REPOST FROM 2008 (APPROPRIATE TODAY)!

(This may not work because I am sick and should be up in bed, but I did feel it necessary to at least get something posted.) An employee where I used to teach recently filed a complaint about John Irving's Hotel New Hampshire. She didn't think it was appropriate to read, so instead of returning it and saying something to the librarian, she initiated The Book Challenge Procedure to try to remove the book from the library. Sad!

This current week through October 4th is Banned Books Week. The concept of banning books is a big No-no in my world! Interestingly, while I am against censorship, there are things I believe should be censored - go figure.

Here's my issue - if a student's parent don't want him or her reading a book, fine, but don't you dare tell the rest of the class what they can or can't read or me what I can or can't teach! I checked one top 100 list of challenged books, and I taught at least 14 of them! I mean Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, Flowers for Algernon, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and To Kill a Mockingbird???? What was I thinking? Maybe they were okay because no one challenged them. All it takes is one person.

The following ten quotes are to ponder. I didn't create them - I found them. If anyone asks, I will create and post a better look at censorship and find at least ten quotes I would have picked. There are a few good ones here!

(10) "We all know that books burn, yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man's eternal fight against tyranny of every kind."
—Franklin D. Roosevelt

(9) "What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist."
—Salman Rushdie

(8) “Imagine books and music and movies being filtered and homogenized. Certified. Approved for consumption. People will be happy to give up most of their culture for the assurance that the tiny bit that comes through is safe and clean. White noise.”
—Chuck Palahniuk

(7) "Damn all expurgated books; the dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book."
—Walt Whitman

(6) "Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

(5) “It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creeds into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.”
—Robert A. Heinlein

(4) “Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently. Stupidity is blockage of this process at any point. Bigotry, ideologies etc. block the ability to receive; robotic reality-tunnels block the ability to decode or integrate new signals; censorship blocks transmission.”
—Robert Anton Wilson

(3) “Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.”
—Potter Stewart, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

(2) "An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all."
—Oscar Wilde

(1) "There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme."
—Ray Bradbury

(These were found on Alternative Reel.com)