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Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Censorship

Banned Books Week is fast approaching. I say "fast" because the last 2 months have literally flown by for me, and I can't help but imagine that the next will move just as quickly.

Being in a high school library, in red, "Bible Belt" state, I frequently think about censorship. When my new principal and I talked this summer, it came up. It just does. Not about anything specific, but just my, and his, general thoughts about it. The books you may find in my collection that are "questionable" (at worst) are books that I know there's kid in my school needs to read. I may not make a big deal of having it, it may never make a display or be booktalked to a large group, but it's there.

Is this censorship? Maybe. Probably. Censorship by omission? I'll grant that I am being "actively inactive" about those books. It's my experience that, generally, the books that get challenged are the ones with a lot of hoopla attached before a challenge was filed. That's not to say those books should've been the subject of a challenge. I firmly believe that
Censorship, like charity, should begin in the home, but unlike charity it should end there.
(I don't know who said that, a quick Google search didn't turn up an answer. If you know, feel free to tell me in the comments.)

This morning, while reading about something completely unrelated on LM_Net, I came across this quote.
"Kids are living stories every day that we wouldn't let them read. "--Josh Westbrook
My gosh...isn't that the truth? I can't imagine telling a kid he can't read a book because the subject matter isn't appropriate in our school when he's living it everyday of his life.

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