On why “banned
books” aren’t quite as obviously wrong as you might think.
You’re not likely
to find a more lifelong opponent of banning books, and I do mean lifelong—one of
my favorite sweatshirts in middle and high school (what can I say, I was an
uber-nerd) read “Celebrate
Freedom, Read a Banned Book” and then listed a group of works that have
been banned at one time or another. So it wasn’t easy for me to write the
teaser sentence above, believe me. But the truth is that in our conversations
about banning and censorship we tend to conflate a couple pretty different
actions: attempting
to remove books from schools and/or libraries (a practice that I thoroughly
oppose); and advocating that we not teach books in particular classes, for
certain grade levels, and so on. The latter, which is generally known instead
as “challenging” those books, is
certainly complicated and often problematic, but is not the same as banning the
book from those institutions.
For a case in
point, we could go to the ur-source for such conversations: Mark Twain’s Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn (1884). Within a year of its 1885 American publication
the novel was banned
by the Concord Public Library, the first of many such bannings. But even if
we agree with the premise that the CPL and other banning institutions were
mistaken (and I do), it doesn’t necessarily follow that Huck is (for example) perfectly fine to teach in middle or high
school English classrooms (both places where it has been
taught with some frequency). On that question I tend to agree with my Dad, Stephen
Railton, who has argued that the book’s defenders have short-changed
genuine questions about its language and racial depictions, particularly when
it comes to the challenges of presenting them to younger readers. Which is to
say, challenges of Huck in the
classroom not only aren’t the same as banning or censorship—they also have, at
least, a leg to stand on.
And then there’s
the case of Lois
Lowry’s The Giver (1993). Lowry’s
award-winning
novel is one of the most acclaimed young adult books of the last few
decades, and so it stands to reason that it would be a good choice to teach in
middle school classrooms. But while the novel does not include unintentionally
problematic or objectional material like Twain’s book, it does create an
incredibly complex and dark dystopian world, one in which characters, situations,
and themes are far more sophisticated and troubling than in many other young
adult works. There’s something—a great deal, in fact—to be said for teaching
precisely such complex works, provided there is sufficient time and space for
the teacher and students to discuss and analyze and engage with those complexities.
But there’s also something to be said for parents and organizations worrying
that, in the absence of those resources, Lowry’s novel will affect students
more negatively than positively. I don’t agree with the
challenges that Lowry’s novel has received, but I understand them—and they
shouldn’t all be dismissed as simple censorship.
Next YA favorite
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What YA lit
favorites and memories would you share?
No comments:
Post a Comment