I guess I got your attention as it did mine. Jesus and Harry Potter are major figures in books that have been banned as inappropriate reading. The Holy Bible banned for vulgarity, violence and sexuality while Harry Potter banned because it contains fantasy, magic and witchcraft. Classics like To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men while kids’ favorites like Chronicles of Narnia and Captain Underpants have faced the same fate.
In fact, in 2023, the pressure to censor what books are included in public libraries and school libraries increased. The chart below is one included in an article by the American Library Association.
Let’s look back about 90 years. On May 10, 1933, Nazi-dominated student groups began carrying public burnings of books they claimed were not German enough. Works of prominent Jewish, liberal and leftist writers were burned and lost forever.
The acts of the Nazi book burnings were seen as barbaric acts that were unconscionable by a civilized society.
I question how we vet and ban books written by authors of critical acclaim for their penmanship, but we will leave social studies and history curriculum in our schools written by unvetted authors from decades ago, who had a biased, white supremacy viewpoint of the events occurring at the time and any call to correct those discrepancies gets thwarted.
Our own state banned teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) in 2021, withholding funds from any school found in violation. Governor Lee said that students should learn “the exceptionalism of our nation,” not the things that “inherently divide” people.
An English teacher from Tennessee was quoted in Education Week as he told Chalkbeat Tennessee, “History teachers cannot adequately teach about the Trail of Tears, the Civil War and the civil rights movement. English teachers will have to avoid teaching almost any text by an African American author because so many of them mention racism to various extents.”
The flipside: remember the past, or we will repeat it. Ignoring it doesn’t erase it but acknowledging it teaches us, so we learn from it. Our divisions have come from not understanding why we are divided. Our youth are missing many lessons to learn from the missteps of the past. In my opinion, banning books from their choices and blocking truth from their knowledge is not going to create the society we desire.
Our mission at KnoxTNToday is to uplift, inform and entertain, but there is always a flipside to some issues that may exasperate us as well. Feel free to send your comments to susan@knoxtntoday.com.