Even when I was at my most conservative, I was against banning books.
I will tell you why.
As an avid reader, I read books of all kinds. As a child, I read some books my parents would have been horrified to know I was reading. Mainly romance novels when I was about 12.
Reading widely taught me several things.
To name just a few, it taught me the value of learning about other people’s perspectives. This has changed my mind and helped me to better understand situations on more occasions than I can count.
It taught me how to curate my own reading. There are only so many hours in a day. Which books am I going to read? Was I going to waste my time on books that weren’t worth my time? Both of those were extremely valuable lessons.
Banning books is a slippery, slippery slope.
Calleen Petersen
I have seen repeatedly books I adore, on lists of books people are trying to ban. One of my favorite authors has several books that have racist leanings. But I also have to understand that she wrote them at a time when we were at war with Japan and she had a very different perspective than I do. Do I agree with that perspective? No. Not at all. Does it help me understand why some people may have different feelings and opinions about things than I do? Yes. I can also appreciate the beauty of the other ideas that she brings to life in her books that are worthy of learning. Because we are all complicated humans.
Do I feel that there is a place for a librarian to carefully curate their books in a library? Absolutely. Do I believe that some books should wait until the child is mature enough to handle them? Much of the time yes. But can you say that all children should or shouldn’t read a particular book at a particular age? I can’t. That is going to depend on the maturity of the child, their life experiences, interests, and more.
By the time a child reaches high school, I believe they should be reading pretty freely. I have books in my personal library I have told my kids that I would like them to wait because I didn’t feel they were quite ready for those themes. Then when they were and did read them, I was able to use those books to discuss difficult topics.
What about books you feel are completely awful and you absolutely, positively don’t agree with?
If I found my child reading Mein Kampf for example, I think I would be more interested in finding out why. Is it a school assignment? Is he trying to understand how a country went crazy? Or what made a madman tick? Or does my child need psychological counseling? These questions would have far more priority in my mind than banning a book.
Even those books can have value. They may help you understand how the other side of a discussion is thinking. I would also rather have my kid reading a book than find answers to questions from questionable sources on the internet.
Some people have vastly different life experiences than I do. For me, in my determination to become a therapist, it’s helpful to get a window into those lives that are foreign to me. What may seem off and base to me may be a perfectly reasonable reaction when I understand the circumstances.
Banning a book is a lot like what people in 2021 came to call “cancel culture”. I don’t like these ideas or this person, so I’m going to ban them, is the idea at the heart of both. It cuts both ways and we aren’t all going to agree. So I prefer to error on the side of trying to understand others.
Meanwhile, I’ll be over here accepting any books you want to ban.
