Japanese author, Haruki Murakami, once said, “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” Literature is the foundation of our society. It impacts the way we think, act, and speak. When you control what is read you can control what is thought. Especially when working with children. Today’s children are tomorrow’s future, and what these kids are reading and learning right now creates impacts on who they will be in the future. This is one of many reasons book banning has become so common in the United States. But when you control what a person can read you control who the person can become.
Reading a diverse selection of books has proven to increase empathy and build social skills these kids will use their whole lives. But with the astronomical
number of books being banned our country has created a new level of censorship.
In 2023 the American Library Association (ALA) reported over 9,000
different titles were challenged that year. While a challenge is not the complete
removal of a book is an attempt to do so. In many states a challenge alone is
enough for access to said novel to be restricted or revoked entirely until a
the decision is made. Many times, these challenges are made by parents or political
groups for any number of things they may deem “inappropriate”. According to the
ALA the top three reasons cited to ban a book included sexually explicit content,
offensive language, and material that was unsuited for any age group. Some
groups have gone as far as to send in challenges in mass without ever reading
the books, simply stating a vague reason such as inappropriate content or
protection of the children. However, censorship such as this doesn’t protect
anyone; it hurts everyone.
In reality, the only people who benefit from censorship are the ones in
power. If you take a dystopian-esque society past, present, or fiction they all
have one major thing in common: censorship of books. When someone wants
complete control the best way to ensure they have it is to control what the public
can know. Every government has to do this to an extent for its functionality,
but things get messy when you restrict access to knowledge. Kofi Annan once
said “Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of
progress, in every society, in every family.” This goes to show, that we are
nowhere without understanding. In 1940 when Russia invaded Lithuania, they
banned the language, the books, all of it, so that these people couldn’t fight
against them. Nazi Germany did the same. In both of these stories, the people
who fought against them had entire groups whose sole purpose was to preserve
and distribute knowledge. Without those people, the fight to get their freedoms
back could never have happened and the people in charge knew that. That’s why
they banned the books, burned them, and killed the people protecting them.
So, with a 65% increase in attempts to censor books between 2022 and
2023, our country is growing ever closer to a dangerous territory.
Without the freedom to read diverse stories, our country’s future is bleak. The United States is a country founded on freedom; it is nothing without that. Freedom itself cannot exist without diversity. Diverse groups, people, behaviors, and thoughts are what make the USA what it is. If we limit access to knowledge or who it is given to, we limit our success. By banning books our country loses the first thing protected in the Bill of Rights. Books are the past, the present, and the future. To succeed in life as both individuals and a society we have to protect access to knowledge and ensure that it is given to everyone.
