Challenged Books

Looking through this list of “challenged books” is disheartening. It’s a track record of all of the school boards who have bowed down to protective parents. Everyone grows up at some point, everyones going to hear the “f” word, and an ignorant collection of misguided folk who still, somehow, use derogatory remarks towards gays, blacks, women ect. So why stop your children from reading these things in books, arguably one of the safest places to learn them. In recently published books how many “cool” main characters still use the “n” word and beat their wives? None. It’s not like an author sits down and tries to come up with a book that they know will be blacklisted by schools. In American schools Harry Potter doesn’t get read because christian parents don’t want their kids casting spells and worshipping satan. But what about the Satanist family? They probably don’t want their kids getting creationism shoved down their throats. So where is the middle ground? And what about here in Canada with our massive multicultural society? Who do schools respect and where is the line for “unteachable and offensive”?

A book like Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird was band for its use of the “n” word upsetting black residents in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. But wasn’t the use of that word part of history? I am in no way defending the use of it now; it’s collected more than enough dust, but is that not the reason we celebrate Black History Month every February? To remember the suffering of African-Canadian and African-American’s predecessors, not pretend like it didn’t happen? If parents don’t want to expose their kids to bad role models who use the “n” word as punctuation, that’s fine. Don’t let them listen to music that offends you, but please don’t try and brush history under the rug. And besides, the characters that readers sympathize with shouldn’t be Bill Ewell, it’s Atticus and the children who people look up too.