The American Library Association (ALA) has been seized by radical leftists. (That isn’t a joke, I swear.) They take the perverse, absolutist doctrine of free speech from the ACLU, and so anytime someone objects to a book being in their library, they consider it an assault on the First Amendment. It’s a mystery how you can get from “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech” to “Thou shalt not complain about the book purchases of the people who work in public libraries.”
This week the ALA is celebrating Banned Books Week, if “celebrating” is the right word. They have a list of the 100 most challenged books.
Not all of the challenges come from people concerned about sex and violence. Number 5 is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which I read someplace else was the most challenged book of all in public school curricula. The objection is “racial stereotyping.” Same deal for To Kill a Mockingbird, my favorite American novel. Their detractors come from a liberal perspective, by and large.
The ALA notwithstanding, an adult objecting to a book being carried by a library or taught in a public school isn’t “censorship” in the true sense. They aren’t trying to “ban” the books. They simply don’t think libraries and schools should have certain materials. If the Feds prohibit a book, that’s a ban.
The public pays the money for the buildings and the staff, so the public gets a say in what goes on in its institutions. The concept is called “democracy,” and it never guarantees the outcome everyone wants, or even the right outcome. Our democracy in particular guarantees that people get to “petition the government for a redress of grievances.” They might be wise or foolish, and they might not get other people to go along with their ideas. But they do get to express them.
Funny how the ALA is concerned about authors getting to express their views, but they’re implicitly telling everyday citizens to shut up about how their tax money is being spent. Irony?
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+J.M.J+
Check out #90: Little Black Sambo. Another one often banned by liberals. Wonder how many public libraries actually stock it?
Strange; I don’t see the Bible on that list, though many atheists fight to have it banned.
In Jesu et Maria,
Not allowing a book written specifically for an audience the age of the schools students in a school library is censorship. There is no reason why “Huck Finn”, “The Great Gilly Hopkins”, and “To Kill a Mockingbird” should not be in every middle school and high school library in America. If a parent is not in favor of their child reading a certain book, then they can deny their child the opportunity to read it, but they have no right to deny MY child or the children of others that opportunity.
As far as public libraries go, I feel that they should stock every single one of those 100 books, even though I personally find some of them offensive. Once we start setting precedents in censoring the arts (by “arts”, I am referrring to written works, visual arts, music, etc.), then we are opening a Pandora’s Box where anyone’s personal taste could lead to the restriction of what the public has access to. If you are offended by something, do not patronize it. If enough people are in agreement with you, that something will naturally fade from public view.
A case in point is Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion”. Should it be censored or outright banned because certain people find it offensive? I say no. If it is THAT offensive, then people will simply choose just not go to see it, it will flop, and that will be that. As it is, the more controversy that is being stirred up in advance of its release, the more attention and curiosity the film receives, and the more likely it is to garner a large audience. In this particular case, it’s a good thing in my opinion, but for other works of art that do offend me, I cringe to see it get negative attention and therefore increase in popularity, due to public curiosity more than anything. Madonna has maintained her career for twenty years now by continuing to shock and generate “buzz”, usually in a negative way.
By the way, what the HELL is “Where’s Waldo?” doing on that list? How hypersensitive and politically correct do you have to be in order to find offense in THAT? There’s probably a miniscule cartoon of someone’s bare bottom hidden in one of the pictures. The horror of it!
Another note: I’ve never actually read an original version of “Little Black Sambo”, and would like to out of historical and literary curiosity. That book should be accessible to me in my public library for that reason, if no other.
Chris, you say, “If a parent is not in favor of their child reading a certain book, then they can deny their child the opportunity to read it, but they have no right to deny MY child or the children of others that opportunity.” I would raise three objections:
1. You’re saying in essence, “The lowest common denominator must always win.” What if a librarian wants to put “Hustler” in the primary-school library? Or to take it from another direction, what if a parent wants to object to the selection of books because they have no conceivable educational content? Surely you’re not saying that librarians are infallible.
2. My kids have to live with your kids. Unless you’re homeschooling your children on a self-sufficient farm deep in the wilderness, they’re going to have contact with other children. If they’re corrupted, they’ll tend to pass that along to others. That’s the reason moral theologians tell us to be wary of the company we keep, and that maxim is even more important for impressionable children.
3. While the state should not interfere with families unless there is a dire, immediate threat to a child, the state should also exercise discretion when the innocence of children is at stake. We’re not talking about denying parents the right to buy Madonna’s “Sex” and read it to their children as a bedtime story. We’re talking about what libraries should buy. You can still make up your own mind about what is and is not appropriate. You just have to do it with your own money.
I agree with you about “The Passion,” but it’s beside the point. That’s a privately financed movie that will (God willing) be shown in privately owned movie theaters. We’re talking about the public’s tax money being spent for ostensibly public purposes. Nobody has any right to tell Mel Gibson how to make a movie, but the public (meaning you and me) has every right to lobby about how public monies are spent.
NOTE: “Where’s Waldo?” apparently had a small topless woman sunbathing on a beach on one of the pages.
…and Rosemarie, I was surprised to see the Bible didn’t make the list either.
Eric,
In response to your three points:
1)My first sentence was “Not allowing a book written specifically for an audience the age of the school’s students in a school library is censorship.” The key part of that is “written specifically for an audience the age of the school’s students”. Hustler doesn’t fall in that category. As far as educational content, who gets to define what that is? Reading is done for one of three purposes: to gain information, to entertain, or to perform a task (such as “How-to” books). Does every book in a school library need to be for gaining information? I’d prefer my son have the choice of books that interest him, whether they are educational or just entertaining. Any reading he does improves his reading skills much more than not reading anything at all. Reading is like all skills, it only improves with practical experience. With some kids, the reality is they will ABSOLUTELY NOT read unless it is something that appeals to them or they are forced by a parent or teacher. Specifically WHAT topics they will choose to read about depends on the environment they have grown up in and their own individual personalities and interests.
2) You said it yourself: “Unless you’re homeschooling your children on a self-sufficient farm deep in the wilderness, they’re going to have contact with other children.” That’s the real world. Are you surrounded all the time with people who are just like you and hold the same moral standards? Of course not. It’s not healthy (or reasonably possible) to raise kids in a vacuum. Monitor them closely, and take the time to genuinely talk to them about a variety things especially those things that they may see or hear that are objectionable in your household. Explain why it’s not okay. That will instill in them the proper moral values to make good choices about the company they keep and the things they do on their own. Parents aren’t going to be at their side every minute of their lives. They need to be equipped with the tools to make the right choices, as no doubt you are. That is one of a family’s biggest responsibilities in raising a child. Common sense dictates that they need to be shielded from certain things (for example, I didn’t see my first R-rated movie until I was actually 17), but if you raise them in isolation from everything even the least bit objectionable in the world, it will leave them very ill-prepared to function as effective adults. It is analogous to raising a cat to adulthood from a kitten as a declawed, inside-only pet, and then releasing it into the wild to fend for itself. They might make it, they might not.
3) I agree that Madonna’s “Sex” is probably one of the books on the list that offends me the most, but I still feel that it is the responsibility of public libraries to have a copy, albeit in a restricted section and available only to adults. If libraries start getting stocked based on individual tastes of the staff, they will become narrowly focused and less and less of a resource. If budgets are tight, as they are now, then it is the responsibility of the library board of trustees to have a policy in place for prioritizing the purchase of books. Hopefully, in such a situation, Madonna’s pornographic book would not make the cut so that other more worthy titles could, as I am sure you and I would agree. However, not everyone would. Without a prioritizing policy, some librarians could refuse to purchase a copy of “Catcher in the Rye” just because they personally found it offensive.
My son was a big Waldo fan in his pre-reading days, and those books kept my sanity intact on long car trips when he was that age. While I don’t deny that image exists, he never located it, and I would have heard about it if he did, believe me! I just don’t think that one thing by itself would be grounds for banning the book from a library, although I might try to steer my son away from that particular selection in the future.
The bottom line for me is this: I want public funds to provide as comprehensive a library facility as possible with the available funds. I’m Catholic, obviously, but I feel a publicly funded library should have The Torah and The Quiran on hand, even though they are not of my creed. For a public library for all ages, no book should be banned, but some may need to be in restricted circulation (i.e.-for adults only, in an area not accessible to children). For public school libraries, the selection of materials should be age-appropriate (that is very important), and as extensive as possible. Finally, priority policies developed by boards of trustees or school boards must be developed and in place when funds are limited, as they often are. Privately-funded libraries, such as those in parochial schools, can rightly do as their benefactors please.
This is the great thing about weblogs and America in general, Eric! We can have a healthy, uncensored debate like this in a public forum without fear of retaliation by our authorities. To quote (more like paraphrase) some dead guy whose name I cannot recall: “I respectfully disagree with your opinion sir, but I would fight to the death for your right to express it.”
That quotation was from Voltaire. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to post, because it’s bedtime.
Keep a few things in mind here, folks.
1) Nobody’s advocating putting porno in our public schools or public libraries. This type of printed material, under law, must be kept out of the hands of those under 18.
2) Because children develop at different rates, some can handle what others cannot. I was fully capable of handling the chilly tales of Poe or H.P. Lovecraft at 10 years old, whereas others my age might not’ve slept for weeks. I understood the difference, and because my parents KNEW I was capable of discerning between what was real and not real, they gave me free reign to choose any book I wanted to read.
My parents had the responsibility and duty to figure it out with me, and other parents have that responsibility too. If Chris decides that his children can’t handle a book, he has the duty to stop his child from reading that title before it ever even gets to the point where it will effect Eric’s kid. I’ve found from my own experience that kids susceptible to the potential evils of any media form are those whose parents have never taken their parental duty seriously in the first place.
We, above all, cannot start micromanaging everything on the basis that it might “offend.” I don’t much like The Davinci Code and am offended by its absurdity, but I’m not going to move that it be thrown out of all public institutions.
Why?
Because if I were to declare that everything offensive to me should be removed from a library, this would give everybody else the right to demand the same stinking thing. We’d COMPLETELY justify the existence of the liberal nut bags who claim that stone tablets in the middle of a courthouse are “offensive” or break some dreamed-up boundry between “Church and State” merely because they do not happen to like what those tablets represent.
Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right, whether that tool be knowledge or a firearm. If your kid – or adult – knows how to use the tool properly and respects the power of that tool, then there is really not a whole heck of a lot to worry about.
Chris, you say that “Not allowing a book written specifically for an audience the age of the school’s students in a school library is censorship.” I’d call it “prudence” or “judiciousness.” “Censorship” can’t be true censorship if the state isn’t involved. Libraries always have limited budgets and limited space, so they have to be selective. They use a variety of criteria to decide which books to purchase. I’m suggesting that moral considerations should be part of the criteria.
Josh, if someone is trying to get Madonna’s “Sex” into a library, then yes, we are talking about people getting pornography into libraries. Not only that, but the ALA catgorically opposes content filtering on Internet-connected computers in libraries, so eight-year-old kids can look over the shoulders of adults and see their dirty pictures. Or the kids can access dirty pictures themselves. Is that okay with you, too? You have company: Chris thinks it’s okay for the government to subsidize porn.
Stay with me here: I have not said that libraries should limit their selections to the whims of anyone. (How did this turn into a debate about my kids and my personal preferences?) I’m saying that the public can do what it wants with its money. If it wants to stock libraries with pornography, then it will get its way. If it wants to exclude pornography or self-help books or whatever else, it should have that right.
I had no idea that so many libertarians read Catholic Light…
Eric,
I don’t think it’s ok for government to subsidize that which we consider pornography, i.e. material that has a specific designation of 18 or older. I actually saw a copy of Madonna’s Sex – my sophomore year of high school – and found nothing socially redeeming (or really very appealing) about it. I would thus label it “porno” and have no problem if my local library decides not to carry it.
I also have no problem with a library deciding to filter out porn. But the problem with this – and the reason the ALA opposes filtering – is that there is no filter that catches only porn. There are filters that catch all porn, but they also render legitimate sources of information unavailable. Perhaps a librarian could disable the filtering software in instances where the software filters the wrong stuff, but I can also see why an understaffed library doesn’t want to be bothered by these requests all day. It’s a lose-lose situation.
if anyone can. im doing a research report for Where’s Waldo and why it is trying to be banned. I know why. I am just tryin to find more detail into it. i have found very little and the only reason i have found for banning it was that is had a small picture of a topless sunbather. If any of you can provide me with anymore information i would really appreicate it. Thanks again.
I certainly do not condone our government’s subsidizing pornography, but this debate continually comes back to the same point: who decides what constitutes “porn”? To one person who pays taxes, a photo of Michaelangelo’s statue of David could fall into that category, or many issues of National Geographic with native people wearing little or no clothing. Others who pay taxes might take the opposite tack: Playboy Magazine might be considered legitimate in a public library because of the literary value of it’s articles.
I am good at remembering quotes, but lousy at remember who uttered them. It seems to me a former U.S. Supreme Court justice once said “I cannot define pornography, but I know it when I see it.”
A quote I CAN attribute accurately is that of the wise-well-beyond-his-years Josh in his comment above, which I think sums up my argument better than anything I have said: “If I were to declare that everything offensive to me should be removed from a library, this would give everybody else the right to demand the same stinking thing.” (His point about the parallel between this and the recent Ten Commandments Monument controversy in Alabama is a good one too!)
I hardly consider the ALA to be liberal group. They are apolitical, except when an issue is dropped into their laps. Most of the time, that issue is somehow related to freedom of speech. I think their views of freedom of speech would be much like that of our Founding Fathers, who wrote our Constitution remembering only too well what happened when their ancestors were denied that freedom and others before coming here from the Old World.
I’m a conservative in almost every way, but when it comes to freedom of speech, I am pretty liberal. I admit that proudly.
Banning books is a practice which represents prejudice and censorship. The banning of books by public institutions such as public libraries, restricts what people are allowed to learn. Even if some books, such as Madonna’s “Sex” have no educational value, they should still be kept in a public library, if for no other reason then they spark debate, which gets people to think, thus learning something, if only more about their own beliefs. In order to live in a society such as the United States, where free speech is a constitutional right, banning of bookd in public libraries must not be allowed.
However, there is a difference between banning books in public libraries and the issue of what to keep in a public school’s library. The solution to the debate is a simple one, in public libraries that are there to serve both adults and children, no book banning should take place. In a public school’s library, there should be age appropriate literature only. Clearly books such as “Sex” by Madonna, have no place in a children’s library. However, I personally read many of the controversal books of the last decade, some as a school age child. I was old enough to read them and analyze them reasonably and my parents knew this. I do agree with Josh on this point:it is the parents responsibility to decide what their child comes in contact with. Parents may not always be able to completely control their child’s environment, but they can always answer their child’s questions in an honest manner which reflects their own values. It is up to the parents to parent their children, it is not the job of the public libraries to make sure that their children do not come into contact with a book the parents deem as undesirable, at the cost of the greater public.
The parallel drawn between peoples opinions on banning books and the Ten Commandment controversy in Alabama is an incorrect one. While banning books is a subject open to debate, the “stone tablets in the middle of the court house” is not. One of the best things about the United States is its judicial system which is supposed to give a fair trial to all Americans. A person not of the Christian faith, and not believing in the Ten Commandments, has every reason to belive that they will not recieve a fair trial in an institution that clearly promotes, through its statues, one religion over another, one God over another. I was raised in the Catholic church, and do not consider myself to be a “liberal nut bag”, but this is clearly an issue of judicial unbias, and not of an “imaginary, dreamed up boundry between church and state”
hey, josh, this is kind of ironic. since you use dthe word “porno” in your posting, i couldn’t access htis site because of the librarie’s filter. I believe that kind of disproves your point.