about if parents can stop OTHER PEOPLE's children/teenagers from reading certain books?
parents can almost always op-out to have their child read another book if they object to the one being read in school.
its when they want to stop OTHER PEOPLE from reading ceration books in PUBLIC SCHOOLS that i have the most objection
Yes, anon, for me that's really where it matters. I have friends with teens who have made alternate arrangements w/teachers over certain books, but they would never presume to have the book banned from the district.
However, John's position in the post here is sort of the opposite situation - he's saying that even if a parent doesn't want a kid to read a book, the best interest of the community trumps that. Problem is, even a group of well-trained professoinals hired by the community are going to have various ideas about what the community's best interest is. Also, is "the community" your town, your state, the country, the world? There are micro-pockets of greatly varying definitions of "best interest." So while I don't necessarily think a parent should (or could) keep his 15 y.o. from reading any given book, I also don't believe "the community" should have the power to force any given book. "the community" might decide that all illegal aliens should be run out on a rail. "the community" might inter everyone of Arab or Persian descent. "the community" might decide certain literature is pornography. We teach kids and teens critical thinking skills precisely to avoid these situations. (Right, John? I mean, I really have trouble believing you would give "the community" that much power, unless you were personally handpicking "the community" or establishing a utopia...)
Yes, I'd have to agree that the "best interests of the community" is a purely subjective construct. And, when you start talking about "forcing" people to read things based on the "best interests of the community," that smacks of totalitarianism to me, too. You must read your Little Red Book-- it is in the best interests of the community. You must read Mein Kampf... etc., etc.
Of course society is all about balancing the needs of the individual (or family) with those of the community. And that balance has swung to many extremes throughout history. In this country, we may tend to fall too heavily on the side of the individual at times. But required reading based on someone's-- whose? yours? the conservative Christian's?-- idea of what's best for all of us? Nope. That's not how I would solve the complexities of the censorship debate.
Sarah
anon and sara,
Yes, I think we are all safely opposed to the kind of censorship where a parent tells other people's kids what not to read.
What I'm arguing here, or trying to begin to think about arguing anyway, is that parents shouldn't have control over what their kids read in school (like, if you attend a public school, you should have to read "Huck Finn," even if your parents don't want you to, just as you have to study evolution, even if your parents don't want you to).
Anon says:
"best interests of the community" is a purely subjective construct. And, when you start talking about "forcing" people to read things based on the "best interests of the community," that smacks of totalitarianism to me, too.
Well, sure sure. But we force people to read things all the time. I was repeatedly forced against my will in high school to read "Ethan Frome." I was forced to read Physics textbooks, also.
I was forced to do these things because education of all citizens is (I would argue) in the public interest. America is a better place for forcing teenagers to study Physics. That is why we are forced to study Physics.
Does that smack of totalitarianism? I don't think so.
I can't imagine "Huck Finn" being banned, maybe it's better I don't live in the U.S. anymore.
But I do think you'd have to agree that a physics book or the subject itself never sparked a revolution but the ideas in books have.
I'm not for banning. I say let 'em read and talk about what they read but let's acknowledge that ideas on paper in story or essay have power to affect us that geometry never did for me.
I realize I'm mostly debating based on what would happen with extreme hypotheticals that, hopefully, will never come to pass. I get what you're saying, and I don't entirely disagree with it. Huck Finn, physics, great. To pick on your favorite target, what if, ten years from now, kids who now love The Gossip Girls become teachers who decide that it's literature and required reading?
Also, I don't know if society is better off because I studied chemistry or trig. It MIGHT be better off if I were forced to study the book of Proverbs. But I'm pretty sure no one wants to see that happen in public schools no matter good it would be for the greater community.
All right, all right, I'll stop. I'm just saying.
Yes-- though again, there are complexities having to do with balancing individual vs. community interests.
Certainly, a text can be required reading in a high school classroom.
However, parents can also argue that their child be exempt from reading a text with whose ideology they disagree. They can remove their child from the classroom during sex ed., ask that their child not be present when a teacher is reading a book about a homosexual couple...etc.
Parents can also choose to send their children to private schools, where those children might be exposed to an entirely different curriculum, and to entirely different required reading.
What you're arguing is not whether teachers can give assigned texts-- but whether parents should have rights that supersede such assignments.
Again, I think it's a complex issue, and one that involves finding a delicate balance. I don't agree with removing a child from a public classroom in order that she not be exposed to the full spectrum of human sexuality... Home schooling children in order to shield them from the materials presented in public schools-- that gives me the chills.
But I don't know that I would have the right to prevent other parents from doing such things. (Though the case of a book that included gay parents seems more clear cut to me. You couldn't keep your child home for the day because you didn't want the teacher to read her a book with an African-American couple.)
I'm not entirely disagreeing with you-- I'm just saying that I think the lines are a little more faint and difficult to decipher than your post might suggest. I don't think community rights always trump those of individual parents. In fact, the rights of parents to educate their children as they see fit-- that's pretty fundamental to the identity of this country.
Even if the way those rights are exercised may sometimes give me the creeps.
Saying that the State-- the public school-- can always decide what's in the best interests of its children, at the expense of parents' rights... *that's* what feels dictatorial to me.
Though one might also argue about the rights of parents vs. the rights of their children... but that's a whole other debate.
Anonymous Sarah
very interesting... I think Proverbs or other portions of the bible should be mandatory... if taught as literature from a time and place. As distinguished from the 'out of context' approach that's so commonly heard in on religious media. Of course many schools do this.
I don't think that banning books actually stops anyone from reading them. And I honestly don't think your book was even ban worthy. And book banning kind of makes me want to throw something out of a window. I mean, shouldn't it be your decision, not others, what kind of book is right for you to read.
Oh and book banning is actually against the US Constitution.
Anonymous sarah writes:
However, parents can also argue that their child be exempt from reading a text with whose ideology they disagree. They can remove their child from the classroom during sex ed., ask that their child not be present when a teacher is reading a book about a homosexual couple...etc.
Sure, they can argue that their child should be exempt, but I'm going to argue in response that their child shouldn't be exempt. You can't skip biology class because they're teaching evolution and expect to get an A. Ditton English class. Ditto history class.
Education is compulsory in the United States (as all those Amish lawsuits have established). And while people certainly can and do opt out of the public school system, they cannot opt out of it and still expect it to give them grades that will please college admissions officers. Basic principle of civil disobedience, right? You've got to accept the punishment, even if you believe the crime isn't criminal.
The goal of calculus is to learn derivatives.
The goal of physics is to learn physics(?).
But the goal of English isn’t necessarily to learn The Great Gatsby, or maybe only part of the goal is reading the novel. But really, the broader purpose of English class is learning how to analyze literature and then coherently explain your thoughts. So I suppose you can argue then that a specific book isn’t necessary to achieve the broader goal.
I think that is why your evolution analogy doesn’t work, because there is no other way to learn evolution besides studying evolution. I think a better scientific analogy is animal dissection. You can learn about the circulatory system of mammals without actually cutting open a pig and looking at the heart and veins and such, so schools offer alternatives to dissection (long papers, I think). So, you can’t skip evolution and get an A, but you can skip dissecting, write a paper explaining what the dissection was teaching and get an A.
Wait a sec... now this discussion is going off track. Didn't you "opt out of the public school system," in a fashion, and do just fine?
Again, I'm not fully disagreeing with you-- just saying I think there are nuances.
I would ask you this: how would you wish, ideally, that public school curricula be developed and implemented? Would you like for curricula to be nationalized, so that identical materials are taught in all public school classrooms? That we would, as a nation, come to some consensus as to what should be taught to all of our citizens? Are there specific novels, for instance, that ALL high school students should be required to read-- so integral are they to our existence as thinking, feeling members of society? Or, are those sorts of decisions subjective-- things to be decided by individual teachers, in their own classrooms... or by individual school systems... or individual communities?
One might argue that there are certain fundamentals to be taught in math and science-- if you're going to learn math, you'd better learn a little algebra.
But what about literature? Can you really say it's the same thing, and that certain books HAVE to be read?
And, if the decisions are local and personal ones, then shouldn't a parent have a right to raise questions about that curriculum?
Here are a couple of examples from my own high school experience: while I was in high school, a group of parents organized to protest the teaching of Palestinian history in one social studies class. They felt the very teaching of that history was, in itself, anti-Semitic. I am Jewish, and I strongly disagreed (and disagree) with that group of parents. However, another group of parents organized to protest what they saw as a lack of diversity in the English curriculum. They felt the assigned books were strongly tilted in favor of the canon, at the expense of books by women, or by people outside of the Anglo tradition. I agreed wholeheartedly with those parents.
Shouldn't both groups of parents have a right to question what's taught in schools, and even try to change it, if they see fit-- whether or not I myself agree with them? Isn't it their right to raise those kinds of concerns?
Or, would you really advocate for a State-sponsored, nationalized curriculum?
Anonymous Sarah
Anonymous: I see how it's between animal dissection and evolution, but I still think what's at issue here is closer to evolution than animal dissection.
Let's take physics. The purpose of physics is to learn physics, right? well, you can learn some physics without learning about Einsteinian relativity (indeed, everyone did, before 1904). You can also learn some American literature without reading Gatsby and Huck Finn. But you're hindered, just as you are if you don't learn about Einstein's theory of relativity.
The purpose of an English class is to teach you to read critically and think critically (and write critically), but it is also to introduce you to the history of literature, and the ways in which language has been used to transform people and the social order. It is very, very difficult to make the argument that "Huck Finn" and "Gatsby" weren't among the most important novels of their centuries in America.
As for the development of public school curricula: What I argue above (way, way above) is that well-trained English teachers know how to develop a reading curriculum better than the average parent does.
Okay, I'll let you have the last word, and I'll read your last word closely, and then let's move on and talk about something else--like Peeps.
oh and p.s. Yeah, i opted out of the public school system when I was in tenth and eleventh and twelfth grades. Like I said, there is nothing wrong with opting out, as far as I'm concerned.
(But part of the reason I opted out was because we were reading crap books in my public school English class while in the boarding school I went to we were reading not just gatsby and Huck Finn but also more controversial titles like "Angels in America" and "The Color Purple." So I went to a private school, basically, so I could read the kind of books that ought to be at least POSSIBILITIES for required public school reading lists.)
But regardless, I really think there is nothing wrong with opting out, if you want to. I'm just saying you can't opt out of a single class and expect to get a good grade in that class. That's the nature of civil disobedience.
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