Joseph Cramer

Books are the foundation of school and learning. People have been reading and learning from books for centuries. Over time, books today represent many topics, themes and ideals that people find offensive. This has led to a resurgence of censorship and banning of books. The banning of books can not be a common thing or something that happens at all.

Books all inherently have a purpose, whether that be a message from the author or for entertainment. Over the course of history and in our modern day, some people see these books as offensive or controversial and think that the books should be banned or censored. This is wrong! 

Books all over the country are being taken out of schools for many different reasons.(check out the list of most challenged and banned books) Books like Fahrenheit 451 and The Catcher in the Rye and many others, have been banned in classrooms across the country. The banning of these books is to censor “graphic material” from children. Some of these books might be graphic, but that does not mean they can just be banned.

Most banning of books in schools comes from school boards, who are oftentimes made up of older people who have been out of the schooling system for years. Some board members see these informative and important books as threats to their parochial beliefs that put more importance on what they think instead of facts. One of the main books being pushed to be banned is Fahrenheit 451. The irony in the banning of Fahrenheit 451 is that the book talks about how the banning and censorship of books is dangerous, but that message is being ignored and our world is getting one step closer to the world of Fahrenheit.

This isn’t the first time that our world has been close to the world of Fahrenheit 451. The book burning in Fahrenheit 451 is a reference to the real life events that happened in Germany during World War 2. Censorship then was at an all time high, and Adolph Hitler had many books burned and banned in his country. He did this to take control of the public and so they could not freely think. This is a very real threat if we continue to ban books as well; we could easily start to live in ignorance without even knowing that we were already stripped of our free thought.

 Last school year in the Norwin School District, several members of the community and school board pushed to ban a book called Al Capone Does My Shirts, which is part of the curriculum in 5th grade at Hillcrest. The was being pushed for a ban by a Norwin parent who was not pleased that her child was reading that book and likewise material due to the fact that the book has sexual innuendos and the use of the “r-word,” but this requires context. The book is set in 1930 during the Great Depression on the prison island of Alcatraz. This book being set in the past is trying to give kids an insight on what life was like back then and that means the good and the bad. Just because something happened in the past that may be seen as offensive now does not mean that it shouldn’t be taught because that would be taking away from our own historical knowledge.

Parents taking kids’ opportunity to learn about the past are frankly over sheltering them. At some point your kids will have to learn about the bad things that happened in the past and currently. Taking away books from children is not only limiting their education, but it is also going to make it that much harder when these kids have a real world problem when they are on their own

Taking a step away from Norwin, one of the most banned books in the nation is The Catcher in the Rye. This book has adult themes and use of foul language. Due to these factors, many states have this book banned despite it providing an important message to the youth that read it. Many books are similar to this in that they are trying to spread a message or show a new way of thinking. This gets many people scared but it should come down to the reader if what they read is right or wrong, not a state or school district that thinks it’s not appropriate because it shows different ideals.

Even though everyone supports freedom of speech, not everyone supports ideals different from their own. Banning books is just another branch of this issue, and as more books are censored then our own world gets closer to the world that many of these people fear.