Banned Books

A Food Analogy

Search Engines and libraries are increasingly drifting apart in terms of the information they provide. Search engines are like an all-you-can-eat buffet with a different dish getting added every second while libraries are starting to look like a single slice of white bread. The ongoing ban on books on library shelves is a nonsensical way of idolizing United States history especially when our ugly history and its effects can easily be accessed in the palm of our hand.

History

The banning of books makes no sense. Banning these books that oftentimes involve LGBTQ+ themes and stories that have to do with racial issues/racism goes against the “free speech” that the U.S. was supposedly built on. “The Book I Never Got to Read: A Tale of Book Censorship” states, “Teaching history to students allows for past lessons to be understood, lessens the chance of repeating mistakes in history, and creates an opening for students to form their own opinions on history, the current present, and the future,” (Everett 4). Continuously neglecting the stated benefits that come from learning history by banning books is a way to uphold the discriminatory laws, policies, and our very political system by means of ignorant mindsets towards silenced, overpowered people. 

Google it?

The banning of books really makes no sense. I get (but don’t agree with) that people in power want to silence the voices of subjugated groups to uphold the racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. backbone of our political system by banning books, but what about the internet? With the internet, anyone can access the atrocities of the U.S. past, present horrors, and also progress that continues to be made. The banned books can be delivered by Amazon in a day and the information they disclose can be further studied with a simple search. So, at this point, it seems like books are getting banned just to piss us off. 

Internet Education

If libraries are going to continue to starve students of reality, I think it is important to teach students how to properly do online research. One useful place to conduct research is library databases. In The Curious Research: A Guide to Writing Research Papers it states, “An advantage that libraries have over the Web is that information in libraries is more organized. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there is so much information to organize that librarians had to develop a special language for searching it,” (Ballenger 53). Students must understand this language so that they can access books, videos, articles, etc. that are available at their institution's library or (if it is not available) another institution's library. Another way of researching online is through search engines. Being able to properly find appropriate sources is useful for not only research essays but also for answering everyday questions. Because banning books that are a little too realistic for people to handle does not seem like it is coming to an end, therefore, students must be taught how to educate themselves through more open-ended online capacities. 

Works Cited

Ballenger, Bruce. The Curious Researcher: A Guide to Writing Research Papers. Eighth ed., Pearson, 2015. 

Everett, Courtney. “The Book I Never Got to Read: A Tale of Book Censorship.” Emerging Writers, 2022, https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/emergingwriters/vol5/iss1/7/.