Ethics Issues around the Banning of Books
Ethics Seminar, May 3, 2023
USCB Hilton Head
Presenter: Hank Noble
Ethics Seminar board chairman Gordon Haist asked the audience to think about potential topics for next year and then introduced Hank Noble for the presentation of the day.
Hank described his preparation as an attempt to “nail Jello to a tree” because of the subject’s tendency to spread in so many directions.
Seeking help from Artificial Intelligence (AI), he quickly got a surprising, comprehensive short history of humans’ attempts to stifle and destroy written material.
In 213 BC a Chinese emperor ordered destruction of information describing empires and emperors before his reign.
In the Middle Ages, Catholics banned material from Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato. Catholics later objected to translations of the Bible into English, insisting that only priests should read the Bible because they were the only ones who could interpret it properly. Catholics at one time banned the writings of Galileo because of his insistence that the planet Earth revolves around the Sun, not the other way around.
During the Protestant Reformation, Protestants banned Catholic literature.
Then, in the Age of Enlightenment, for a time everybody was encouraged to read everything.
A new censorship movement began during the Reagan Administration with the “Moral Majority” as its leader.
From time to time, various leaders banned Shakespeare’s works because they made people blush. Censors removed words from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and from “Leaves of Grass.”
Some people tried to ban the Harry Potter books because of the hexes and magic, but a generation of non-readers found them fascinating, almost addictive.
As school principal, Hank encountered the challenge of boredom on the part of a group of “smart kids” who were given only “age appropriate” material to read and so had been offered and encouraged to read material generally considered suitable for older students. A parent complained that one of the stories referred to the prank of boys to slip under the bleachers in the school stadium to look up the skirts of the girls sitting above them.
Once parents and school staff met to talk about the problem, they agreed that the school would henceforth notify parents when their “smart kids” were given reading material considered more advanced than typically appropriate for their ages so they could opt out if they wished.
Two letters from parents to school officials illustrated the challenge of offering reading material to students from diverse families. One mother asked that her child be protected from information about abortion and homosexuality. The mother of a biracial child whose parents were gay expressed sincere hope that her child would learn to know about and respect “a variety of people.”
Asked to ban 97 books, including Beloved, The Kite Runner and To Kill a Mockingbird,from Beaufort County’s public school libraries, the superintendent removed the books and established a committee to read them and make recommendations on ten at a time.
From the audience came varied comments.
A former English teacher spoke against censorship, saying that parents can keep their own children from reading some material but should not be able to prevent others from reading them.
“Should we protect children from the real world?” someone else asked.
Announcing the banning of a book will propel children and others to want to read it, said another.
A library director said that several web sites scour books for offensive language. One identified the”bitch” as an offensive word despite the fact that it referred to a female dog.
A former media specialist noted that many of the books people want to be banned are books the would-be banners have not read.
A retired librarian pointed out that we live in a complicated society with a very diverse school population, indicating that children should have complicated, diverse material to read.
Gordon Haist urged the audience to realize this: “Children need to learn how to think.”
Another person said the job of parents and schools is not so much to protect the child from ideas as to “shape children to face the world.”
“I grew up in a Jewish household, and we had a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf,” someone said.
“I have a copy of the The Holy Qur’an and Mao Tse Tung’s Little Red Book,” not because I’m Muslim or Communist but because I am curious,” said someone else.
The director of the Beaufort County Library System affirmed that the county’s public libraries are well used, expressing pride that libraries are one of the last trusted institutions in society.
To counter a small committee asking for books to be removed from school libraries, a new organization has recently formed: “Families Against Banning Books.”