Sunday Sermonette: Book banning

Ch. 4 is pretty self-explanatory -- the neighbors feel threatened by the Jews rebuilding the city wall but Nehemiah is resolute and they do it anyway. So I ' ll take this opportunity to talk about the current book banning wars. There are some distinctions that people seem to elide in this controversy so I ' ll try to be clear about my own position.  Of course there is plenty of literature that isn ' t appropriate for third graders to read, for various reasons. It might be just too disturbing, and give them nightmares. They might misunderstand it -- for example, literature featuring unreliable or malevolent narrators. They might not be ready to think critically about some controversial moral issues. I agree that young children probably aren ' t ready to think about all the complexities of sexual relationships and desire, and they don ' t need to know specifically about all the varieties thereof. And for sure, large parts of the Bible come under those restrictions. (On the other hand, it ' s highly unlikely that a third grader is going to pick the thing up and start reading through the really nasty parts. As I have often said here, very few adults have done so including the vast majority of the people claim to believe in it.) Obviously, as people grow older the range of what they can and should be reading and thinking and talking about expands. The public library should have copies of Mein Kampf, Das Kapital, Plato ' s Republic, Lolita, and the Joy of Sex, as wel...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs