In my CI-3850 class today, we watched a video about banning books/ censory in the library. There was this one little girl and her father on the video who really upset me. The little girl started by saying that the only book that she had ever learned anything from was the bible and reading any other book was pointless. As an avid reader this really disappointed me. The little girl later checked out a book from the library and took it home with her. She claimed that the pictures gave her nightmares and so her dad sued the school. He insisted that books of a certain content should be taken out of the school library. Is this not a violation of students' rights? If that girl chose that book then it is not the fault of the school, is it? I'd like to know what you all think about censorship in the school.

Also, this is a website of the top 100 challenged books from 1990-2000: http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksw ... uently.htm Some of these titles suprised me!

Censorship is a huge issue in today's society. I do agree that if the little girl picked the book out, then it is her fault that it gave her nightmares. She should have looked at it in the library before checking it out. If the teacher made her read this, then I can see where the school is at fault.
Censorship as a whole, to me, is stupid. I feel that parents take some issues too far. They get books banned that are good for children. The list of 100 is pretty shocking. A lot of the books that I read as a child are on there. I just could not imagine how they could be. But as I have gotten older and been able to read them again, I am sort of able to see why some of them are on there, but I still think it is ridiculous that they are on there.

We discussed censorship in some of the other classes too. Some books on the banned lists are those that are required reading for many colleges. The thing that makes me so mad is the parents that flip through a book and see profanity and forbid their child to reach the book. The parent paid no attention to the context of the word. I feel that parents are threatened by the school systems. Parents feel that the school is trying to take over their children and this is their demented way of having some power. This violates the students rights and limits their minds. I cannot imagine any that good parent would stop their child from learning. There are going to be very "traditional" parents that will object to everything no matter where we teach so a future teachers we just have to fight for our students. One good thing is that parent involvement may have stopped children from seeing inappropriate material.

Censorship to me is something that keeps students from being able to truly explore the world around them in the easiest way possible which is through books. I think that students should be able to read whatever they want. However, we as teachers serve two roles in this instance. First we must support our students and we should be thrilled to watch them dive into a book to learn about something new or to read for pleasure. Also, we must still serve as guides. There are certain books that seriously may not be suitable for a certain age group of children. If necessary we as teachers must inform the parents of a particular book and let the parent be the ultimate decision maker in deciding whether a book is appropriate for their child or not.

In the case of the father suing the school, I believe this is completely wrong. The girl chose the book herself and the only thing the school could be found guilty of is providing its students with a variety of books and allowing them to learn new things for themselves. I applaude the school for providing a true education for its students.

Censorship to me is something that keeps students from being able to truly explore the world around them in the easiest way possible which is through books. I think that students should be able to read whatever they want. However, we as teachers serve two roles in this instance. First we must support our students and we should be thrilled to watch them dive into a book to learn about something new or to read for pleasure. Also, we must still serve as guides. There are certain books that seriously may not be suitable for a certain age group of children. If necessary we as teachers must inform the parents of a particular book and let the parent be the ultimate decision maker in deciding whether a book is appropriate for their child or not.

In the case of the father suing the school, I believe this is completely wrong. The girl chose the book herself and the only thing the school could be found guilty of is providing its students with a variety of books and allowing them to learn new things for themselves. I applaude the school for providing a true education for its students.

I think parents who monitor what their children are reading should be commended. I also think that there are certainly materials that are not appropriate for certain age levels. However, I cringe when I think of a parent suing a school for something his child did. If a child is curious about something, a parent needs to be involved in that curiosity and guide the child through an issue, hopefully screening the child from ideas and pictures that might be too mature for them to handle (the parent knows the child best and hopefully can discern what is and is not appropriate for the child to see). I think that we really need to be careful about what we censor, however. Always shielding a child from what truly goes on around him or her can be just as harmful as not shielding the child from anything. If a child is constantly shielded from undesirable pictures, issues and ideas, the "real world" will be a harsh reality for that child. For example, "The Diary of Ann Frank" was a censored book at one point because of some of the language it contained. To me, however, this is depriving someone of learning about World War II from someone who was there and experienced it. This is also depriving a child (or anyone else who cannot access this book because of it's being censored) of learning about a real-life experience in it's true context. Textbooks, on the other hand, are only so interesting and sometimes unappealing to students. As I said before, we need to be careful about what we censor - are we harming our students because of it?