Interesting Information

The first article I came across was titled, "How I Turned a Censorship Problem into Something Positive".  The article provides seven short stories about how teachers dealt with censorship in their classrooms.  The most informative story was from Gail Robbins, who teaches Of Mice and Men every year, and constantly gets challenges from parents.  She decided to have her students respond to previous complaints, and the student responses were wonderful; 

 Parent Objection: We don't want our children to hear or read that kind of language in school.
Student Response: There is no way to protect us from hearing or reading profanity.  This language was used by poor, uneducated migrant workers. Our situation is different and we would not use this language at home or with our friends.          

Parent Objection:  Teaching this book is as if the school is saying profanity is okay.          
Student Response: The school is not saying that profanity is okay any more than by reading about World War II and saying killing is okay.          

Parent Objection: I haven't read the book, but I think it's too rough.          
Student Response: Life during the Depression was rough.  We see rougher things on TV or even in P.E. class, but there are many examples of kindness, love and humanity, too.  Reasd it yourself - you'll see.          

Parent Objection: I don't like John Steinbeck. He wrote about a tough element in life.          
Student Response:  John Steinbeck wrote about people with real weaknesses and strengths, but his descriptions of how tough life is makes us see how important it is for us to trust and rely on each other 

I also found an essay written by a future teacher (now probably a teacher).  The essay is titled "Censorship and the Student Writer", and the author creates a lesson plan to teach her class about censorship.  Some of the assignments include; discussing public and private censorship,  studying song lyrics from a controversial song (students had to bring in a censored version of the song if they wanted to play it in class), and debating whether or not censorship has a place in America's society. 

I also found this video interesting, it provides an overview of a censorship challenge in the high school setting and one of the ways that it can play out.  

Has anyone read this novel? Can you think of reasons why it should or shouldn't be banned?

  

Potential Problems

Some potential problems that I have/will run into:

-After researching literary censorship cases in Rhode Island, I realized that getting information is going to be extremely difficult. There was little to no information about literary censorship in Rhode Island! 

-Researching just censorship in general brought up cases at Rhode Island College, which is not what I was looking for at all! I don't want to start debating about the good/bad results of censorship at Rhode Island College, especially if it involves professors that are on the project board. 

Basically, I started getting into some problems with lack of material, and material that don't fit the direction that I wanted to go in.  I'm trying to re-work my ideas and see if there is a different direction that I could approach censorship in relation to schools or its impact on English.  I was thinking of maybe looking into author's reactions of censorship, or from the author's point of view.  There are a lot of interviews and articles where authors talk about the impacts of censorship, so I think it would focus more on English and it would alleviate any school problems.

Narrowing Down My Ideas!

After looking at other Honors Theses in the field of Education, I started to figure out exactly where I want to go with my project.

I am studying challenged novels and the reasons they are/were being censored

because I want to find out how teachers can choose novels for their classroom library/discssions, and also be aware of the implications that the novels may come with

in order to help my readers understand the severity/importance of censorship challenges, and how teachers can prevent and deal with them

I have also realized a number of things that I would like to "do" or "research" within my project:
-research banned/challenged books and their reasons for censorship
-try to justify why these books should NOT be banned or censored
-observe how censorship effects teachers and students
-understand the consequences of a censorship challenge
-find out how teachers can deal with censorship challenges 
-share how parents can approach a teacher about specific novels, without immediately jumping to a censorship challenge

Mind Mapping

My project is going to center around censorship and banned books, but I am not sure where to narrow it down.  There are a number of different fields that it encompasses:

Education - Dealing with censorship in the classroom

Writers - Authors may write according to how others will read, rather than writing how they want

Media/Communications - How censorship impacts society and the media

Law - What allows people to ban books, freedom of speech, power struggle between people

Psychology/Sociology - Why do people request censorship? Personal lives, power, impact...

Community - Schools and libraries, free service, first amendment rights

Marketing - Publishing and book sales 


My concern is that there will not be enough material for me to research in this field, and that the topic will grow boring after the first few pages.  I need to find the spark among all of the research that will set it apart from just censorship and banned books, but actually grab the reader's attention.  (Maybe something along the lines of choosing books for the classroom, or how censorship impacts teens...)

Introduction

          As a future Secondary Education/English teacher, I am interested in one of the largest problems in both English and Education, which is, censorship.

Questions:

• How do teachers deal with banned books or censorship challenges?
• Is it possible to teach a banned book?  What are the consequences?
• Is there a way to un-ban a book?
• What happens if a student is reading a banned book?
• What if a student brings up a banned book in class?
• Is there a safe way to talk about censorship?

Some of these questions are easy to answer, but others require a bit of research.  I would love to ask teachers and librarians (both school and public) how censorship has impacted their career.  Censorship can easily cause a teacher to lose their jobs, which is one of the reasons it is so important to me.  I feel like high-schoolers should be able to have mature discussions about censorship and be able to read the banned books and understand why some people may be offended by them.