my paper on book banning...

Book banning is an interesting topic. The definition of what book banning is, is a little bit elusive. The American Library Association seems to think that banning a book equates to taking it out of a public school. Others, such as the author of this article, define “banning” a book a bit more extremely- the book must be made unavailable. If you can still buy it at the bookstore- it isn’t banned.
The idea that choosing not to stock a book in a bookstore is “book banning”, is debatable. On the one hand, not stocking it could affect its availability to others who might desire to read it. On the other hand, the book will still be available from another source; not everyone is refusing to stock it- and if they all do, then perhaps it wasn’t decent, at all. This is what publishing companies do, for goodness sakes- they refuse to publish things they don’t like. Who knows what things we are “missing” because the publisher didn’t accept it?
At the same time, if you were to request a book at your library, and the library refused to get it for you because it didn’t approve of the book; or if the library just refuses to carry books of a particular mindset because they don’t like them, this is not tolerable. This is the restriction of free speech, because the library is government-funded. It’s a “public” library, and should not be bent to a ideological slant.
This causes a predicament, however, in that some things are really indecent, and do not deserve to be on the book shelves. For example, pornographic books or magazines. We do not need those in our public library, where they can be viewed by children. So if you are going to call them “speech” (though speaking is the LAST thing that occurs in this type of publication), I personally believe that you should do something to restrict their availability to minors. Place them in an “Adults Only” section of the library, or something.
I went to the ALA website, and read some of the quotes they had about books. One of them stuck out to me:
“[Confiscating a book and punishing its author] is a sign that one does not have a good case, or at least doesn't trust it enough to defend it with reasons and refute the objections. Some people even go so far as to consider prohibited or confiscated books to be the best ones of all, for the prohibition indicates that their authors wrote what they really thought rather than what they were supposed to think . . .”—Johann Lorenz Schmidt, 1741

A point to raise that is kind of pertinent to the concept of banned books, is that the most widely printed book in the world, the christian Bible, is also banned more than any other book in the world. What does this say about its opponents? If banning a book is a sign that you don’t have a good case against it... what case is there against the Bible, that makes people run and hide from it, and refuse to let us have it available to people in our public school systems?
This point may not be appreciated, because not everyone agrees with it... but according to Dwight Eisenhower:
Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as any document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship......And we have got to fight it with something better, not try to conceal the thinking of our own people. They are part of America. And even if they think ideas that are contrary to ours, their right to say them, their right to record them, and their right to have them at places where they're accessible to others is unquestioned, or it's not America.


that is what was submitted to my teacher... I am expecting the same grade as usual- 10/10.... Nothing but quizzes in that class have ever gotten me less than 100%... a lot get me extra credit- 39/30 on a quiz or two.... :-)

(I could probably slack off and not do some stuff, and still get an A.... nice. :-) )