Bonfire of the Vanities

Here ' s Anne Lutz Fernandez onthe epidemic of book banning, which is affecting not only schools and public libraries but even commercial bookstores and publishers.  There are some complexities here which she doesn ' t really address, so I ' ll give it a try. Obviously  there can be legitimate debate about what books schoolchildren should be assigned to read, and also what should be available to them in the school library, although these are certainly not the same question. Assigned readings need to be age appropriate, and they need to include what is acceptable to a wide range of the community. Children are being made to read it and it seems that parents in principle have a right to object. That said, in my view and that of most people who share democratic and liberal values, they ought to be exposed to a range of ideas and viewpoints, including those of people their parents don ' t agree with, all the more so the older they get and the more capacity they have to think for themselves. We can debate what the limits of that range are, but it should include most of what is intellectually respectable and factually accurate. Finally, of course, what is available in the library should include material that you might not want to assign.Public libraries of course hold a lot of material which is intended for adults, but I suppose the question of what material intended for children should be there isn ' t radically different from what should be in the school library,, a...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs