Earlier this week, I saw an article on The Atlantic website with the provocative title, "Who Should Decide What High School Kids Are Allowed to Read?" The article examines the recent controversy surrounding the young adult novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which is about a gay teenager who is trying to come to terms with her identity. Although it focuses on the debate on whether or not Cameron Post should be an option for students at Delaware's Cape Henlopen High School (the school board first voted to remove the book from a reading list and then, after the backlash, they reinstated the book but also decided to abolish the list to allow students to choose anything they wanted for summer reading), it also provides an opportunity for readers to think about censorship in general, especially when it comes to students.The publication of this article happens to come right around the time as libraries and schools are preparing for Banned Books Week 2014, which is a time to celebrate intellectual freedom and to raise awareness of the threats to that freedom. While it is easy to think that censorship and banning books only happen in other places or in different times, Banned Books Week serves as a reminder that it is a too real threat in any time or place. According to the ALA, over 300 challenges were reported to the Office for Intellectual Freedom in 2013. However, this number likely doesn't tell us of all of the times that a book has been challenged or removed from a public library or a school because stealth censorship doesn't always get reported.
I've always been an advocate for Banned Books Week and for making students aware of challenges and bannings. Besides educating them with the fact that this happens all of the time, it also gives us the opportunity to discuss the role that parental and community groups, administration, and other forces have on the curriculum and what students have access to. Although the knee-jerk reaction to book challenges and banning is to immediately condemn it as wrong in all instances, the reality of the situation is sometimes complex and nuanced and is often messy. Banned Books Week gives us a time to have needed discussions about what they, as future teachers, need to be aware of and how they might handle these situations when they are in the classroom.
This year, some of my students have agreed to help our college library publicize Banned Books Week around campus. In addition to the library events, I'm planning some other ways of marking the event in my classes. This includes:
- A banned and challenged books scavenger hunt, where I bring in an assortment of books that have been banned or challenged. Inside of each book is a Post-It note with the reason for the challenge or ban written on it. Ideally, the books are ones that students would be familiar with. After each student has a book, I hand out the scavenger hunt sheet, which has clues for each book. Students have to work together to find all of the answers. The first three people who get all of the answers correct get a prize.
- A variation of the scavenger hunt is the trivia contest, where you have teams of students try to answer questions about books that have been banned or challenged. Categories can include banned or challenged authors, plots of banned or challenged books, and reasons that books have been called into question.
- A banned book read out, where excerpts from banned or challenged books are read aloud. I'm hoping to have students do the reading, but you could also use the official Banned Books Week Virtual Read-Out.
- The American Library Association's Banned Books Week home page - With information on bans and challenges by year as well as resource guides, timelines, and lists, this is a great starting place.
- The official Banned Books Week site
- NCTE's Intellectual Freedom Center page
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