Censorship

From the beginning of modern civilization, books have been an important and revolutionary source of human knowledge. Unfortunately, it has become a growing trend to censor books for a variety of reasons. Several of these reasons, which include protecting children and omitting offensive material, are not only arbitrary but are without merit. This is because sheltering children is not beneficial to the children, and also it is impossible to shelter kids without resorting to isolation. Also, it’s not possible to screen out offensive material in books because all material is potentially offensive. The escalating trend of censoring information in books is not only an impossible task, but it contributes to the declination in the population’s intelligence.

Especially considering America’s wide access to information through technology, the attempt to restrict “inappropriate” information from children is an infeasible and somewhat malicious task. First of all, children are not “protected” when unable to read books that contain adult material. Kids need to be exposed to things like sex and violence because if they are unfamiliar with these “adult” topics, when they come upon them in the uncensored, real world, their reactions will be unpredictable. Censoring reading material about murder, for example, may seem like a good solution to preventing violence among the future adult generation. But if a child did not understand the concept of taking another person’s life, they may be more prone to violence than a child who had read and thought about the subject. Also, it is cruel to make children think that there are no flaws in the world. This false precognition about the world could damage a youth in their slow exposure to life, because they would later realize that their outlook on life was based on lies. People need to grow up perceiving their surroundings as they really are, and not be deprived of information because it’s not positive information. Another problem with trying to censor inappropriate material from children is that it there are many influences on the child, outside of books, that will present them with the same “inappropriate” information, sometimes in a worse form than books present it. For example, a 4th grader will unquestionably hear more vulgar language on the school playground than they will in a book containing bad language. Children are probably more influenced by their peers and television than books. Although television is something that can be censored, humans can not be, so censoring books because of unsuitable language or violent/sexual scenes is ineffective.

The censoring of books for potentially offensive material should be ceased because everything that is written may be controversial since it is impossible to please all readers, and because books do not always have the same influence on readers as they are intended. Books with a certain intention can actually have the opposite effect on the public. Even the most negative, bigoted books can trigger peace rather than anger, the presumed response. Consider a book written that slanders blacks. A black person may read it and, instead of being insulted, may start a civil rights movement in order to show that the white author (along