Censoring in the Classroom

Censoring books in the classroom is very foreign to me.  I went to a public school where we read a lot of books that were multicultured, had witchcraft, or were very prejudiced.  I read Huckleberry Finn in 6th grade and watched the movie as well.  I read The Crucible in 11th grade.  I also read Night in college.  I have had various reading in all my English courses and to my knowledge, I have not heard any student complain about the novel that was being taught and the book was never censored my the teacher or the community.  I went to a school that was bi-racial.  We did have mainly white students but there were a decent about of African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, etc.  There were books taught referred to all the different ethnicities and we never had a problem in my school about teaching the books in class.

In NCTE guideline article, there was a quote that stated, "any work is potentially open to be attacked by someone, somewhere, sometime, for some reason."  This quote made me think a little bit.  In my school we had a lot of discussions and most were about how racism is bad and how we should not discriminate against other races.  The books we read were never attacked but I am sure that people have attacked  The Crucible because it has to do with a lot of things that people know is fake but do not want their children to think that it is real.  I think that parents and other members of the community need to realize that in the real world there are drugs, premarital sex, under aged drinking, divorce, high school gangs, dropouts, racism, violence, and sensuality.  This is brought up in most adolescent books.  Most parents that have books dismissed from schools would hate it if there were any of those things in a book that their child was reading.  I feel this is wrong because this happens in the real world and to teach students anything different would be lying to them and why should we do that? We obviously are not telling the students to go out and do any of these things but we are teaching them what happens in the real world and not talk about a book that makes everything simple and easy and have nothing to do with the real world.  I also think is was stupid that teachers got in trouble for using certain books.  Teachers should use books that talk about fears, hopes, joys, and fustrations of people.  Students are being denied the freedom to explore ideas and pursue truth wherever and however they wish.  I know that there are a lot of schools now that are having censoring issues and I think it is very important for the English department from the school to have a plan what to do if a parent or someone else has an issue with a novel being taught. 

In the article about the ripple effect of censorship I was really intrigued by all the things the teachers said about how they are dealing with all the censoring that is happening at schools.  A teacher got fired because she used a book called The Shadow Box and it had offensive language and referred to homosexuality.  What as teachers should we do when we have parents that are going to get mad at books we teach.  I think I would give options to the students.  I would have options that did use some offensive language and talk about issues that should be discussed.  Then I could have some other choices that have been cencored and approved by the parent's that are having problems.  I would let the students first choose their book and then send a note home to the parent if the child chose a book that was not censored to get permission for them to read the book.  This sounds a little insane to me, even though it was my idea, because my school never had these issues and this is very new to me how this can happen.  I am actually a little afraid because I ready to teach the classics in my classroom like To Kill a Mockingbird and now I think I might get in trouble for doing it from reading this article.  This is obviously what the article wanted to convey, but I hope I have the courage to teach my students about the real world.  I thought it was really rediculous when a teacher got in trouble because they were going to teach a book in their class and the title of the book made a parent think it was about something bad and it was not.  The teacher was told not to teach the book.  This is hard for me to believe because how can a parent have this much power and not even have read the book to know what is it about?  When using, "A Modest Proposal," in class parents thought the teacher was telling kids to go out and be cannibals which is completely ludicrous because who would believe that.  The proposal is supposed to me a satire and a good teacher would explain that before having the students read it.  I think it will be hard to teach multicultural literature in the classroom now because censoring is becoming more popular. 

In the article about Huckleberry Finn, as a person who wants to be a teacher and has had to read this book and watch the movie in school just like just about everyone else in the country, I was suprised to read this and hear about how this novel is racist and how a lot of people want it censored from the schools.  Teachers feel like they have a kinship to the book because they understand what it represents and stands for.  When the book was being fought over whether it should be taught or not, students were feeling weird.  Friendships between friends of different races were in jeopardy because of this.  The students were feeling very strongly with what their parents were saying and were not sure why the African Americans were so upset.  Teachers are getting more and more scared of rick taking.  This is not a good thing because as we have learned, it can be a good thing to make a student uncomfortable to leave an impression and to have the student think critically, and when teachers stop taking risks, students will stop feeling uncomfortable and start to become the bad kind of an apathetic student.  I thought it was interesting how the article talked about how the movie was more effective to a student than the novel itself.  I had to read the book first in 6th grade and then had to watch the movie.  Since it was so long ago, I can't remember much.  I think the movie did add some key points when I read this article and it told me what was added, but I think the book is a true classic and is still being taught in every school for a reason and most of the time it is not attached with a movie.  The book may portray African Americans wrong, but I think that a lot of books do this.  There are a lot of prejudice books in the world and some were written by a person of the same race the book is stereotyping. 

Authors have an amazing job.  They can write whatever they want, say whatever they want, and then see if other people like it or not.  Some books, like Huckleberry Finn, were very popular and a lot of classes used the book.  Even though there are people out there that think it shouldn't be used, there are a lot more that think it should.  I loved all the books I got to read in school because even when they talked about different races and I got to the points where I even felt uncomfortable to talk in class, I still thought critically and can still remember a lot from most of the stories.  I think all books that people would have censored are some of the most important books that students should encounter because that means their real.  That is what scares most people, besided becoming a cannibal or doing witchcraft, but there is parts that are even real from them as well.  The Salem witch trials were real and there were people in poverty that were so hungary they could eat a "baby," which is obviously disgusting but that is a saying that I have heard before.  When I am a teacher, I want to teach the books that are real and make my students think about the real world.  I hope I will not get into trouble though.  I may just have to find a school district that is okay with most books taught like mine.