I am responding on the topic of school libraries (and public libraries) banning books because of possible controversial content and trying to "protect" students in elementary & middle school from these challenged books.
Parents and teachers often worry about the kind of books students/children are reading, which result in challenging a book in the classroom and library. Hundreds of books are brought to the attention of the American Library Association (ALA) a year. I believe that banning books from libraries and classrooms is actually very pointless and well, stupid. It violates the constitutional right to freedom of speech and press and the right to read. I also think that reading controversial books is very educational, anyway. Reading them can give you a more open mind, show a different point of view, learn about new things you might not have thought or been taught about before, and can give you awareness on a topic. And schools love educational material, so why ban them?
As an example, there is a allegorical picture book called "And Tango Makes Three". This book is about two male penguins raising an abandoned baby chick. It is among the top 10 most challenged books in the United States since 2005.
I don't understand why that would be very challenged right now in 2010, since the Department of Education is trying to teach that there should be equality in the LGBT community with the rest of America, and here we have a book about male penguins raising a penguin that parents want out of libraries and classrooms. This really contradicts the teachings of equality that go on these days.
So anyway, my beliefs are that books shouldn't be banned in classrooms and libraries, for these reasons.
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