Alyssa Tyler editor in chief
Thanks to social media, there seems to be some new earth-shattering event happening every day. One of those being the topic of banning books, specifically within schools. While this is not a new debate by any means, it is still gripping America with heated debates and arguments.
Growing up in a small town, the topic of banning books was a common one. I remember hearing some complaints about Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and others for having magic, violence, and other themes that were ‘not appropriate’ for kids my age. Even then I never understood the idea of banning a book completely, instead, not allowing kids of a certain age to read them.
Now, as a young adult in college, the debate has only become more heated for kids in K-12. I find this debate to be confusing, because I see a simple solution: don’t ban all books, determine which ones are more important for certain age groups.
When I was 12, I made a goal of reading 100 books over the summer. This led to many walks to the public library and trying all the new books I could get. I would scour the young adult section trying to find a new book that I hadn’t already read. Finally, a new display was set up in the young adult section and this one book in particular still stays in my mind, it was a poetic narrative of a young girl in Africa being sold into sex slavery. Throughout the short novel she was repeatedly raped, a man committed suicide in front of her, and she was repeatedly traumatized until law enforcement finally shut the operation down.
It was the summer heading into seventh grade, and I had no business to read a book that detailed such traumatic events, so, I kept track of the chapters with the detailed scenes, went to the librarians, showed them the scenes, and they moved the book to the adult section.
When I now read these many debates online of book bans and book burns, I routinely think of this situation. There are plenty of books that are not appropriate for children to read and not every book should be offered at the elementary or even middle school level. Books with explicit sexual content, extreme violent and aggressive scenes, and other inappropriate content should not be offered for these younger ages. There are plenty of other novels, short stories, and other forms of literature that they can read without exposing them to these extreme kinds of content at a young age. However, once these students reach their junior or senior year, if their teacher decides that they are mature enough to handle the material, that should be left to the school’s discretion.
Overall, book banning is never the right answer. Instead, evaluating books content with the teachers’ goals and intentions of using the book within the classroom should be examined. Let kids be kids for as long as possible but let them learn about the real world when it’s appropriate.