Dangers Of Censorship Persistence

By Author: allan
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Our audience may query "Why write a commentary about censorship using three metaphors" Unequivocally; censorship is an "old" topic that has been mulled over time and time again. And like many old topics, it could be easily dismissed because many people might argue that the issue has been examined, discussed, thought about, and when problems related to it emerge, resolved. To remind us that censoring books is no dead issue, Muzevich (2008) noted, "The Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) of the American Library Association (ALA) recorded 3,019 challenges between Jan 1, 2000 and December 31, 2005." She said further that "The OIF also notes that for each Vibram Fivefingers Shoes challenge reported there are as many as four or five which go unreported'" . Given the times, and the fact that book challenges are as prevalent today as they were decades ago, clearly, the problem of censorship has not been resolved and remains persistent.

The late scholar, Joseph Campbell once told Bill Moyers (Gross, 2008), "If you want to change the world, you have to change the metaphor." With ...
... Campbell's admonition in mind, we refute the metaphors of censors who would burn important books in public places or lobby school officials to remove critical texts from the curriculum or libraries. In their place, we offer our own metaphors to capture the dangerous and stultifying nature of censorship. Censorship as barbed wire, patina, and a tightrope affords us a way to discuss the dangers of censorship in the 21st century, and these metaphors enable us to reopen the conversation as a fresh new chapter so as to analyze a persistent problem.

What metaphors do censors tend to live by We argue that the metaphors of censors are designed to maintain a sense of reality that does not exist. They try to keep people from seeing life as anything other than a safe, neat world where everybody looks the same and behaves in similar ways. This view of the world, however, looks to us a lot like the world found in Lois Lowry's (1993) The Giver where only a few citizens made decisions for all others. The metaphors that censors live by would have us believe that in life we all live "happily ever after," but at the same time, reality stands knocking at the door. Unfortunately, this view of reality that does not exist too often influences teachers to make decisions they would not otherwise make about literature they will teach. Wollman Banilla (1998) argued that teachers, attempting to protect their students from what they see as harsh realities, have "outrageous" criteria for rejecting certain works of children's literature when they select texts for classroom use. In particular, they "avoid addressing sociocultural differences and discrimination," appear to "lack the courage to present nonmainstream perspectives and experiences, and they lack the faith in children's ability to recognize and handle difficult issues" .

When censorship is practiced, what is at stake the professionalism of teachers—who were hired due to their knowledge, skills, dispositions, and expertise—is placed at risk. When parents or guardians find materials objectionable, rather than broach their children's teacher, they take their grievance to the principal—and in some cases the superintendent—to resolve the problem. Besides violating First Amendment rights, when parents or guardians do not honor the process for challenging books, and complain to the principal or superintendent, their actions de-professionalize teachers. "Going to the top" is not without consequences. First, by bypassing the teacher on their way to the principal or superintendent, would-be censors project the message that the teacher has neither expertise nor power. A superintendent or principal, who does not encourage the censor to talk to the teacher and, instead, acts on the spot to remove the text in question, reifies the parents' image of a powerless teacher. Often, moreover, this approach results in removing a book from the library shelves or from the curriculum immediately without consideration of the book's value to students. Honoring a process is one thing that makes a school a "good school." Leadership is not about making rash decisions on the spot to make the issue go away but rather about respecting the professional knowledge of teachers and guiding the objectors to take the appropriate and proper procedures. Vibram FiveFingers Discount They should be encouraged to work within the system that's in place, rather than against it. Such a stance will ensure that teachers have administrative support and those teachers and students receive due process.

Agee (1999) wrote about teachers that she studied who, fearing threats of challenges and censorship chose "safe" books to study with their classes, selected "safe" methods for teaching literature, and made decisions about both their teaching and their curriculum based upon how they might protect themselves from possible complaints by parents or other potential censors. "A particularly insidious effect of censorship," wrote Agee, "is its power to silence teachers" (p. 62). All but one of the teachers in her study had, to greater or lesser degrees, largely sublimated their desires to use nontraditional, multicultural texts or books that dealt with controversial social issues out of caution, outright fear, or a desire to avoid the disruption of book challenges. Yolen (cited in Newman, 1995) called this type of self-censorship by teachers "gray censorship," and she explains it this way:

Everyone in the teaching community turns to one another and says, "This took up too much money and too much time and too much energy. Next time, let's be more careful...." It's like winning the battle and losing the war.