Both sides of the political aisle are in full pearl clutching mode over what books should be allowed in school libraries; parents are petitioning school boards, political pundits are pontificating their opinions and the politicians are proposing new laws.
Conservatives and parental rights groups rightly bristle at the thought that their young kids might be given what amounts to pornography to read; meanwhile, the left wants classics such as “To Kill a Mockingbird” taken off the shelf because they take offense at the language some people used 90 years ago.
Some even want the “Holy Bible” removed over claims of overt sex and violence contained within the tome.
The favored trope trotted out by both sides of the debate is recalling images of books being burned under the Nazi flag.
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First, let’s get one thing straight. Deciding what books may go into an elementary school library constitutes neither censorship nor a ban.
Censorship is when the government censors and controls what may be published and punishes those caught possessing the banned material.
The very first published work I created, a Southern Gothic horror novel and a three-act play adaptation as part of my college honors thesis, remains under lock and key in the special collections room at Reese Library at Augusta University. The decision to not allow wide publication of the work was mine and mine alone.
Now, why would an author “ban” his own work?
It is not because I am ashamed of the writings; I spent the better part of four years under the tutelage of a board composed of people with Ph.Ds to produce “Manse” and “Swinging Innocence.”
In terms of the play, “Swinging Innocence,” I specifically banned it from ever being performed live on stage. Some plays should be read, not produced for an audience and “Swinging Innocence” is one of those plays.
My reason for limiting access to the material is because it was a scholarly exercise exploring some of the worst types of atrocities that occurred in America during the slavery and segregation eras; as such, access to the work is limited to other scholars.
Most of us have seen the photographs of the body of 14-year-old Emmett Till in his casket after he was tortured and lynched in 1955 for “offending” a White woman. I do not think that anyone in their right mind would show a six-year-old those photographs; children have not formed the comprehension skills to view such material without being traumatized.
In my opinion, children should also not be given access to overtly sexual material. At those ages, both sexes believe the opposite sex has the “cooties,” and have not matured enough to understand that sexual relations (gay or straight) are not just a physical act, but an exercise in intimacy.
Young kids pick up the smallest of cues from the adults around them; they learn intimacy by seeing dad kiss mom on the forehead and hand her an unexpected bouquet of flowers, not from thumbing through the “Kama Sutra.”
School boards should work with parents and take a commonsense approach, understanding there is a very big difference between “All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto” by George M. Johnson and “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” by Judy Blume.
The former book cited graphically describes child rape and the latter explores the thoughts of an adolescent girl at the onset of puberty. One of the books is clearly appropriate for adolescents and the other should not, under any circumstance, be placed in a school library.
When it comes to classics that contain language that offends modern sensibilities, we must remember that Mark Twain, Harper Lee and Harriet Beecher Stowe were writing in the vernacular of the times they were writing about, and the language was not necessarily considered vulgar as it is today.
The commonsense approach would be to simply add a small disclaimer after the title page advising the reader that the book contains language that is not appropriate in today’s times; heck, it might make teens actually want to pick up the classics.
When I was a student of Lakeside High School, I checked out the book “Helter Skelter” by Vincent Bugliosi without really knowing what it was about. The book had a disclaimer penned by the author and, yes, the tale of sex, drugs and cult worship that led to the Tate-Labianca murders did ‘scare the hell’ out of me.
We must not allow emotion or someone’s political agenda to cloud common sense when it comes to what we allow our children to read.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter and Editorial Page Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
