Censorship in the Public School

¶ … censorship in the public school system. The writer explores various issues and argues against censorship, citing the American constitution as support for the argument. There were 10 sources used to complete this paper.

The United States constitution was an instrument that the nation was founded on. The constitution provides specific protections to the citizens of the country and those protections are held against every standard and legal question that comes up. The United States public school system, which is funded by American tax dollars, works to comply with the constitutional rights afforded the students, however the question of censorship comes up again and again across the states. Book censorship, in the public school system has made the news more often of late. School systems attempt to ban or censor certain books from the student reading list and groups of student advocates object and raise legal questions about the ability of a school system to do it. Censorship of books in the public school system should not be allowed as it goes against the constitution of the United States.

The question of censorship when it comes to books and the public school system has been debated for years. Each time the subject comes up the two sides line up against each other and the debates and court appearances begin. Censorship in the public school system is an especially sensitive issue because it involves the nation's children as well as the constitution that they learn about in the schools they attend.

In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 the author presents an extremely frightening vision of what the world will be like in the future if the nation does not put a halt to any attempt at censorship of books. In this book the author has fire fighters starting fires for the purpose of burning books.

The main characters of the work hide books in the effort to preserve the right to have ideas and thoughts outside of the things that are taught or approved.

The book was written in 1953, and at that time he spoke of a future world in which books were banned from shelves and schools. It is a bit scary to note that many of the things he had happen in his book are not far fetched from the real life attitudes of American society today regarding censorship of reading materials in the school systems.

Other Arguments

There are three solid constitutional reasons that censorship should not be allowed in the public school system.

The first reason of course is the basic right to freedom of speech. Freedom of speech does not only protect the spoken word but also protects the written word.

Tennessee, one of the more bible-based states in the union considered making it illegal to teach evolution without parental consent and many of its districts have voluntarily adopted the policy. In addition the state has taken aim at its public school library system.

Evolution is not the only subject in which the religious right flexes its muscles to control education in the public schools. The library and course content are targets for censorship by the religious right when they encounter works that offend their religious sensitivities. Thus, Shakespeare's "Macbeth" and Mark Twain's books are examples of works they find offensive and for the removal of which they labor (Schwartzbart, 1997)."

Freedom of speech is a right given to the schools and the students by the constitution that the nation was built on. Freedom of speech allows for the above books to sit side by side with the approved books on every school shelf in the nation.

The censorship of books in the school system is wrong because it interferes with the amendment that promises the right to live freely and without censorship. That right is given by the document by which all legal questions are held against for measurement as to their viability (Mediavilla, 1997).

In the early 1950's there were attempts to censor books in the California school system. Various groups formed to either fight for or against censorship (Stewart, 1948).

At that time the question had to do with communism and the fear of individuals that their neighbors, friends and family members had joined the communist party. Many books at the time were examined to determine whether they had pro-communist content and if so there was a movement to remove those books from the shelves (Tenney, 1947).

At stake here were much more far-reaching intellectual freedom issues than just the proposed suppression of provocative textbooks. Fueled by citizens' complaints, the Tenney Committee proceeded to introduce several bills "designed to prevent the teaching of controversial subjects... And to increase the legislative control over the selection of textbooks and educational policies." Among them was SB 1026, which would have revamped the school social studies curriculum by prohibiting the introduction of any kind of "propaganda" in the classroom. For the first time, California's long-standing tradition of an educational system independent of politics was seriously threatened. Recognizing this, the Southern and Mount Shasta Districts, representing well over half the membership of CLA, quickly passed and sent to the legislature a resolution opposing SB 1026. The bill, which was passed by the Senate, eventually was defeated by the Assembly (Mediavilla, 1997)."

The third reason that book censorship is against the constitution is that it interferes with freedom of the press. The freedom of the press has been tried again and again in various situation and it has always won the battle because of the protections that the constitution provides (Brubaker, 1994).

In the case of censorship of books in the school system freedom of the press is challenged because the school system is trying to tell the schools what can and cannot be printed. While the schools don't actually state that something cannot be printed, they say it by not allowing it to be added to the school shelves, or to student reading lists.