Banned Books: A History and Examination

One of the most prolific issues in American education has been censorship in the classroom. This issue has manifested itself in several ways throughout history; however, censorship most often manifests itself in the classroom as book banning. Book banning can be any form of textual censorship from the exclusion of novels from a school library, to the censoring of textbooks by a school board, to the full banning of books by a government. This paper will examine book banning and textual censorship and its impact on education. It will first look at the history of book banning including several modern occurrences of it in the classroom. It will then seek to explain the significance of book banning on education in general with particular attention paid to the American educational system. Banning books has been used as a system for controlling what students learn for ages where those in power use it force the views of the few on the next generation of learners. The banning of books has its origins as far back as 450 B.C., when Anaxagoras wrote that he thought the sun was a “white hot stone and that the moon reflected the sun's rays.” His writings were deemed “derogatory” to the gods, forcing his departure from Athens and the burning of all of his writings. Since that time, decisions about book bannings often have turned on the definition of what is derogatory. As society has grown and changed, so have its tastes, and the fine line between what one person considers art and what another considers rubbish has shifted several times. This issue becomes more complex when the material is available to minors or included in the education of children. Debate over which books should be used in the classroom or made available in a school library can become very heated. Those who object to content of a particular book feel that they, not the school, should decide what materials are available to their children. On the other side, those who feel a book has value and merit feel that a small group of people should not have the power to limit the rest of society’s access to materials.
One of the most notable periods of book censorship in U.S. history began in 1873 when Anthony Comstock founded his New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. The main objective of the society was to prevent “obscene” materials from polluting the minds of the American people, especially the youth. In the beginning, the group targeted mostly erotica and crime stories. Comstock viewed dime novels as the equivalent of children's pornography and claimed the devil used such novels to entice children to a life of crime and lust. Comstock advocated boycotts of businesses that sold dime novels, and he lobbied state and local governments to pass laws to limit or prohibit the sale of such materials. His efforts led to bans or suppression of dime novels in Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington.4 In the years following the campaign of Anthony Comstock, implementing outright bans on books and materials has proved to be more difficult. Communities as well the courts have tried to balance personal preferences with intellectual freedom.
More than a century after the Comstock era, the Supreme Court ruled in Board of Education, Island Trees v. Pico that public school boards could not remove a book from the library “simply because they dislike[d] the ideas contained in those books.” In its 1982 decision, the Court said a balance must be struck between the school’s role as an educator and the students’ rights of access to materials. Justice Harry A. Blackmun elaborated, saying that books should be removed only when a book more relevant to the curriculum was available or when other “politically neutral” reasons were present. The Court’s decision, however, did not halt public challenges to school books and materials. In the decade 1990 and 2000, individuals raised 6,364 challenges to books, according to data from the Office for Intellectual Freedom. The greatest number of complaints arose from “sexually explicit” material (1,607). The second largest category consisted of “offensive language” (1,427). Other objections were prompted by: material that was not age appropriate, books having an occult theme, materials containing violence, books promoting homosexuality, items promoting a religious viewpoint, or books containing nudity.
Many people would think the time of book burning is long past. However, in August 2003 a group burned the Harry Potter Series in Greenville, Michigan. As long as ideas and ideals continue to conflict, there likely will be individuals willing to put a book under lock and key or to eliminate it entirely in order to protect their beliefs. The delicate task of school boards, librarians and teachers is to strike a balance between personal values and intellectual freedoms, so that information is not thrust on those who do not wish to receive it while access is preserved for those who want it.
One of the most recent cases of book banning in the classroom comes, not in the form of actually banning books, but instead in the form of textbook censorship by the Texas State School Board. Texas is a large state. By population the state of Texas is second only to California and it is this great size that grants these two states enormous power over the printing of textbooks. This power means that any decisions on textbooks made by the Texas state school board have a huge effect not just upon the students of Texas, but on the entire nation. The board used its power over Texas schools to implement the textbooks it felt best embodied the political ideals of the board and its constituents. The purchasing power of the board allowed it to influence the content of textbooks by refusing to purchase textbooks that did not include the exact content the board required. This power led to students across the nation learning from politically and religiously biased texts. In 2009, the Texas board required that textbooks ask students to consider whether gaps in the fossil record and the complexity of the human cell can be explained by evolution. Next was the social studies year, when the board defined America not as a democracy but a “constitutional republic” and replaced capitalism with “free-enterprise system. The wording here indicates, quite clearly, the beliefs of the board and threatens to turn learning into hypnosis.
Since 2011, state officials have begun to regulate the Texas State School Board’s power by removing the final “say-so” from the state board to local school boards. This step highlights a realization among the American public that students are the future of the country and compromising their education compromises that future. Book banning has a long a sordid history and it may never truly end, but as long as there are people willing to recognize the damage it can cause, there will be a way to prevent its expansion. Whether it is through “Banned Book Week” or legislative action people across the nation are rising to the challenge of ending censorship. Education may never be free of censorship, but it must attempt to prevent the expansion of bias.
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