[bookshare-discuss] Re: Banned Books Week
- From: "Vapour Wiseblood" <vapour@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2007 18:03:47 -0700
A few thoughts on this subject:
1. Parents ought to be able to restrict some material from the acceptable
media content their children access, literary or otherwise.
2. It is to a society's best interest for children to have access to as wide
of a range of content as possible.
3. There is some material which children are not able to process fully, even
if they understand the material intellectually. It would not be appropriate
for a six-year-old to read Lady Chatterley's Lover or the Kama Sutra, even
if said child was comfortably reading Shakespeare or reproductions of the
Dead Sea Scrolls in their original languages.
4. Parents have a right and a responsibility to know what their child is
reading. This includes a parent being able to have a record of the books
their child has checked out from any library, but especially the library of
the school where their child is a student. There might be an earlier cut off
than 18 years, but I think most people would agree that it is reasonable for
said records to be available for children under twelve.
5. Parents do not have a right to restrict the range of content available to
other children. If there are certain materials they do not wish their
children to have access to, it is up to them to make arrangements with the
school librarian to restrict what their child is not allowed to access, not
for them to have such material removed from the library entirely. Children
having accidental exposure to inappropriate material is unavoidable and is a
fact that has to be dealt with in our current era.
6. While we may find the particular parenting choices certain people make
distasteful, we do not have a right to tell somebody how to raise their
children. What person considers normal, other people may find overly
permissive. What one person considers indoctrination, another would consider
educating their children to a unique belief or tradition relevant to their
particular family. Only in the instance where a child is clearly being
neglected or abused does society have the right to dictate somebody else's
parenting style, even if we are completely opposed to the particular style
of parenting utilized.
-Vapour
Vapour Wiseblood: Musician, writer, warrior-priest.
Check out my band, Arimathea, at: www.myspace.com/arimatheasd
----- Original Message -----
From: "Monica Willyard" <rhyami@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2007 3:48 PM
Subject: [bookshare-discuss] Re: Banned Books Week
Hi, Karen. No, I don't see the folly in both assumptions. I see what looks
like a double standard here, and that concerns me far more than a list of
books. We have been reminded this afternoon that parents are ultimately
responsible for what our children read and that parents who do not do so
are unwilling to work with their children. Yet I also have read comments
from several people here about how a child should be allowed to read
freely, to explore every idea without restraint. It looks to me as if the
second concept would negate the first concept which is that parents have
the responsibility of monitoring and shaping what their children read. It
seems to be a convenient argument that parents should be responsible so
that school libraries can put anything they like on a shelf. Librarians
routinely allow children to check out books that are above their grade
level, so arranging them according to level doesn't help much if a child
checks out a book from school without a parent present. In some states, a
parent is not even allowed to see a child's library record if that child
has his/her own library card. This state of affairs creates a system where
we know we're responsible but don't have the tools or access to take on
full responsibility. When parents object to our children accessing certain
books, we are perceived as narrow-minded, hostile people who stand in the
way of progress and free thinking. Because many school libraries do not
allow parental involvement and do not set limits, parents are left with
few good options other than to stir up the school board.
I see a simple solution to this issue, but librarians I've approached seem
to oppose it. With my cable TV service, I can block content based on the
rating, and I can block certain channels completely. Why can't parents set
up their children's library cards to allow them to read books within
certain grade levles or to prevent them from checking out adult books?
Then the parent, who should know his/her own child best, would be able to
help them access content that is uniquely appropriate for their skill
level and could modify the profile as a child matures. Parents would still
need to talk with their children about what they're reading just as I do
now with what my daughter watches on TV. The parental controls would act
as the yellow lines on roads do, allowing freedom with established
boundaries. Those boundaries expand as a child grows and ultimately
disappear when the child has become a young adult, around 17 or so.
Monica Willyard
Karen Lewellen wrote:
Monica,
I can respect your stance, but you are making two major assumptions here,
sadly you are not alone.
You are working from the idea that there is a uniformed homogenized
group known as children, who can all only understand things at the same
level, and who are all brought up in such similar environments that the
result of putting a book in their hands would be exactly the same. the
second assumption is that libraries do not for example make an effort to
put books in a grouping such as grade level.
I feel sure you see the folly in both assumptions.
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