The thought that leads me to contemplate with dread the erasure of other voices, of unwritten novels, poems whispered or swallowed for fear of being overheard by the wrong people, outlawed languages flourishing underground, essayists’ questions challenging authority never being posed, unstaged plays, cancelled films — that thought is a nightmare. (Toni Morrison)
When I was in the sixth grade, there was time out each day for reading. We could read books from the school shelves or from home. I was reading Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger, which was running in the movies at the time. Sister Mary Gaudio would walk the aisles making sure we were reading. She stopped by my desk, tsked loudly, told me I should not read that trash, then moved on. She did not take the book, which she could have. She did not pull me aside later to tell me why I should not read that “trash.” She did not send me to see the principal or call my parents.
Last month, a county school board in Tennessee banned “Maus” from the curriculum. Since then, sales of Maus have been going through the roof. It is a top seller on Amazon. Now, a school board in Wentzville, Missouri, voted to ban acclaimed author Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye.” We can expect sales of “The Bluest Eye” to soar.
This is nothing new. The left and right have been trying to ban books with “objectional” language and themes for years. The past few years, the right has been on a roll, not only banning books but enacting laws to keep specific “objectional” reading material and curricula out of schools. Ignorance appears to be more contagious than COVID. Ignorance is at pandemic levels.
The book and curriculum banners are ignorant about literature and history. They are clueless about young people. Young people have an innate curiosity. If the books or ideas are banned, they will find ways to obtain those books or search for ideas. Banning books or ideas only fuels their curiosity.
They choose to deny young people the chance to understand and develop empathy for others. Evidently, allowing young people to develop understanding and empathy runs counter to supposed values and morals. They want to raise their children to be as ignorant and insular as they are.
Here is a clue. If you ban something from young people, they will seek it out. If you banned brushing teeth, you would find young people in gangways, alleys, and rooftops furiously brushing their teeth. The same holds true for banned books or ideas. Curious young people will find them, even if they must hide them from adults.
We need our young people to widen their perspectives. You cannot do that in a vacuum. Our society is in constant change. Morals and values are changing. If we want our children to be good world citizens, they need to be exposed to ideas and language. They are not being converted, nor are their morals and values corrupted. Hell, the Bible is full of immorality and atrocities. Not one of those Bible-thumping book banners wants the Bible banned.
The internet opened the whole world of ideas. Young people can go on the internet and learn anything they want, even the ideas banned by so-called adults. There are no hiding ideas and concepts from young people. They can find out anything without the permission or knowledge of their narrow-minded school boards, state legislatures, or parents.
Language and history are uncomfortable. They are they supposed to be. We teach young people history without the horrors humans inflicted on the world. They learn that later in their educations, usually at university.
Young people are more sophisticated than their parents, just like every young generation was. If taught correctly, they can critically think and make their own decisions about right or wrong, moral or immoral. They can decide what is right for them. The question is will they choose to condemn others or understand and have empathy for them?
When people ban books, they are self-defeating. The same people who complain about censorship of certain ideas or cancel culture are the same ones trying to ban books. They are the bad guys not only to young people but to themselves. Knowledge is not good, evil, moral, or immoral. It is just information to produce informed citizens.
Certain kinds of trauma visited on peoples are so deep, so cruel, that unlike money, unlike vengeance, even unlike justice, or rights, or the goodwill of others, only writers can translate such trauma and turn sorrow into meaning, sharpening the moral imagination. (Toni Morrison)
We can send informed citizens with moral imagination in the world, or we can send ignorant citizens with no imagination, just like the book banners. The choice is ours. The future is theirs.