This has been a long running debate with all the first amendment rights/violations and what not, but something has been bothring me.
I'm only a sophmore in high school, and I recently read "The Lord of the Flies" in my english class. I thought it was good book all things considered, but I nearly died when I was talking to my older cousin the other day.
Now, you may be wondering what my older cousin has to do with Lord of the Flies. You see, when he was in high school they never read LotF. It was banned from his school. No copies in the library, and it was never read in a single classroom.
I remember hearing about Tom Sowyer getting the boot out of schools for the use of the "n" word. That, in my opinion, has no merit. It was part of the dialect of that era. However I know that a good deal of America's population have to be politically correct. Anyway the thing that keeps bothering me is the fact that I can't see why anyone would exclude LotF from schools...
What am I missing? More importantly what other books are getting the ax, and why?
As for why it’s been a banned book, well, here’re the reasons I found: :
Because the stabbing of the pig is supposed to represent rape
Mabey It was Because people do not want to expose Children to the natures of the book. There is a lot of evil in the book and many savage stuff in the book
I was not only required to read The Lord of the Flies in high school, but they requried us to go see the movie (which had just come out, how’s that for dating myself) at an “art” theater in a fairly seedy part of town. “Art” theater meant (in that era) that it normally showed porn films.
I don’t think The Lord of the Flies should be prohibited in high school, but I do think that students should be given an option to read something else if they or their parents object. I certainly wouldn’t stop my daughters from reading it, but that’s one book that I never care to read again.
When I was in high school (in the early 80s, public system in California) The Catcher In The Rye was banned because of its use of four-letter words - not because of its themes, so we were told. My English teacher was obviously disgusted by the ban, and explained that the school had to assume that the students didn’t know any four-letter words, so assigning the book would be teaching the students foul language.
This was about the time I lost my faith in education. In retrospect, this explanation was so implausible that I can only assume the real reason was, in fact, the unacceptable themes of the book.
Actually, you’d be suprised–there’s many a busybody out there who couldn’t understand the themes of Catcher well enough to understand that it is subversive but who can recognize “God Damn” at 30 paces. And don’t underestimate that to some people “God Damn” (which Catcher is full of) is the most offensive expression of all–actually sinful, as opposed to jsut real rude.
What I find most offensive is the nimrods who will say “I haven’t read (book title) and I don’t intend to, but here’s why I think it should be banned.”
From my admittedly limited experience with school boards, I agree with Manda Jo. The negative side of local school boards is that the squeaky wheel generally gets the grease, and the wheel generally ain’t too pretty. One person who squeals loud enough about Huckleberry Finn, say, can scare a school board into banning it, especially if there’s a threat of legal action.
But this is also the positive side of school boards. If you can get 10 of your neighbors on the agenda of a meeting (which can be a battle in itself; you’ve GOT to know something about their rules of order), all espousing the same thing, this makes a very powerful impression.
However, I admit that it’s generally easier for me to bitch about it than find out who’s on my school board and when the meetings are held.
Out here in my town, a man donated 10 copies of the “Turner Diaries” to the local High School library. The school accepted them, but soon took them off the shelves. When the man protested, he was told that the books were racist, and had no place in the public schools.
You have no idea of the satisfaction I got from standing up infront of my freshmen class, and amongst crappy black romance novels and miscellaneous books about horses, reading my summary of A Clockwork Orange.
“So then he hits this old chick in the head with a phallic-shaped statue, of course she dies… and then they beat the hell out of this other old dude”
Oh! And I forgot. The newspaper story said that the only reason the man donated all those copies of the “Turner Diaries” in the first place was because the schoolboard in our town had just recently passed a resolution condemning all censorship in the school libraries.
I believe it all started when a parent complained about some of the “sexually explicit” content of the books in the school library. So then the School Board passed that resolution.
Books are banned by small minds who are too afraid that the knowledge obtained may be detrimental to the power and control base of those same small minds.
It will be couched in religion, morals and soiling the clean minds of the young, among other “reasons,” but at the end of the day it’s always about power and control.
I had to find out about the whole Waldo thing. I just thought it was because it was just rather innocuous and insipid, rather, here’s the reasoning behind it:
Where’s Waldo?by Martin Handford - Although most of us are searching for Waldo among the crowd in the illustrations of this book, some folks have discovered something else entirely—purportedly a topless sunbather. The book was challenged by libraries in Michigan on the grounds that “on some of the pages there are dirty things.”
cite:http://www.alibris.com/articles_features/features/banned/bannedchildrens.cfm