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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Human Rights — Censorship

Essays on Censorship

Hook examples for censorship essays, the power of banned words hook.

""In the world of censorship, some words hold more power than others. Explore the impact of censorship on language, expression, and the voices that have been silenced throughout history.""

Censorship in Literature: Forbidden Stories Hook

""Behind the covers of banned books lie forbidden stories that challenge norms and provoke thought. Journey through the pages of censored literature and the battles fought to tell these tales.""

Freedom of Expression vs. Harmful Content Hook

""The clash between freedom of expression and the need to protect against harmful content fuels the censorship debate. Analyze the delicate balance between these two fundamental values.""

Censorship and the Digital Age Hook

""In the age of the internet, censorship has taken on new forms and challenges. Delve into the digital battlegrounds of online censorship, privacy concerns, and the power of social media platforms.""

The Artistic Rebel: Censorship in the Arts Hook

""Artistic expression has often collided with the boundaries of censorship. Investigate the stories of artists who defied censorship to create provocative and impactful works of art.""

Censorship and Democracy Hook

""Censorship can have far-reaching consequences on democracy and the public's access to information. Explore the role of censorship in shaping political landscapes and public opinion.""

The Fight Against Censorship Hook

""Throughout history, individuals and organizations have risen to challenge censorship. Join me in examining the movements and activists who have fought for the freedom to speak, write, and create without fear of censorship.""

Book Bans: Censorship Vs. Freedom of Expression

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Why is "Flowers for Algernon" a Banned Book

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Censorship of Art and Freedom of Expression

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Pros and Cons of Internet Censorship in Unfree Countries

The restriction of our first amendment rights through the use of censorship, negative effects of internet censorship, the necessity of political correctness and censorship, the issues of internet censorship in australia, a research of censorship in china, censorship in social media, drawbacks and benefits of internet censorship, evaluation of the practicality of internet censorship, media censorship in china, the benefits and shortcomings of internet censorship today, a study on censorship in music, television and the movie industry, a research on the censorship of popular music, the analysis of plato’s republic: the issue of censorship, discussion of whether censorship of internet is necessary, analysis of the benefits of internet censorship, evaluation of the 1984 child protection act and keith jacobson's case of procurement of prohibited uncensored material, internet censorship - the way we can protect ourselves today, internet censorship as a modern way to protect the youth, censorship and dehumanization in "v for vendetta" and "brave new world", relevant topics.

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Modeling and Characterization of Internet Censorship Technologies

The proliferation of Internet access has enabled the rapid and widespread exchange of information globally. The world wide web has become the primary communications platform for many people and has surpassed other traditional media outlets in terms of reach and influence. However, many nation-states impose various levels of censorship on their citizens' Internet communications. There is little consensus about what constitutes “objectionable” online content deserving of censorship. Some people consider the censor activities occurring in many nations to be violations of international human rights (e.g., the rights to freedom of expression and assembly). This multi-study dissertation explores Internet censorship methods and systems. By using combinations of quantitative, qualitative, and systematic literature review methods, this thesis provides an interdisciplinary view of the domain of Internet censorship. The author presents a reference model for Internet censorship technologies: an abstraction to facilitate a conceptual understanding of the ways in which Internet censorship occurs from a system design perspective. The author then characterizes the technical threats to Internet communications, producing a comprehensive taxonomy of Internet censorship methods as a result. Finally, this work provides a novel research framework for revealing how nation-state censors operate based on a globally representative sample. Of the 70 nations analyzed, 62 used at least one Internet censorship method against their citizens. The results reveal worldwide trends in Internet censorship based on historical evidence and Internet measurement data.

Degree Type

Doctor of Philosophy
Information Security

Campus location

West Lafayette

Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair

Advisor/supervisor/committee co-chair, additional committee member 2, additional committee member 3, additional committee member 4, usage metrics.

Cybersecurity and privacy not elsewhere classified

Censorship - Essay Examples And Topic Ideas For Free

Censorship, the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc., deemed obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security, has been a contentious issue across different cultures and political systems. Essays on censorship could explore its historical occurrences, the ethical and political dilemmas surrounding it, and its impact on freedom of expression, creativity, and societal progress. Discussions might also cover the mechanisms of censorship, the rationale provided by authorities for its implementation, and the various forms of resistance against censorship. Furthermore, analyzing the implications of censorship on the digital realm, the global disparities in censorship practices, and the ongoing discourse on censorship in a rapidly evolving information landscape can provide a nuanced understanding of this complex issue. A substantial compilation of free essay instances related to Censorship you can find at PapersOwl Website. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Freedom of Speech and Censorship

The government needs to also look at the First amendment that gives Americans the freedom of speech. Although freedom of speech gave the Americans an opportunity to express themselves, it came with some disadvantages. Some individuals used this freedom to propagate hatred especially racism. Individuals who had something against the blacks would use the freedom of expression clause to protect themselves before making hateful remarks. They would propagate hate between the African Americans and the whites. Some leaders were known […]

Examples of Censorship in Fahrenheit 451

The book "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury is about a firefighter named Guy Montag. Guy Montag does the opposite of what a firefighters does. He starts fires instead of putting them out. Books in Montag's society are banned and if you are caught with a book it will be burned then you have to suffer a consequence. Instead of reading books their society spends most of their time watching television that is as big as the wall called the parlor […]

Fahrenheit 451: Guy Montag

Who is Guy Montag and What Do We Know About Him? At the beginning of the story, Montag starts as the protagonist, with a mind and actions of a child. He has no knowledge of the outside world and is basically mentally stupid. There are current scenes in the book where he is shown retarded by a strange girl Clarisse McClellan that opens his mind to another world of knowledge and books. He realizes something or a feeling he never […]

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What is the Role of Censorship in Fahrenheit 451?

The bombs fell, the city burned, the government has not succeeded. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, introduces many themes that shape reality throughout the book. The author uses events to show the reason why things are happening like they are happening and how society is dying to do to technology due to the people. A society driven by the values of censorship and conformity will fail by the people. Government Censorship in Fahrenheit 451 Censorship is one of the most […]

Censorship in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

In a world where speeches, comments, books, and posts are made about everything from illegal to offensive acts, it is difficult for the public to imagine society being censored. The society in Fahrenheit 451 is the opposite of this. The totalitarian government blocked virtually every form of creative and free speech. Ray Bradbury showed the theme of censorship throughout the story by including the government banning books and banning most freedoms. The Government in Fahrenheit 451 The government in Fahrenheit […]

Negative Side-Effects of Free Speech

Since the beginning of our country, one of our founding principles has been the right to express yourself through speech, media, or any other means of communication. For a long time those that founded our country were under the control of the British, and the lack of freedom to do and say what was on your mind was very constrained. With the American Revolution, we fought for the right to convey our beliefs without fear of another governing force taking […]

Issue of Regulation or Censorship of Internet Porn

The internet traffic for pornography has been reported to take up to 30% of the internet bandwidth (Kleinman Par. 1). This means that a lot of people are watching porn, which has even further divided the debate over the censorship of internet porn. The debate of internet pornography is a fascinating one considering moral or ethical and legal issues surrounding it. At the heart of the debate is the issue of regulation or censorship that has divided opinion into two […]

Internet Censorship should it be Allowed

One of the latest media inventions is internet. It has introduced a completely new way of communicating and expressing ideas and views on a great range of topics because it offers a lot of updated information, people prefer to deal with internet instead of any other media such as television or radio. Nowadays billions of people all over the world have access to the internet, simply, through a dial-up connection. In addition, everybody is able to create his/her homepage on […]

Freedom of Speech in the United States

Freedom of speech has been protected in The United States by the First Amendment since 1791. For over 100 years, this right, though symbolically important, has sat dormant. However today, freedom of speech has been in the headlines due to its involvement in controversial topics surrounding the media, political correctness, and “hate speech”. Hateful beliefs and intolerance towards those with different characteristics exist throughout society and results in an environment of hate. Americans now have a hard choice to make […]

Art Censorship

A beautiful art "The birth of venus" that was created by William Adolphe Bouguereau in 1879 was censored within all of his hard work. Some people don't understand that art is meant to create a reaction and what is offensive to one person might not be offensive to another. In many country creativity has been very valuable but many people couldn't see it in the same perspective as we did. Many people know creativity came from hard work and try […]

The Censorship of to Kill a Mockingbird

There are a few select authors who have challenged the delusional comfort society has created. Harper Lee, the author of To Kill A Mockingbird, is no exception. The book discusses the story of Scout, a little girl growing up in Maycomb, Alabama. Her father is an attorney for a black man being wrongly accused of raping a white woman (“SparkNotes: To Kill a Mockingbird.”). Due to the discussion of racism and rape, many think that this book should be pulled […]

Harry Potter Controversy about Banning the Books

This reflection paper begins by investigating censorship as related to challenged and banned books. It explores why Harry Potter has remained at the top of the American Library Association (ALA) Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books: 2000-2009 for a decade connecting with church vs. state relations. Cases are reviewed that involve Harry Potter, school districts, and the First Amendment. It was found most challenges to the Harry Potter series involved concern over witchcraft, wizardry, and magic. The Harry Potter series was also […]

How Censorship Affect the Development of Animations

"The Motion Picture Production code" (Will H. Hays, 1924), most American films published by major studios used such code between 1930 and 1968. It also known as the "Hays Code" These set of industry moral guidelines and rules called "The Don'ts and Be Carefuls" was entered into industry by Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDAA) which created to avoid direct government censorship and to satisfy public demand for morally acceptable movies in 1930. The acceptance of content for […]

Censorship in Media

The worst thing about censorship is violating individuals' freedom of speech. The internet should be a free market with unrestricted ideas. Currently, the only exception constitutionally in the US is speech directed to inciting imminent lawless action, which is likely to incite or produce such action. Our laws should stay that way. Censorship is bad because it suppresses people's voices. Currently, the only exception constitutionally in the US is the use of words with the specific intent of provoking an […]

Internet Censorship in China

An original supporter of internet censorship was Deng Xiaoping, a Chinese politician. Deng Xiaoping had a famous saying that "If you open a window for fresh air for longer than 10 hours, you have to expect some flies to blow in". Deng Xiaoping, as well as many other Chinese politicians, were the main reason internet censorship exists today. Using this analogy, the Communist Party of China decided that it would be best for them to be proactive in "swatting flies". […]

Censorship in a Nation

Censorship has always been and will continue to a part of society. Censorship is defined as the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, speech, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security. The term censorship, however, when most commonly used, connotes any examination of thought or expression in order to prevent publication of what is seen as 'objectionable' material. Day to day, what we see, observe, and hear, is censored by our […]

Literary Analysis of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 is a novel by Ray Bradbury. The novel is set in a American city in the future. In this society people no longer read books, think independently, spend time by themselves, enjoy nature, or even have meaningful conversations. They now watch excessive amounts of television, drive extremely too fast, and listen to the radio on “Seashell Radios” (sets are attached to their ear) at all time. They have become shells of people. Not only are people just shells, […]

Internet Censorship Laws in Saudi Arabia

"The thought of not being able to express oneself through the internet without repercussions might seem implausible; however, it is an ongoing problem in countries like Saudi Arabia. Currently, Saudi Arabia holds a score of 73 out of 100 for its Internet Freedom Score, which sets it as “not free” (“Saudi Arabia Internet Score”). Citizens are prohibited from visiting and accessing many parts of the web due to governmental restrictions based on immoral and “radically” opinionated content. This limits their […]

Catcher in the Rye Censorship

Catcher in the Rye may not seem like an age appropriate book for teenagers to be reading during such a confusing time, you cannot judge a book based on the cover or what others may deem as inappropriate. For many many years, this novel has been challenged and even banned in some schools because of the language used in the book. Looking past the expletives used or the content that is in it is beside the point because there can […]

Music Censorship

“Without music, content life would be a mistake.” These are the exact words of Friedrich Nietzsche that inspires me, ladies and gentlemen. What is the use of a society without music? Music is vital in our social existence since it is a tool of expression and interaction in society. Censoring music is a spell of doom and an insult to a quest for the realization of perfect social order. Music is life, and no one can dispute that. I come […]

Modern Day Censorship: Syria

How much do we value our freedom of speech as citizens of the United States of America? Would you risk your life to report news that might make an impact in the lives of many? Many countries around the world maintain very strict guidelines in what can be reported and broadcasted. In many countries this amount of strict censorship could even lead to you getting either tortured or killed. One modern day censored country would be the Middle Eastern country […]

First Amendment Freedom of Speech

The 2017 Berkeley protests organized by different groups including By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) were an abject violation of the freedom of speech as outlined in the First Amendment of the American constitution. The protests successfully stopped a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, a controversial Breitbart editor and a self-declared Trump supporter. The protests turned violent and led to the destruction of the property thus posing significant harm to the society. In defending the protests, Yvette Felarca, BAMN’s spokesperson argued that […]

Defining Censorship

Censorship is the restriction of speech, communication or other information. Censorship affects our society in different ways. Censorship is usually determined by the government or a private foundation. It influences the music we tune in to, news articles, films, and the books we read. Censorship is a widely debated topic, and can be either harmful or protective to a society. It is possible to argue that censorship has no place in a nation that focuses on freedom of expression, because […]

The History of Censorship

Oxford University Press(2018)"The suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security is considered censorship."Censorship has been around since 213 B.C. for example when Minister Li Si and Emperor Qin Shi Huang of China ordered the destruction of many history books. He wanted the people that come after him to believe that the world started with his first ruling. The struggle for freedom of opinion is about […]

The Catcher in the Rye: Censorship

To start off, the Catcher in the Rye, written by J.D. Salinger, is about a boy named Holden Caulfield, who begins the book at a school named Pencey Prep School, in Pennsylvania. At the books beginning, the school is several days away from Christmas break, where Holden will be returning home to Manhattan, where his parents live, because he has been expelled out of the prep school due to the failing of four out of his five classes. To end […]

The Benefits of Censorship on the Chinese Wanghong

The wanghong are internet celebrities in China, and they differ from traditional celebrities, who gain their fame through mainstream media, such as television and movies (Roxburgh). The word wanghong translates directly into "internet celebrity." There are mainly two types of internet celebrities: celebrities who produce original content, such as short comedy videos, and celebrities who are centered around content involving beauty and fashion (Li). The relationship between the wanghong and strict censorship is a complex one. There are looser censorship […]

Hatred under the Freedom of Speech

There is a thin line between an open expression of plain hatred and the expression of opinion. It is safe to assume that every person at some point of his or her life, either witnessed or experienced a bias from bigots based on race, nationality, sex, or other characteristics. People interpret “hate speech” differently; some compare it to the crime; others see it as practicing the First Amendment. Both groups can bring a lot of arguments to support their point […]

Book Censorship

The banning or censorship of books in America is a very controversial topic. "A banned book is one that has been removed from the shelves of a library, bookstore, or classroom because of its controversial content" (Lombardi). Various controversial topics could lead to a book being banned. Some of these topics include language, diversity, and religion. Many books aimed at younger audiences and removed from classrooms have subject matter that "your kid has encountered before or will soon" (McMahon). Young […]

The Undercurrents of Video Censorship: Grappling with Banned Content

In the age of technology, where information dissemination is at the tip of one's fingers, the phenomenon of video censorship becomes a fascinating and often controversial subject. Banning videos is as old as the medium itself. As soon as humans learned how to record and broadcast images, authorities sought to control what could be shown, out of concerns ranging from preserving public morality to avoiding potential political unrest. But what really lies beneath the surface of video bans? What prompts […]

A Comparison between China and Hong Kong during the 2000s:

Abstract This paper claims that, for cultural reason, Chinese television has maintained its ways to function as a mass communication medium throughout years; accordingly, Hong Kong TV and society are influenced by China’s use of technology to some degree even though the city is run under “One Country, Two Systems.” After investigation, I found the claim is accurate if considering the approach of how TV presents information (especially political news) in both societies. Hong Kong and mainland Chinese society has […]

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Censorship and the Arts in the United States Essay

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Introduction

Freedom of expression, social responsibility, works cited.

The term censorship is used to refer to the proscription of an idea or image that is deemed by the government or any authority to be unduly controversial, obscene or indecent. From antiquity, governments have both censored and supported works of art. The United States government hesitantly created the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in 1965 to provide material support for deserving artists. Initially the government did not want to support individuals or groups of individuals because it feared that the works of art they created might end up being construed as national art and it only allowed NEA to be formed after being pressured by activists.

The need to cease underwriting vulgar art became apparent in 1988 after an artist named Andres Serrano who was funded by the government through NEA made a picture named “piss Christ” which depicted a crucifix in a container full of his urine. A year later, an artist called Robert Mapplethorpe who was funded by the same body compounded the situation when he made images portraying sadomasochism, nude children, flowers and homosexuality. This prompted the senate to call for government action against vulgar art. However, the due process guaranteed by the fifth amendment of the constitution of the United States has suppressed most efforts put forward by NEA towards outlawing obscenity and instilling decency in art.

This is probably because the intentions of the artists work may easily be misinterpreted by people calling for actions. If the government or other institutions such as universities among others allowed art work to be censored based on people’s feelings towards assumed moral or religious authority, discrimination against people based on their gender, race or sexual orientation, fear of taboos or controversial issues etc then no work of art would ever be created. Apparently the United States is a cosmopolitan country and different individuals will have different views upon an artists work and this makes it difficult to censor art work based on people’s attitudes. It is therefore incumbent upon the artist to draw boundaries between freedom of expression and social responsibility when developing work of art meant for the public.

Although freedom of expression is guaranteed by the fifth amendment of the constitution of the United States, artists must understand that freedom of expression has both explicit and implied limits. The first amendment of the US constitution fosters a mutually supportive relationship between artists and the society. The society gains a lot from free and diverse artistic expressions which address contemporary and past issues by challenging people to rethink their assumptions. The article titled “Censorship versus Freedom of Expression in the Arts” by Chiang and Posner expresses concerns that the government may illegitimately censor art to avoid corruption of morals and avoid subversion of politics.

Suppressing verbal and non verbal expression, i.e. speech/writing and works of art respectively, undermine free communication which is fundamental to the preservation of a creative culture and a free society. Indeed, art should be censored because it can and does cause offense. This is exemplified best by the work of art by Francis Goya titled “naked Maja”. Apparently, the artist wanted to show disdain to those who associated female nude with evil. However, the artist was summoned by the Spanish inquisition in 1815 to reveal who had authorized him to make the painting which was obviously offensive. Goya self censored his work to protect himself from losing the job of a court painter by clothing the female who now became the “clothed Maja”. Recently, in 1991, a group of female teachers in Penn State managed to persuade the authorities to bring down a repainting of “Naked Maja” which made it difficult for them to teach because it was considered to be a form of sexual harassment (Chiang and Posner, 2006, 1).

That notwithstanding, the works of art including dance, theater, literature, painting, music, cartoon, caricature and sculpture continue to be the main instruments of expressing the level of a peoples freedom. They improve people’s lives by providing solutions to various problems facing humanity. Art does challenge people to consider new ideas, envision new possibilities and embrace feelings that can foster social growth. Suppressing ideas as it happens in most societies under the guise of censorship may hinder freedom and encourage conformity which is unhealthy for social growth and evolution.

The source argues that, to preserve freedom of expression in arts, an individual should be left alone to decide for himself or herself on what kind of art work to accept or reject and that such a person should not be allowed to suppress the works of art that he or she does not approve. Consider the case of the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard who caricatured the image of Mohammed. The cartoonist was almost assassinated by an Islamic fundamentalist in his home in Denmark on January 2010. In rebuttal to the argument offered by the article that all censorship is contrary to democratic principles, artist must realize that images send strong messages and that recklessness can lead to irreversible harm being done to the society or the artist in particular as not all states in the world are democratic.

Although freedom of expression should be protected at all costs, it would be ludicrous to portray absurd images that would obviously spark strife between different factions. Most artists misinterpret freedom of expression by giving whim to every imagination not considering that they live in a world inhabited by real people with real differences and not imaginary creatures like the tooth fairies. Passing on a message should not always involve taking any all symbols out of context considering that the initial intention may be misinterpreted thereby sending the wrong message which could cause undue fear and anxiety that is not beneficial for the progress of society. Apparently, artists should demonstrate maturity and avoid portraying childish fantasies that can be a cause of serious social concern.

The article social responsibility and art written by Camillo Mac Bica PhD explains that artists ought to become socially responsible in order to avoid the abuse, exploitation and oppression of individuals or groups of persons. There is no doubt that the picture of the “naked Maja” above does encourage the exploitation of women in our contemporary society which is obsessed with nudity. A society that condones snuff films such as “The Family: The story of Charles Manson’s dune baggy attack” battalion which depicts the actual murder of the victims and child pornography movies is at the verge of losing freedoms that is so much after safeguarding in the name of freedom of self expression (Bica, 2005, 1). Such movies made by actual murderers desensitize people thereby encouraging pedophiles and murderers to give room to their base instincts. This can eventually undermine morals which are the fabric of society.

The difficulty in defining what is socially abusive, oppressive or exploitative does not mean that artists have the right to give way to any of their whims as the example above which is only representative of the tip of an iceberg indicates clearly how reckless actions can harm a society that claims to be civilized. Hence, artists should strive to engage the civil society in debates concerning standards of evaluation and build a consensus. Thus, artists should uphold the right for people to be treated with respect and should therefore refrain from artistic endeavors that are likely to cause oppression by treating people as means instead of ends.

Drawing a line between what is socially acceptable and what is not is difficult and certain social values may hinder the development of work of art. Some forms of art do not portray their meaning directly and members of the public are certain to interpret them as pornography where nudity is involved. For instance, collages made by David Wojnarowicz depicting erotic and deathly images were barred from public view although the intention of the artist was to reflect his experiences of unusual hardship when he was a boy. Such experiences according to the artist were never portrayed anywhere else in art from members of the mainstream heterosexual, white, Christian, male dominated society. The government should not censure such works without proper selection criteria. The artist was not involved in the murders or the sexual activities but only wanted the society to shift focus and solve the problems in question. In censoring artistic work, the government and other authorities must be able to distinguish between doing from portraying.

Bica M., Camillo. “Social responsibility and art.” Visual Arts Press , 2005. Web.

Chiang, Tun-Jen and Posner, Richard A. “Censorship versus freedom of expression in the arts.” Elsevier , 2006. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2020, May 19). Censorship and the Arts in the United States. https://ivypanda.com/essays/censorship-and-the-arts-in-the-united-states/

"Censorship and the Arts in the United States." IvyPanda , 19 May 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/censorship-and-the-arts-in-the-united-states/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Censorship and the Arts in the United States'. 19 May.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Censorship and the Arts in the United States." May 19, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/censorship-and-the-arts-in-the-united-states/.

1. IvyPanda . "Censorship and the Arts in the United States." May 19, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/censorship-and-the-arts-in-the-united-states/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Censorship and the Arts in the United States." May 19, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/censorship-and-the-arts-in-the-united-states/.

Internet Censorship and Freedom of Press Right essay

The introduction of censorship in internet raises the problem of the open access of individuals to information and the freedom of mass media. Therefore, the current debate on the necessity of the introduction and enhancement of censorship in internet is unnecessary and dangerous for basic human rights of users. This is why the current study focuses on the problem of censorship and internet.

Thesis statement: the development of internet raises new threats and challenges but the introduction of the government censorship over internet contradicts to basic human rights and primarily violates the freedom of press right because censorship will limit the access of the public to information, while the public should have the right to know everything to prevent the misuse of power by the government and other actions of the government that may be harmful for public interests.

2 Reasons for the introduction of internet censorship

2.1 Key issues which are relevant today and may affect people now and in the future.

2.1.1 The progress of technology creates numerous precedents and problems in regard to the observation of human rights. The development of online technologies contributes to the emergence of new problems, such as the problem of the identity theft, information breaches, misuse of information technologies to get access to the private information of users.

2.1.2 Many issues related to the violation of the copyright law online are among major concerns that raise the pro-censorship debate. The development of internet opened the way for audio- and video-records sharing, including music and films and other audio-visual products that were protected by copyright laws and legal norms. As a result, owners of copyright and intellectual property rights suffered from substantial losses caused by such misusing of their property.

2.1.3 Numerous cases of unethical behavior of users online is another reason for the development of censorship to limit the violation of ethical norms. For instance, the emergence of online pornography is offensive in regard to the existing legal and ethical norms but often sexually explicit content may be available freely to all users, including children. In such a situation, the censorship turns out to be very important in terms of the prevention of possible risks of the violation of ethical norms of users.

2.1.4 Mass media also report on numerous cases of child abuse online committed by predators. Children are vulnerable to the impact of predators online because they cannot identify users, whom they communicate with online. Internet creates ample opportunities for predators and other online offenders to misuse internet to create false identities and to reach their ends.

2.1.5 The idea of the introduction and enhancement of censorship in relation to internet naturally emerges from the existing threats and risks associated with the uncontrollable use of internet.

2.2 Government censorship can protect users

2.2.1 Government can introduce censorship and allow law enforcement agencies to conduct the investigation of cases that may be dangerous for the public or individuals

2.2.2 Government has more tools to maintain the censorship effectively compared to public or non-public organizations. Therefore, there are presumably no alternatives to the government censorship in internet.

3 Negative effects of internet censorship introduced and maintained by the government

3.1 Consequences of such censorship are negative and dangerous for democratic societies. The introduction and enhancement of online censorship by the government will raise another problem related to the violation of basic human rights and freedom of press.

3.2 There is a risk of misusing the power by the authorities to ‘filter’ information flow via internet. As a result, the government can have excessive control over users and information flow. Such control is dangerous since the public may have limited access to certain information, while the government will play with information flows to meet its interests or interest groups supporting the government.

3.3 People using internet turn out to be under the surveillance of the government, since the information is censored and, therefore, controlled and studied by law enforcement agencies.

3.4 Censorship is the violation of the privacy right along with the right of freedom of press.

4 Alternatives to the government censorship

4.1 The development of software aiming at the enhancement of the individual information safety. For instance, users can set parameters of their information security using the software developed specifically for the protection of information of users. In such a way, they can determine which threats they want to protect themselves from

4.2 The development of secure networks is another way to protect private information and avoid information security threats. In fact, today, many companies have already started implementing such solutions to secure their networks. In such a situation, the government censorship becomes unnecessary because secured network can protect users from numerous threats and risks associated with information breaches and other issues related to the information security.

4.3 Individual responsibility of users is particularly important in terms of the protection of users. In fact, information security problems emerge mainly because users are careless and do not pay much attention to the problem of their information security. As a result, when users take responsibility and are careful, they may decrease the risk of information breaches. For instance, users should not provide their private information to unreliable websites, but many users do it that leads to information breaches, identity thefts and other problems.

4.4 Corporate responsibility is also important because companies developing and providing IT and online services should act responsibly. They should be aware that they may expose their customers to risks and threats associated with the violation of information security. In this regard, the corporate responsibility could have become an effective tool that could have helped to secure internet making government censorship unnecessary. In addition, companies offering reliable information security services could attract more customers seeking for secure online services.

5 Conclusion

Thus, the introduction of the government censorship that will monitor and control internet and information flow transmitted via internet will have a negative impact on the society because it violates basic human rights, such as the privacy right or the freedom of press right. This is why the government should refuse from the introduction of censorship in internet because the public should have the right to have access to the information, while the government has no right to decide what people should know and what they should not. Instead, people should have the free access to the information and they may choose how to secure themselves from possible threats, for instance, with the help of special information security software.

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This webinar is part of CFR’s Local Journalists Initiative, created to help you draw connections between the local issues you cover and national and international dynamics. Our programming puts you in touch with CFR resources and expertise on international issues and provides a forum for sharing best practices. We are delighted to have over forty journalists from twenty-six states and U.S. territories with us today for this discussion on “Press Freedom and Digital Safety.” The webinar is on the record. The video and transcript will be posted on our website after the fact at CFR.org/localjournalists, and we will circulate it as well. We are pleased to have Ela Stapley, Tat Bellamy-Walker, and host Carla Anne Robbins with us for this discussion. I have shared their bios, but I’ll give you a few highlights. Ela Stapley is a digital security advisor working with the International Women’s Media Foundation. She is the coordinator of the course “Online Harassment: Strategies for Journalists’ Defense.” Ms. Stapley trains journalists around the world on digital security issues and provides one-on-one support for media workers in need of emergency assistance. Tat Bellamy-Walker is a communities reporter at the Seattle Times . Their work focuses on social justice, race, economics, and LGBTQIA+ issues in the Pacific Northwest. Tat also serves on the National Association of Hispanic Journalists LGBTQIA+ Task Force, as a member of the Seattle Times Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. And Carla Anne Robbins is a senior fellow at CFR and co-host of the CFR podcast “The World Next Week.” She also serves as the faculty director of the Master of International Affairs Program and clinical professor of national security studies at Baruch College’s Marxe School of Public and International Affairs. And previously, she was deputy editorial page editor at the New York Times and chief diplomatic correspondent at the Wall Street Journal . Welcome, Ela, Tat, and Carla. Thank you very much for being with us today. And let me turn the conversation now over to Carla. ROBBINS: Irina, thank you so much. And, Ela and Tat, thank you so much for doing this. And thank you, everybody who’s here today. We’re going to chat among us just for about twenty, twenty-five minutes, and then questions. You’re all journalists; I’m sure you’re going to have a lot of questions. So, Ela, can we start with you by talking about the threat environment, as we national security people refer to it? The IWMF announcement on your safety training—and I want to talk about that—referred to, quote, a “spike in physical and digital violence” directed against U.S. newsrooms in particular. And it said, “This year alone, thirty journalists have been assaulted and eight have been arrested in the U.S., all following a surge of anti-media rhetoric.” And you also said that the U.S. currently ranks forty-fifth on the World Press Freedom Index, down from thirty-two just a decade ago; and also that this abuse disproportionately affects women and diverse journalists, who are often reluctant to speak out for fear of jeopardizing their careers. Can you talk a little bit about the threat environment here in the U.S., what’s driving it, and the different forms it’s taking—it’s taking? STAPLEY: Yeah, sure. So I’m Ela Stapley. I’m a digital security advisor. So when I look at the threat environment, I’m looking at it from a digital safety standpoint. What we do see in the U.S., and we have seen now for a number of years, is a massive uptick in online abuse—or online violence, as it’s now called, in order to get across the seriousness of the situation. So when we’re talking about online abuse/online violence, what we’re really saying there is attacks on journalists that are now so serious that it’s really limiting their ability to do their work. And it’s really having—I don’t say this lightly—an impact on democratic conversation. So one of the biggest issues that you see in the U.S. is this, along with common tactics that are used with online harassment and online violence. And that includes the publishing of journalists’ personal information online, known as doxing. This includes the home address or personal contact, such as a personal email or personal phone number for example, with an intent to do them some kind of harm. And we do see that being used against journalists in the U.S., especially if they’re covering particular beats. That includes so—kind of far-right or alt-right groups, for example, who—one of their tactics is doxing journalists online or people who talk about them in a way that they don’t agree with. So that is one of the biggest threats we’re seeing. And we’re in an election year. I do think we did see this during the last election. There will be an increase in online abuse and harassment during that time, and all the other threats that come with it, which include doxing but also things such as phishing attacks, for example; malware attacks; and possible hacking attacks of accounts, for example, could also be something that we see an uptick in. Other threats that journalists are facing. If they’re going out and they’re covering the election—so some of these rallies or places where they’re going—the chance of a physical confrontation might be quite high. So you’re seeing there kind of damaged equipment, which it sounds like a physical safety issue but is actually a digital security issue as well. So journalists quite often carrying their personal devices instead of work devices, that’s very common, especially for freelancers. And you know, if you haven’t backed those devices up, the content on them; or if you’re detained and those devices are searched, for example; what about the content that you have on them? How safe is that content? Not very. And do you have sensitive contacts on there or content that could put you or your sources at risk is something I’ll say that journalists, you know, need to be thinking about, I would say. And we do see that across the U.S. Obviously, some areas, some states may be more complicated than others. ROBBINS: So I want to get to Tat and talk about your experiences and that of your colleagues, and then want to talk to both of you, because it seems like there’s this intrinsic tension here because—I mean, I’m going to really date myself—back in the day, when I started in the business, the idea that we would want to not share our emails or not share our phone numbers with people who we would want to be reaching out with us, we wouldn’t want to hide from potential—people who could be potential sources. So I understand there has to be, you know, a separation between the public and the private because the private can really be a vulnerability, but it's certainly a very different world from the world in which—when I started. And I will add I started writing with a typewriter back in the—Tat, there used to be typewriters. For you young’uns. OK. So, Tat, can you talk about your experience and that of your colleagues, in Seattle but also the people that you deal with in the groups that you work with? BELLAMY-WALKER: Yeah. So I’ll talk a little bit about, like, my, like, personal experience. So last year I was covering, like, the local response to, like, the national, like, uptick in anti-drag legislation, and I interviewed, like, several, like, trans drag performers about, you know, how that had an impact on them. Like, it severely, like, limited their, you know—in terms of, like, violence, they were experiencing violence, and it was, like, difficult for them to navigate this, like, increasingly, like, hostile climate where, like, anti-drag, like, legislation was just going through the U.S. So from me, like, writing that story, I started to get, like, a lot of, like, transphobic emails targeting me and my sources. And then from, you know, the, you know, transphobic emails and messages, later on, there ended up being, like, at this conservative Facebook page that also seen, like, the stories that I cover. And I’ve been covering, like, LGBTQ issues for a very long time including writing, you know, personal essays about my experiences as, like, a trans person. And they—like, they wrote this whole—this whole Facebook post about, you know, like calling me, like, a girl, like—it was, like, this whole thing. And they included, like, you know, that I work at the—at the Seattle Times . Like, it was, like, this very intense situation. And it ended up escalating even more to the Blaze writing a story about me. And it just—like, it just escalated from me. You know, I wrote the story. Then, you know, there was the conservative Facebook page. And then, you know. You know, it ended up in a story being written about me. And so, like, things like that are very—are very serious, and really do you have, like, a negative impact on how, like, trans journalists, like, do our work. And for me, like, at that time, it did make me feel pretty, like, traumatized to see, like, how, you know, my story was, like, taken—like, it was—it just—it felt like it was just being used as this—like, this negative force, when I was trying to write about, like, why these drag performers were pushing for their craft, and why they—you know, be felt so intensely to push for their craft, at a time of such hostility targeting drag performers. So for me, at that time, what was most important was to, like, assess, like, my online presence, and see how far was this going. Like, how far was this harassment going? So I made sure to, like, lock down my accounts. You know, that was very important for me to do. Also, having a friend document the abusive language that was coming up under the different post was very helpful. And just kind of like logging what was happening to me on, like, a day-to-day basis. Yeah, so that's essentially what I experienced. And it made me want to—I guess, in some way it made me want to make sure that I'm very careful about the information that I put out there about myself. So I have since, like, removed, like, my email address, you know, from the Seattle Times website. I try to be pretty careful about what I put online about myself. Yeah, so that—I would say those—that is how that had, like, an impact on me and my role in journalism. ROBBINS: So before you wrote that story—because, of course, you were writing about people being harassed because of what they did—did you think about the fact that you were going to be harassed for what you did in writing about them? BELLAMY-WALKER: At that time, I did not—I did not think about that, about how, like, writing about this story would have an impact on me. At that time, I did not think about that. But now, like, in hindsight, I know that it's important to be prepared for those, like, online attacks. And, like, vitriol and in everything. But yeah, it just—like, I didn't realize, like, how far it would go. Because at that time I was also pretty vocal about, you know, the lack of diversity of trans journalists in—just in journalism and the industry in general. So that also caught fire online with folks, you know, targeting me for that as well. So, I feel like all of those situations started to make me, like, a very big target for—you know, for these for these folks. But I know now in the future that it's important for me to prepare for these online attacks and everything. ROBBINS: So you're talking about you preparing. Ela, I want to go back to the training that IWMF does, and this handbook, that we're going to share with everybody, that you all have developed. Which has really, I think, absolutely fabulous worksheets. This is one which I have here, which is an online violence risk assessment, which talks about things like have you previously been targeted. You know, questions that you want to ask yourself, that newsrooms want to ask themselves before the work starts. Can you talk about the training that you all have done, and some of the—some of the things that take place in that training, that that makes—preemptively, as well as once things have happened? Some of them are big changes—raising awareness in the newsroom—and some of them are actually technical changes. Like some of the things Tat’s talking about, training people about how to even reel back their information. When I read this I thought to myself, God, there’s so much information out there. Is it even possible to pull that back? STAPLEY: Yeah, so, unfortunately, Tat’s story is pretty familiar to me. It’s a story I’ve heard many times. And what we used to see—so I’ll talk a little bit about how online harassment kind of came to be and where it is now, just very briefly. So it used to be in the newsroom, online violence or harassment was seen as, you know, something that happened to normally women journalists, so nobody really paid that much attention, if I’m honest with you. It’s only in the last few years that newsrooms have started more seriously to pay attention to online violence as an issue in terms of protecting their journalists. So online harassers were also seen as kind of just a guy in a hoodie in their basement attacking a person over and over. And that stereotype still exists. That person still exists. But now there’s a whole other layer, there’s a whole array of other actors involved, including state-sponsored actors, particular groups online who are hacking groups, but also other groups who feel very passionately about particular topics on the internet. And I use the word “passionate” there not in—not in a positive sense but also negative. So they have strong opinions about it. And they will target journalists that publish on these issues. And I think before we could predict who those journalists would be. So if you were covering particular beats you were more likely to get harassment. But now we’re seeing it as just a general attack against journalists, regardless of the beat. So if you’re a sports journalist, you’re likely to get attacked by sports fans equal if you’re covering—you know, the journalists who are covering LGBTQ+ issues, anything to do with women, anything to do with race—disproportionately likely to face attacks. And if they are from that community themselves, even more so. There’s a lot of academic research that’s been done on this. So Tat’s situation, unfortunately, for me in my position, I would see Tat, I would think: This is a story that Tat’s covering. The likelihood of Tat getting abuse is incredibly high. Now, from our work with newsrooms, what we began to see is that newsrooms started to think about how they could better protect their staff. In some newsrooms, you know, that conversation needed to be had. But some newsrooms were reaching out to us proactively. And I have to say, the Seattle Times was one of those. And I have to give a big shoutout to the Seattle Times for their interest in the safety and security of their journalists. And we’ve worked very closely with the Seattle Times on this guide, actually. So part of the pre-emptive support is not only raising awareness with upper management, because if upper management are not on board it’s very difficult to implement changes, but also putting good practices in place. So the more you can do in advance of an online attack, the better it is for you. Because it’s very difficult to be putting best practices in place when you’re in the middle of a firestorm. So the more pre-emptive steps you can take, the better it is for you, as a newsroom but also as an individual journalist within that newsroom, especially if you fit into one of those categories that are more high risk. So we, at the IWMF, we've been working very closely with journalists. We started training journalists and newsrooms in data protection. So how to best protect your data online? This is the kind of information Tat was talking about—your email address, your cellphone, your home address. But what we realized was the training wasn't enough, because after the training the journalist would go, well, now what? And the newsrooms would be, like, well, we don't have anything. So what we needed was policy. We needed best practices that journalists could access easily and, ideally, roll out fairly easily to staff. Now, I will say that a lot of content for this does exist. There are other organizations that have been working on this topic also for an equally long number of times, and they do amazing work. But what we were hearing from journalists was: There's a lot of information and we need short, simple one-pagers that will really help us protect ourselves. And also. editors were saying: We need it to help protect our staff. So they didn't want to read a fifty-page document. What they wanted was a one-page checklist, for example. So the guide that we created came out of a pilot that we ran with ten newsrooms in the U.S. and internationally, where we worked with—and the Seattle Times was one of those—we worked with the newsroom very closely, with a particular person in that newsroom. to think: What do they need and how could we implement that for them? In some cases, in the Seattle Times , they created their online—their own guide for online harassment. In some cases, it was newsrooms that they only could really manage to have a checklist that would help them protect staff data as quickly as possible. So it really depends. Different newsrooms have different needs. There's no really one-size-fits-all when it comes to protecting staff. I can't say to this newsroom, you need to do this. I can say, what is your capacity? Because a lot of newsrooms are overstretched, both financially but also in terms of people. And how many cooks in the kitchen? Generally, the bigger the newsroom, the more difficult it is to roll out change quickly because you need more buy-in from different areas within the newsroom. And the most successful pre-emptive support we see is from newsrooms where there is, what we call, a newsroom—a champion in the newsroom. Someone who pushes for this. Someone who maintains that momentum and is also able to communicate with HR, for example. Because some support needs to come from HR. What do you do if you've got a journalist who needs time off, for example because they've been getting death threats? Support from IT departments. Traditionally, IT departments in newsrooms are responsible for the website, for making sure your email is running. They're not generally resourced and trained in how to deal with a journalist who's receiving thousands of death threats via their Twitter feed. So getting newsrooms to think about that, and also getting newsrooms to think about you have journalists who are using their personal social media for work-related content. And you request them to do this. But you are not responsible for protecting those accounts. And that’s a real gray area that leaves a lot of journalists very vulnerable. So their work email may have all the digital security measures in place and helped along by their IT team, but their personal Instagram account or their Facebook account has no security measures on it at all. And that is where they will be most vulnerable. Because online attackers, they don’t just look at the journalist in the newsroom. They look at the journalists, the whole picture. So your data that you have on the internet is really your calling card to the world. So when people Google you, what they see is how you are to them. So they make no distinction there. There’s no distinction for them in terms of work and personal. So at the IWMF what we’ve been doing is really working with newsrooms to help them roll out these best practices, best as possible, to put them together, to help them write them, and then to sit with them and try and figure out how they can roll it out. And some do it quicker than others, but there’s been a lot of interest. Especially now, during the election. ROBBINS: So, Tat, can you—what’s changed since your experience? What do you do differently now? BELLAMY-WALKER: Yeah. I would say maybe like one of the main things that I—that I do differently is, like, trying to prepare ahead of these potential attacks. So that includes like, doxing myself and removing personal info about myself, like, online. So like signing up for, like, Delete Me, sending takedown requests to data broker sites, submitting info removal requests to Google. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But trying to, like, take away that, like, personal information about myself. I would also say, locking down my accounts and using more two-factor authentication. For, like, my passwords in the past, I have just used very simple, easy-to-remember passwords. But I have learned, like, since the training that it’s really important to have a password that’s way more secure. Even for me on the go, I just want something that’s easy to remember. So using, like, a password manager, like one password. So that has also been helpful for me. And also paying attention to my privacy settings. You know, on, like, Facebook or Twitter. You know, making sure that it’s only me that can look up, like, my phone or my personal, like. email address. So that is helpful. And just generally, like, using the resources from IWMF’s online violence response hub. That has been very helpful as well, and making sure that I have a good self-care practice. And having, like, a team of folks that I can process these different challenges with, because unfortunately, like, you know, this won’t probably be, like, you know, the last time that I experience threats like this, given the nature of my reporting. So it’s really important for me to also have, like, a self-care practice in place. ROBBINS: So maybe, Ela, you want to go through some of that a little bit more deeply, although Tat sounds like Tat’s really on top of it. So these online data brokers, can you just—do you have to pay them to delete yourself? Or are they legally—you know, do they have to respond to a request like that? STAPLEY: OK. So let me start by saying that the U.S. has some of the worst data privacy laws I’ve ever seen. ROBBINS: We’ve noticed that before. STAPLEY: So it’s very difficult for a journalist to protect their personal information, just because so much information in the U.S. has to exist in a public-facing database, which, for me, is quite astounding really. If you buy a house—I don’t know if this is statewide or if it’s just in certain states— ROBBINS: Let me just say, as journalists, we are ambivalent about this, OK? On a certain level, we want to protect ourselves. But on another level, that’s really useful if a corrupt person is buying that house, OK? So we’re—you know, we’re not really crazy about the ability to erase yourself that exists in Europe. So we’re ambivalent about this. But please, go on. STAPLEY: Yeah, but I think from a personal safety standpoint it makes you very vulnerable. And the reason for this is that journalists are public-facing. So but you don't have any of the protection that is normally offered to kind of public-facing people. If you work in government, for example, if you're incredibly famous and have a lot of money, for example, you can hire people. So a lot of journalists don't have that. So it makes them very vulnerable. And they're also reporting on things people have strong opinions about, or they don't want to hear. And they're also very—they're very visible. So and they give—this gives people something to focus on. And when they start digging, they start to find more and more information. So and when I talk about journalists having information on the internet, I’m not saying that they shouldn’t have anything. Because a journalist has to exist on the internet in some form, otherwise they don’t exist and they can’t get work, right? So it’s more about the type of information that they have on the internet. So ideally, if I were to look a journalist up online, I would only find professional information about them, their professional work email, where they work, probably the town they live in. But I shouldn’t be finding, ideally, pictures of their family. I shouldn’t be finding pictures of their dog in their home. I shouldn’t be finding photos of them on holiday last year, ideally. So it’s more about controlling the information and feeling that the journalists themselves is in control of that information that they have on the internet, rather than people putting information on the internet about you. So data brokers sites, you’re very familiar with them. As journalists, you use them to look up sources, I’m sure. But people are also using them to look up you. If I was a citizen, never mind just a journalist, in the United States, I would be signing up to a service. There are a number of them available. One of them is called Delete Me. And they will remove you from these data aggregate sites. Now you can remove yourself from these data aggregate sites, but they are basically scraping public data. So they just keep repopulating with the information. So it’s basically a constant wheel, basically, of you requesting the information to be taken down, and them taking it down, but six months later putting it back up. So companies will do this for you. And there’s a whole industry now in the U.S. around that. Now the information that they contain also is very personal. So it includes your home address, your phone number, your email. But also, people you live with, and family members, et cetera. And what we do see is people who harass online, if they can't find data on you they may well go after family members. I've had journalists where this has happened to them before. They've gone after parents, siblings. And so it was a bit about educating your family on what you're happy and not happy sharing online, especially if you live or have experienced already harassment. So that's a little bit about data broker sites. We don't really see this in any other country. It's very unique to the United States. With all the good and bad that they bring. But in terms of privacy for data for journalists' protection, they're not great. Other preemptive things that journalists can do is just Google yourself, and other search engines. Look yourself up regularly and just know what the internet says about you—whether it’s negative, whether it’s positive. Just have a reading of what the internet is saying about you. I would sign up to get Google Alerts for your name, and that will alert you if anything comes up—on Google only—about you. And when you look yourself up online, just map if there’s anything there that you’re slightly uncomfortable with. And that varies depending on the journalist. It could be that some are happier with certain information being out there and some are less happy. But that’s really a personal decision that the journalist makes themselves. And it really depends on, what we call in the industry, their risk profile. So what do I mean by that? That’s a little bit what I was talking about earlier, when I was talking about Tat’s case. The kind of beat you cover, whether you’ve experienced harassment previously, or any other digital threats previously, who those attackers may be. So it’s very different the far right or alt-right, to a government, to, you know, a group on the internet of Taylor Swift fans, for example. So knowing who the threat is can be helpful because it helps you gauge how more or less the harassment will be and also other digital threats. Do they do hacking? Are they going to commit identity theft in your name? So getting a read on that is very important. Identity theft, a lot of groups like to attack in that way, take out credit cards in your name. So it’s quite good to do a credit check on yourself and put a block on your credit if you are at high risk for that. And you don’t need to have this all the time. It could just be during periods of high levels of harassment. For example, during an election period where we see often a spike in online harassment. Once you have seen information about yourself online, you want to take it down. If you are the owner of that information, it’s on your social media, et cetera, you take it down. The internet pulls through, it removes it. Please bear in mind that once you have something on the internet it’s very difficult to guarantee it’s completely gone. The reason for that is people take screenshots and there are also services such as the Internet Archive, services like the Wayback Machine. These types of services are very good at taking down data, actually, if you request. You have to go and request that they remove your personal data. So you may have deleted information from Google or from your own personal Facebook, but maybe a copy of it exists in the Wayback Machine. And quite often, attackers will go there and search for that information and put it online. So if somebody has put information about you on what we call a third-party platform—they’ve written a horrible blog about you, or it exists in a public database—then it’s very difficult to get that data taken down. It will depend on laws and legislation, and that varies from state to state in the U.S., and can be quite complicated. I’ve had journalists who’ve been quite successful in kind of copyright. So if people are using their image, they’ve—instead of pursuing it through—there are very few laws in place to protect journalists from this, which is something else that that’s an issue. If you do receive online harassment, who do you go to legally? Or maybe even it’s the authorities themselves that harassing you, in certain states. So maybe you don’t want to go to the authorities. But there’s very little legal protection really there for you to get that data taken down and protected. So once you’ve done kind of knowing what the internet says about you, then you just need to make sure you have good account security. What do I mean by that? That means having something called two-factor authentication turned on. Most people are familiar with this these days. They weren’t when I was doing this five years ago. Nobody had heard of it. Most people are using it now. Most people are familiar with this through internet banking, where you log into your account and a text message comes to your phone or an email with a code. Most online services offer this now. Please, please turn on two-factor authentication. There are different types. Most people use SMS. If you are covering anything to do with alt-right, far right, anything where—or hacking groups, or particular—if you’re covering foreign news, I don’t know if there’s here, and you’re covering countries that like to hack a lot, you want to be looking at something a bit more secure, such as an app or a security key. And then making sure yeah, and Tat mentioned a password manager. The most important thing about passwords is that they're long. They should be at least fifteen, one-five, characters. And they should be different for each account. Sorry, everyone. And the reason for that is if you are using the same password on many accounts, and one of those services that you have signed up for gets hacked, they've been keeping your password in an Excel sheet on their server instead of an encrypted form, then everyone will have your password for your Gmail account, your Instagram account, et cetera. That's why it's really important to have different passwords for different accounts. How you can do that? Using a password manager or, it is statistically safer to write them down and keep them safe in your home. If you feel safe in your home, if you're not at risk of arrest and detention and you don't cross borders, statistically it's much safer to write them down. Don't obviously stick them to your computer, but you can keep them somewhere safe in your home. Much safer than having passwords that are very short or reusing the same password on many accounts. Or, on any other account. That will prevent hacking, basically. Which online abusers do like to do? So that's kind of a little bit of a very quick walkthrough on that. And we do have resources that we can send out which will guide you through that. ROBBINS: So I want to turn it over to the group. I’m sure you guys have questions. You’re journalists. So if you could raise your hands or put it in the Q&A, please. I’m sure you have many questions for our experts here. While you’re doing that, I’m just looking at the participant list. If not, I’m going to start calling on people. It’s something I do all the time. It’s the professor side of me that does that. Well, while people decide what they’re going to ask, Tat, so since I said Ela said that your newsroom is actually one that’s been trained in, and that’s actually quite good, how much support they give you? And what sort of support? I mean, if something costs money, did they pay for it, for example? You know, have they—you know, have they given—paid for password manager? Have they given you, you know? And what’s the—what’s the support they gave you, and what do you wish they gave you? BELLAMY-WALKER: That’s a really good question. Well, I would say, maybe the first thing that they had—like, you know, they sent over the different, like, resources, and, you know, for, like, online harassment. And also, they recommended that I take out my, like, email address from the bio online. Since so many of my—since so many of the messages were coming to my email. But in terms of, like, money towards, you know, getting, like, a password manager or, you know, trying to delete some of these, you know, information about me from the internet, I was not provided, like, support with that. And I think just, like, in the future, I—you know, at the time of these stories I was very new to my position. And I think it’s, like, you know, it would be great if, like, news organizations, like, give more trainings on online, like, risk. I think that would be very, like, helpful. Like, alongside having a guide, like a training as well, for, like, new employees. I think that would be very helpful. ROBBINS: So sort of basic onboarding? I mean, this should be a required—a required part of—a required part of it. Ela, are there newsrooms that are doing that now? They've just sort of included this as part of the onboarding process. STAPLEY: Well, ideally, it would be included in the onboarding process. A lot of newsrooms we’ve worked with have included it within the onboarding manual. But obviously, training is money. Newsrooms are short on money these days. So it can be quite difficult. And also, if there’s a high staff turnover, one of the issues we’ve noticed is you can create the best practice, you can train journalists, but journalists leave. New journalists come. Who’s staying on top of that and managing that? And that’s why it’s important to get HR involved from the beginning because maybe HR—in some newsrooms, HR is the editor and also the IT person. So it really depends on the size of the newsroom and how much support they can offer, in terms of financially as well, how much support they can offer. Delete Me is expensive if you add it up for many journalists within your newsroom, or other data broker removal services. One Password actually does free accounts for journalists. So I would recommend that you have a look at that. They have One Password for journalism. And you can—and you can sign up for that. But obviously, it costs money. You know, and there are bigger issues newsrooms need to think about as well. So one of the things we encourage them to think about is how much support can you offer, and also to be honest about that support. So what you don’t want is a journalist who’s been doxed, their home addresses all over the internet, they’ve had to move out, but they find out their newsroom can’t pay for that. So where did they go? Do they still have to work during that period, for example? So getting newsrooms to think through these issues in advance is really helpful for the newsroom because then they can say, look, if this happens we are able to provide this for this amount of time, and after that, you know, we can do this, this, and this. Some newsrooms can't afford to pay for journalists to move out of their home because their budget is too small, but maybe they can offer time off, for example, paid time off, or mental health support through insurance. Maybe they can start to build community networks in the newsroom. This is increasingly more important, as newsrooms—we were speaking about this earlier—are more remote. So people aren't coming into the office so much. So you're not connected to people as much. There's no kind of chatting to people around the water cooler like they used to. So, you know, this kind of self—almost kind of exchanging information between journalists around, like, how to protect against issues or which issues are causing more conflict or—could be tricky. It may not be being picked up, on especially for younger journalists coming into the newsroom because, you know, they're just starting out on their journalism career. They don't have years of experience behind them. And they can often be vulnerable to attacks and, you know, I, on several occasions, spoke to editors at newsrooms, small local newsrooms, who had sent out, you know, like, a young reporter or just a reporter—junior reporter to cover a protest, which was actually a far-right, or alt-right march. And then that journalists would be doxed. And the journalists were completely unprepared for that. The newsroom was completely unprepared for that. Because they hadn’t assessed the risk. They hadn’t seen what the risk, and they wouldn’t have known that doxing was a very common tactic used by these groups. So planning for that in advance is really important. That’s why risk assessment can be really great—a great tool. Getting newsrooms to think through risk assessment processes. ROBBINS: So we have two questions. One from someone named Theo. I’m not sure, I don’t have a list in front of me. Do you recommend any apps for password managers? This person says: I went to a seminar that suggested LastPass, and then LastPass had its data stolen a few months later. This has always made me actually nervous about password managers. I sort of wondered how secure they are. It seems to me every time I get my snail mail I’m getting another warning that, like, something else of mine has been hacked. And we’re going to give you a year of, you know, protection. Are there any of these apps—are they actually secure? STAPLEY: So, one of the things about digital security and safety that journalists really hate is that it’s a changing environment. So, something that was safe, you know, yesterday, isn’t safe today. And the reason for this is, is that tech changes, vulnerabilities become open. Hackers attack. Governments and other groups are always looking for ways to attack and find access. And people in my industry are always looking for ways to protect. So it’s always in a kind of constant change, which is frustrating for journalists because they just want to say use this tool, it’ll work forever, and it’ll be fine. And I’m afraid digital safety is not like that. So nothing you use that is connected to the internet in any shape or form is 100 percent safe, or any device. And the reason for that is, is there is always a possibility that there is a vulnerability that in some area that could be leveraged. So what you’re looking for is really for journalists to stay up to date with the latest tech information. And you’re all journalists. So this, you know, it’s just research. So it should be pretty OK for you to do. The best way to do it is just to sign up to the tech section of a big newspaper, national newspaper, and just get it coming into your inbox. And you’ll just stay up on, like, who’s buying who, what data breaches have there been, who’s been hacked, what hacking groups are out there. You don’t have to investigate in depth. You just have to have a general read of what’s happening in the global sphere around this issue. I think Elon Musk's buyout of Twitter, for example, is a very good example of, you know, what happens when a tech tool that we all depend on changes hands, right? I know journalists who built their entire careers on Twitter and are now just really floundering because it's so difficult to access audiences and get the information. So in order to answer your question, no, nothing is 100 percent safe. But if you're looking to use something, there are certain things that you should look for. Like, who owns this tool? What are they doing with your data? And how are they storing that data? So in terms of password managers, for example, password managers are currently the industry best practice for passwords for the majority of people. There are certain groups within that who may be advised not to use them, most of them are the more high-risk ones. So they—password managers are keeping your passwords in encrypted form on their servers. What does that mean? If someone hacks a password manager, they can't gain access to those passwords. In terms of LastPass, what we saw was security breaches but no actual passwords being accessed. But the fact that they'd have several security breaches made people very unsettled. And, you know, people have been migrating off LastPass, basically. It means their general security ethos may not be as secure as people want. So, you know, you have to move elsewhere. And that is for any tech tool that you use. So now maybe people aren't using Twitter; they’re moving over to LinkedIn. You may be using iMessage one day but may have to migrate over to WhatsApp another. So having many options in play is always—is always good as well. So don’t just rely on one thing and expect it to work forever in the world of tech. Generally, it doesn’t. ROBBINS: We are we have—so, Theo, I’m just going to answer your question really quickly, because that’s one that I actually know something about. This is—Theo asked whether there’s any suggestions—and Theo, I believe, is Theo Greenly, senior reporter at KUCB. Suggestions when finding/choosing a fixer on a reporting trip, especially abroad? Questions to ask or things to look for when initially assessing risk before a trip. I would just say, for finding a fixer, find somebody who’s worked in that country already and ask their advice. That’s the only way you can do it. It’s just—the same way if you’re going down a road and whether or not you think there are mines on that road, ask people who know. There’s, like, no—you just have to rely on the kindness of people who’ve already worked in that environment. And it’s just—that’s what I did for years and years and years working abroad, is that I always relied on people who knew more. I can tell you the first trip I had was in Haiti. The overthrow of Baby Doc. Yes, I’m that old. And I was flipping out. And I called my husband, a very experienced foreign correspondent. And he said to me, find Alfonso Chardy from the Miami Herald , and do everything that he’s already doing. He was completely right. And that’s how I learned how to do it. So that’s—you know, there’s no secret here. It’s just find more experienced reporters. And they’re usually really kind, and they’re really, really helpful. So there’s a question from—is it Steve Doyle? StDoyle. What suggestions do you have for journalists facing physical threats? How should journalists be prepared for that? Ela, Tat? I don’t know if you—this is focused on digital, but do you guys—have you heard of any training? I know that when my reporters at the Journal went overseas, they had a lot of training on security, particularly the ones who went to Afghanistan and Iraq. And we had to pay for it. We went to security companies that trained them. Have you heard anything about people being trained for physical protection in the United States? STAPLEY: Yeah, the IWMF is currently actually on their U.S. safety tour. So they’re visiting states and training them in physical and digital safety. So you can go to the website and check that out. So they do do also the HEFAT training as well. I’m not a physical security expert, so I can’t really speak to that. But, yes, there are organizations that offer this. But there’s a lot more that are obviously paid for than are actually free. But, yes, there are organizations out there that do offer this type of training, press freedom organizations. ROBBINS: Tat, have you done any training on physical security? Because you’re out and about in the community all the time. BELLAMY-WALKER: Hmm. Yeah. So I would also echo the IWMF’s HEFAT training. During the training, like, we learned how to, like, you know, if we’re in a protest and it gets extremely, like, hostile, we learned how to navigate ourselves, like, out of that situation. We learned how to navigate—if there’s a mass shooting, like, what to do. If—you know, if we’re, you know, getting kidnapped or something, we learned how to navigate that situation. So I would definitely recommend IWMF’s HEFAT training has something for folks to use to learn how to navigate these different physical threats that can come up in the field. ROBBINS: Great. Well, we will share a link to that as well when we send out our follow up—our follow-up emails. That's great to know, that that's available. Also never go in the center of a crowd. Hug the buildings. You don't want to get trampled. It's another thing my husband taught me in the early days. These are all really useful things. Question: For a reporter who covers a remote minority community in a news desert, she must be visible on social media for sources to reach her. At the same time, she’s getting harassed/doxed. We provided Delete Me, but she still needs to be findable. Best practices? That was—I mean, it seems to me, sort of that’s the great paradox here. You know, how can you be visible so people can find you, but at the same time you don’t want to get people—the wrong people finding you? How do we balance that? STAPLEY: Yeah. And, like I said, it’s different for each journalist. Depends on the degree of harassment, and how comfortable, and who’s harassing you as well. So generally, if the people who live close to you are harassing you, the physical threat level is higher. So that’s something to be mindful of. So, you know, if you’re—some of the most challenging cases are journalists who report on the communities that they are living in, and those communities are hostile to them in some form. And it can be very, very difficult for them to stay safe, because they also know where you live. Because, you know, they know your aunt or whoever, like they live three doors down. But I think really it's then about putting best practices in place. So having a plan for what if this happens, what will we do as a newsroom to support this journalist? And maybe seeing—asking the journalist what they feel that they need. So when it comes to harassment on social media, I'm afraid—a lot of responsibility for managing that harassment should come from the platforms, but it doesn't. And there are very few practices now in place, especially, you know, what we've seen with X, or what was previously Twitter. You know, the security there is not as efficient as it once was. I think I could say that. So you can be reporting things, but nothing's happening. Or they say that it adheres to their community guidelines. Often we hear that from Facebook, for example, or Instagram. One thing you should know, if you’re reporting harassment, is you should read the community guidelines and see how that harassment—you need—you need to parrot the same language back to them. So you need to show them how the harassment is violating their community standards, and just use the same words in your—in your report. And document it. So keep a spreadsheet of who—what platform it happened on, take a screenshot of the abuse. Don’t just have the URL, because people delete it. So make sure you have the handle name, the date, the time, et cetera. And the harassment, the platform it happened on, whether you reported it, who you reported it to, have you heard back from them. Why would you document it? Well, it really depends. Maybe, you know, it’s just personal, so you can track it. Maybe it’s for you to show editors. Maybe it’s to take to the authorities. But that’s not always appropriate for everybody. You may or may not want to document—and you can’t document everything. So you’re just looking for threat to life there, I would say. And it can be helpful to get—I know Tat mentioned this—to have, like, a community of people who can help you with that. So in the case of this journalist, like, what’s their external support network like? Are there other journalists that journalists can be in contact with? What can you offer that journalist in terms of support? So does that journalist need time every week to kind of document this during work hours so she doesn’t—or, he—doesn’t have to spend their time doing it on the weekend? Do they need access to mental health provision? Do they need an IT team? So it sounds like it's a small outlet, you probably don't have—maybe have an IT team? Or, you know, the owner's probably the IT person. That's normally how that works. So what can you do there to make sure their accounts are secure, and make sure they know that they don't always have to be online? So one of the most important things for journalists is for people to contact them. But if you're on a device all the time, and that device is just blowing up with hatred, it can be quite useful to have a different device, a different phone number that you use for personal use. And that, you know, maybe you don't work on the weekend, you switch your work phone off so you don't have to be reading all this abuse. I know switching the phone off for a journalist is like never going to happen, but in some cases it could be useful. If you’re in the middle of a sustained, like, vicious attack, you know, just having your phone explode with calls, messages, emails, all just coming at you 24/7, is really not great. And it really impedes your ability to do work as well. So, you know, putting a bit of separation there, and helping that journalist—letting that journalist know that you support that journalist doing that is really helpful. That’s a really good, important step for a newsroom to do, kind of giving them that support. ROBBINS: So one of the things that Ela said, and, Tat, I want to ask you about it. Ela said something about knowing something about who your attacker is, because then you might know more about whether they just—they’re just going to dox you—I don’t mean “just”—but if they’re going to focus on doxing, versus they maybe want to hack your personal accounts, or they want to go after your aunt, or they may actually come to your newsroom and physically threaten you. That people have patterns of their attacks. When you were getting attacked over the story you were doing about drag laws, did you have a sense—did you know who was attacking you? Did you research it? BELLAMY-WALKER: Yeah, I did. At first, it just seemed like it was just, like, random folks, you know, from, you know, the internet. But I started to see that there was definitely this, like, conservative Facebook page. Like, everyone from that conservative Facebook page. They were all definitely emailing me. You know, I’m definitely maybe not 100 percent sure about that, but it seemed like the Facebook page took the harassment to a whole different level, especially because they included, like, where I work. They, you know, had spoke about like a tweet that I had wrote about, like, the journalism industry in general, in terms of diversity. So many of the attacks started to heighten from the Facebook page, and then the article that was written about me. And so for me, it’s really important for me to, you know, check, you know, what is being, you know, written about me through either Google searches or I will search Facebook, and that’s how I came across this, you know, conservative Facebook page. I think they were called, like, the Whiskey Cowboys, or something like that. Yeah, yeah. So that’s how I look at—that’s how I came across them. It was after I had done, like, a search of my name in Facebook. And if I had not done that search of my name, I would not have realized, like, why it was becoming so intense. Because before then, I did—you know, definitely I get some emails here and there, but never something as targeted as it was. I’m like, whoa, like, these are getting, like, really, really personal. And then with the Facebook page, it was very, very personal attacks on me. ROBBINS: So, Ela, I think my final question to you is, sometimes a Facebook page isn’t necessarily who we think it is. I mean, it could be the Iranians. It could be somebody in New Jersey. It’s not—I mean, there’s Donald Trump, it’s some 300-pound guy in a basement in Newark, New Jersey. OK, well, that’s a story for another day. Do you guys or does someone else have—you know, has done more forensic research so that if we’re getting—we’re getting attacked we can say: That looks like X group, and we know that they tend to mainly focus on doxing, or you probably should be more aware that they’re going to go after your financial resources? Is there some sort of a guide for particular groups in the way they do their work? STAPLEY: Not a guide, as such. But, yes, there are journalists who’ve researched the people who have harassed them. And it also makes very good stories—I know journalists who have written good stories about that. And, obviously, there are tech professionals, IT professionals, who can also look into that. They can study things like IP addresses and things. And it helps build up a picture of who the attackers are. But I think here, the important thing is if you are writing on a particular story—on a particular topic or on a particular region of the world, knowing who’s active online with regards to that topic and regards to that region of the world, and what they can do in terms of their tech capacity, is important. Ideally, before anything happens, so that you can put steps in place. ROBBINS: But how would I, if I work at a medium-sized or small newspaper—you know, where would I turn for help for that sort of risk assessment, as I’m launching into that? You know, how would I know that if I’m going to go down this road that I might draw the ire of X, Y, or Z that has this capacity? Where would I look for that? STAPLEY: Yeah, speaking to other reporters who cover the same beat is very helpful, whether in your state or just, like, if you have reporters in other areas of the country or in other countries. You know, if you’re covering international news, like, speaking to them and finding out if they—what digital threats they’ve faced is a really useful step. So connecting to that network, like we talked about fixers in different countries. Like, getting a feel for it. But ideally, this should come from the newsroom themselves. So, you know, ideally, newsrooms should be proactive about doing risk assessments. And ideally, they should train managers. They should train editors on this. So a lot of responsibility does kind of fall to the editor, but a lot of them haven’t been trained in how to, like, roll out a risk assessment appropriately. And so getting newsrooms to really be proactive about this, training their editors, and being—you know, looking at the risk assessments, putting them in front of people, and getting them to—and asking them to fill them out. Because the risk assessment really is about mitigating risk. It’s getting you thinking, what are the risks? How can you reduce them in a way that makes it safer for you to go about your daily life, but also to continue reporting? Which at the end of the day, is what all journalists want to do. ROBBINS: Has anybody—like Pew or anybody else—brought together sort of a compendium of, you know, significant online attacks that journalists have suffered, sort of organized by topic or something? That would be really useful. STAPLEY: Yeah, there’s a number of organizations that have published on this. There’s been a lot of academic research done. The ICFJ and UNESCO did one, The Chilling it’s called. That was a global look, against women journalists, and involved a lot of case studies. We have our online violence response hub—which Tat mentioned earlier, which I’m very pleased to know that Tat was using—which is a one-stop shop for all things online harassment-related. And there you will find the latest research. So you can go there and search for academic research, but it also has, like, digital safety guides, guidance for newsrooms, as well as for journalists and for those who want to support journalists to better protect themselves. ROBBINS: That’s great. Ela, Tat, thank you both for this. I’m going to turn it back to Irina. We’re going to push out these resources. And this has just been—I’m fascinated. This has been a great conversation. Thank you so much, both of you. STAPLEY: Thank you. FASKIANOS: Yes. And I echo that. Ela Stapley and Tat Bellamy-Walker, and, of course, Carla Anne Robbins, thank you very much for this conversation. We will send out the resources and the link to this webinar and transcript. As always, we encourage you to visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for the latest developments and analysis on international trends and how they are affecting the United States. And of course, you can email us to share suggestions for future webinars by sending an email to [email protected] . So thank you for being with us today. And thanks to all of you for your time. We appreciate it. ROBBINS: Ela and Tat, thank you for the work you do. Thanks, Irina. (END) Webinar by Tat Bellamy-Walker, Ela Stapley, Carla Anne Robbins and Irina A. Faskianos February 13, 2024 Local Journalists Webinars
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The Hydra Nature of Book Banning and Censorship

A snapshot and two annotated bibliographies.

Michelle Boyd Waters University of Oklahoma
Shelly K. Unsicker-Durham University of Oklahoma

In Fall of 2022 two researchers set out to explore both scholarly work on censorship and news articles via social media, to help gain a broader understanding of censorship and book banning trends. The following research question guided their research: What does this wave of book banning and censorship look like across the US? What they discovered is a kind of censorship-Hydra, an evolving beast posing an ever-present danger, one that will likely take the courage, collaboration, and ingenuity of educators everywhere. This article offers a snapshot of this current beast of book banning and censorship in the form of two annotated bibliographies—one focused on news reports and trends in social media—the other focused on academic searches of scholarly articles.

Author Biographies

Michelle boyd waters, university of oklahoma.

Michelle Boyd Waters is a doctoral student at the University of Oklahoma studying English education. She taught middle and high school English Language Arts for 10 years and is now studying the establishment and impact of writing centers in high schools. She is the Graduate Student Assistant Director at the OU Writing Center, an Oklahoma Writing Project Teacher Consultant, and co-editor of the Oklahoma English Journal.

Shelly K. Unsicker-Durham, University of Oklahoma

After 23 years of teaching English Language Arts, Shelly is a PhD candidate with the University of Oklahoma in Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum, where she has also served as graduate instructor, researcher, and co-editor of Study & Scrutiny. Her favorite research pursuits include expressive writing pedagogy, teacher conversations, and young adult literature.

THREE REFERENCE LISTS:

REFERENCES FOR ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY #1

Authors speak out on censorship. (2022, March 11). National Council of Teachers of English. https://ncte.org/resources/ncte-intellectual-freedom-center/authors-speak-out-on-censorship/

Backus, F., & Salvanto, A. (2022, April 6). Big majorities reject book bans - CBS news poll. CBS News. Retrieved September 25, 2022. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/book-bans-opinion-poll-2022-02-22/ . DOI: https://doi.org/10.3886/icpsr04092.v1

Banned & Challenged Books: Simon & Schuster. New Book Releases, Bestsellers, Author Info and more at Simon & Schuster. (n.d.). Retrieved September 25, 2022. https://www.simonandschuster.com/p/bannedbooksweek

Blake, M. (2022, July 27). A surprising list of recently banned books. Penguin Books UK. https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2022/05/surprising-books-that-have-been-recently-banned-2019

Chess, K. (2018, September 8). Why I hate censorship in ya fiction. Khristina Chess. https://www.khristinachess.com/blog/2018/9/8/why-i-hate-censorship-in-ya-fiction

Friedman, J., & Farid Johnson, N. (2022, September 19). Banned in the USA: The growing movement to censor books in schools. PEN America. Retrieved September 25, 2022. https://pen.org/report/banned-usa-growing-movement-to-censor-books-in-schools/

Frisaro, F. (2023, May 24). Amanda Gorman’s inauguration poem banned by Florida School. PBS. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/amanda-gormans-inauguration-poem-banned-by-florida-school

Gregory, J. (2022, September 9). 22 titles pulled from Missouri district shelves to comply with state law and more: Censorship roundup. School Library Journal. Retrieved October 2, 2022. https://www.slj.com/story/22-titles-pulled-from-missouri-district-shelves-to-comply-with-state-law-and-more-censorship-roundup

Jensen, K. (2022, August 4). A template for talking with school and Library Boards about book bans: Book censorship news, August 5, 2022. Book Riot. Retrieved September 25, 2022. https://bookriot.com/book-censorship-news-august-5-2022 . DOI: https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0173.0203

Jensen, K. (2022, August 25). States that have enacted book Ban laws: Book censorship news, August 26, 2022. Book Riot. Retrieved October 2, 2022. https://bookriot.com/states-that-have-enacted-book-ban-laws-2022/

Jensen, K. (2023, May 25). When do we move from advocacy to preparation?. Book Riot. https://bookriot.com/when-do-we-move-from-advocacy-to-preparation/

The Learning Network. (2022, February 18). What students are saying about banning books from school libraries. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/18/learning/students-book-bans.html

Lopez, S. (2023, May 8). The extreme new tactic in the crusade to ban books. Time. https://time.com/6277933/state-book-bans-publishers/

Magnusson, T. (n.d.). Book censorship database by Dr. Tasslyn Magnusson. EveryLibrary Institute. Retrieved September 25, 2022. https://www.everylibraryinstitute.org/book_censorship_database_magnusson

Miller, S. (2022). Intellectual Freedom Center Provides Support for Censorship Challenges. Council Chronicle, 32(1), 16–18. https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/cc202232050 . DOI: https://doi.org/10.58680/cc202232050

“Not recommended” reading: The books Hong Kong is purging from public libraries. (2023, May 26). Hong Kong Free Press. https://hongkongfp.com/2023/05/26/not-recommended-reading-the-books-hong-kong-is-purging-from-public-libraries . DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110966879.26a

op de Beeck, N. (2023, May 2). Turning a censorship controversy into a learning opportunity. PublishersWeekly.com. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/92172-turning-a-censorship-controversy-into-a-learning-opportunity.html

Parker, C. (2023, July 25). Readers can now access books banned in their area for free with New App. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/banned-book-club-app-180982592/

Pendharkar, E. (2023, June 29). How students are reacting to book bans in their schools. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/how-students-are-reacting-to-book-bans-in-their-schools/2023/06

Price, R. (2022, September 19). The power of reading, or why I do what I do. Adventures in Censorship. https://adventuresincensorship.com/blog/2022/9/17/the-power-of-reading-or-why-i-do-what-i-do

Russell, B. Z. (2022, September 23). Panel: Book-banning push is coordinated, national effort. Idaho Press. Retrieved October 2, 2022. https://www.idahopress.com/news/local/panel-book-banning-push-is-coordinated-national-effort/article_cb6606aa-3b89-11ed-be6c-67820ea458a1.html

School Library Journal. (2023, May 25). Amanda Gorman’s Inaugural Poem Restricted in Florida District After One Parent Complains | Censorship News. https://www.slj.com/story/newsfeatures/Amanda-Gormans-Inaugural-Poem-Restricted-in-Florida-District-After-One-Parent-Complains-Censorship-News

REFERENCES FOR ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY #2

Beck, S., & Stevenson, A. (2018). Teaching contentious books regarding immigration: the case of Pancho Rabbit. Reading Teacher, 72(20), 265-273. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1739

Boyd, A. S., Rose, S. G., & Darragh, J. J. (2021). Shifting the conversation around teaching sensitive topics: Critical colleagueship in a teacher discourse community. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 65(2), 129-137. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.1186

Buehler, J. (2023). Voices of Young Adult Literature authors in the conversation about censorship. English Journal, 112(5), pp. 64-70. DOI: https://doi.org/10.58680/ej202332423

Collins, J. E. (2022). Policy solutions: Defying the gravitational pull of education politics. Phi Delta Kappan, 104(1), 62-63. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00317217221123654

Dallacqua, A. (2022). “Let Me Just Close My Eyes”: Challenged and Banned Books, Claimed Identities, and Comics. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy,66(2), 134-138. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.1250

Dávila, D. The Tacit Censorship of Youth Literature: A Taxonomy of Text Selection Stances. Child Lit Educ 53, 376–391 (2022). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-022-09498-5

Garnar, M., Lechtenberg, K., & Vibbert, C. (2020). School Librarians and the Intellectual Freedom Manual. Knowledge Quest, 49(1), 34–38.

Goodman, C. L. (Ed.) (2022). IDRA Newsletter. Volume 49, No. 2. Intercultural Development Research Association.

Greathouse, P., Eisenbach, B., & Kaywell, J. (2017). Supporting Students’ Right to Read in the Secondary Classroom: Authors of Young Adult Literature Share Advice for Pre-Service Teachers. SRATE Journal, 26(2), 17–24.

Hartsfield, D. E., & Kimmel, S. C. (2020) Exploring educators figured worlds of controversial literature and adolescent readers. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 63(4), 443-451. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.989

Hlwyak, S., Ed. (2021, April). State of America's libraries 2021: Special report: Covid-19. American Library Association. https://www.ala.org/news/sites/ala.org.news/files/content/State-of-Americas-Libraries-Report-2021-4-21.pdf

Ivey, G., & Johnston, P. (2018). Engaging disturbing books. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 62(2). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.883

Leland, C. H., & Bangert, S. E. (2019). Encouraging activism through art: Preservice teachers challenge censorship. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 68(1), 162-182. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/2381336919870272

Lycke, K., & Lucey, T. (2018). The Messages We Miss: Banned Books, Censored Texts, and Citizenship. Journal of Social Studies Education Research, 9(1), 1–26. 3

Matthews, C. (2018). Sexuality. Brock Education: A Journal of Educational Research and Practice, 27(2), 68-74.

Mehan, K., & Friedman, J. (2023). Banned in the USA: State laws supercharge book suppression in schools. PEN America. https://pen.org/report/banned-in-the-usa-state-laws-supercharge-book-suppression-in-schools/

Metzgar, M., & McGowan, M. J. (2022). Viewpoint diversity at UNC Charlotte. Acta Educationis Generalis, 12(3), 1-12. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/atd-2022-0020

Moffet, J. (1988). Storm in the Mountains: A Case Study of Censorship, Conflict, and Consciousness. Southern Illinois University.

Page, M. L. (2017). Teaching in the cracks: Using familiar pedagogy to advance LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 60(6), 644-685. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.616

Pekoll, K. (2020). Managing censorship challenges beyond books. Knowledge Quest, 49(1), 28-33.

PEN America. (2022, April). Banned in the USA: Rising school book bans threaten free expression and students’ First Amendment Rights (April 2022). https://pen.org/banned-in-the-usa/#what

PEN America. (2022, Sept. 19). New report: 2,500+ book bans across 32 states during the 2021-22 school year. https://pen.org/press-release/new-report-2500-book-bans-across-32-states-during-2021-22-school-year/

Pérez, A. H. (2022). Defeating the censor within: How to hold your stand for youth access to literature in the face of school book bans. Knowledge Quest, 50(5), 34-39.

Rumberger, A. (2019). The elementary school library: Tensions between access and censorship. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 20(4), 409–421. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1463949119888491

SLJ Staff. (2023, April 20). New PEN America Report Shows Increase in Book Bans Driven by State Legislation. School Library Journal. https://www.slj.com/story/censorship/New-PEN-America-Report-Shows-Increase-in-Book-Bans-Driven-by-State-Legislation

Steele, J. E. (2020). A History of Censorship in the United States. Journal of Intellectual Freedom & Privacy, 5(1), 6-19. https://www.ala.org/news/sites/ala.org.news/files/content/State-of-Americas-Libraries-Report-2021-4-21.pdf

Sulzer, M. A., & Thein, A. H. (2016). Reconsidering the hypothetical adolescent in evaluating and teaching young adult literature. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 60(2), 163-171. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.556

Vissing, Y., & Juchniewicz, M. (2023). Children’s book banning, censorship and human rights. In J. Zajda, P. Hallam, & J. Whitehouse (Eds.), Globalisation, values education and teaching democracy, vol 35 (pp. 181-201). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15896-4_12

Walter, B., & Boyd, A. S. (2019). A threat or just a book? Analyzing responses to Thirteen Reasons Why in a discourse community. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 62(6), 615-623. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.939

Woo, A., Lee, S., Tuma, A. P., Kaufman, J. H., Lawrence, R. A., & Reed, N. (2023). Walking on Eggshells--Teachers' Responses to Classroom Limitations on Race-or Gender-Related Topics: Findings from the 2022 American Instructional Resources Survey. Research Report. RR-A134-16. RAND Corporation. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7249/rra134-16

REFERENCES NOT INCLUDED IN THE ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHIES

Bishop, R. S. (1990). Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom, 6(3).

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. (2022, October 20). Hydra. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hydra-Greek-mythology

Foster, M. V. (2022, August 23). NPS teacher resigns from district after sharing QR code for library access with classroom. FOX 25, Oklahoma (KOKH). https://okcfox.com/news/local/norman-public-schools-nps-norman-high-school-teacher-summer-boismeir-house-bill-1775-hb1775-american-civil-liberties-union-aclu-first-amendment-critical-race-theories-crt-book-ban-oklahoma-state-board-of-education-race-sex-discrimination?fbclid=IwAR0WiSTlBqucyBFZLzDIbKqrmRJ9PMOG-wKbGLihujHOBiAzidJn9I7F_Ho

Hill, J. A. (2023). Legitimate state interest of educational censorship: the chilling effect of Oklahoma House Bill 1775. Oklahoma Law Review, 75(2), 385-408.

Interactive chart. Ad Fontes Media. (2023, July 8). https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/

KOKH Staff. (2023, March 21). 'What did I do?' OSDE applies to revoke certificate of ex-Norman teacher Summer Boismier. FOX 25, Oklahoma (KOKH). https://okcfox.com/news/local/summer-boismier-teaching-certificate-revoked-norman-oklahoma-ryan-walters-books-unbanned-qr-code-state-department-education-brooklyn-public-library-critical-race-theory-gender-queer-

Media Bias Chart. AllSides. (2023, June 21). https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart

Oklahoma State Department of Education. (2016). Oklahoma academic standards for English language arts. https://sde.ok.gov/sites/ok.gov.sde/files/documents/files/OAS-ELA-Final%20Version_0.pdf

PEN America. (2022, August 23). For the first time, Oklahoma education officials punish two school districts for violating gag order on teaching race and gender. [Press Release]. PEN America. https://pen.org/press-release/for-first-time-oklahoma-education-officials-punish-two-school-districts-for-violating-gag-order-on-teaching-race-and-gender/

Penharkar, E. (2022, August 2). Two Okla. districts get downgraded Accreditations for violating state’s anti-CRT Law. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/two-okla-districts-get-downgraded-accreditations-for-violating-states-anti-crt-law/2022/08

Smith, J. C. (2023, June 22). School officials ‘failed to prove’ teacher violated law by helping students get books, prosecutor says. USA Today Network. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/06/22/no-proof-teacher-violated-oklahoma-book-law-prosecutor/70347891007/

Suares, W. (2022, August24). ‘I am a walking HB1775 violation’: Former Norman teacher discusses book ban controversy. FOX 25 Oklahoma (KOKH). https://okcfox.com/news/local/summer-boismier-norman-public-schools-critical-race-theory-brooklyn-public-library-qr-code-house-bill-1775-oklahoma-teacher-resigned-education-books?fbclid=IwAR2Pz72tTGDJbZrEeGEm6LYaaJb17ojMMTrztDxU_6uBvZcDD7cVIJvf5yw

Stafford, W. (2022, July 28). Two Oklahoma school districts punished for violating CRT ban. FOX 25, Oklahoma (KOKH). https://okcfox.com/news/local/2-ok-school-district-punished-for-violating-crt-ban-tulsa-public-schools-and-mustang-public-schools-accreditation-with-warning-house-bill-1775-accreditation-with-warning-accreditation-with-deficiencies

Taylor, J., & Fife, A. (2023, August 3). After a state law banning some lessons on race, Oklahoma teachers tread lightly on the Tulsa Race Massacre. The Frontier. https://www.readfrontier.org/stories/after-a-state-law-banning-some-lessons-on-race-oklahoma-teachers-tread-lightly-on-the-tulsa-race-massacre/?fbclid=IwAR1PBzCAnjyI59RRArRTNudvmJydz5hYvZghABDSLjYPoq0tmcDsYRj8Lqc . DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74679-7_3

Tolin, L. (2023, January). Oklahoma teacher is still fighting book bans, now from Brooklyn.

Waters, M. B. (2018, December 31). Rethink ELA #010: Fostering student-led discussions with the TQE method. reThink ELA. https://www.rethinkela.com/2018/12/rethink-ela-010-fostering-student-led-discussions-with-the-tqe-method/

Woo, A., Lee, S., Tuma, A. P., Kaufman, J. H., Lawrence, R. A., & Reed, N. (2023). Walking on Eggshells—Teachers’ Responses to Classroom Limitations on Race-or Gender-Related Topics. Rand American Educational Panels. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA100/RRA134-16/RAND_RRA134-16.pdf . DOI: https://doi.org/10.7249/rra134-16

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How to Write a Thesis Statement | 4 Steps & Examples

How to Write a Thesis Statement | 4 Steps & Examples

Published on January 11, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on August 15, 2023 by Eoghan Ryan.

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . It usually comes near the end of your introduction .

Your thesis will look a bit different depending on the type of essay you’re writing. But the thesis statement should always clearly state the main idea you want to get across. Everything else in your essay should relate back to this idea.

You can write your thesis statement by following four simple steps:

Start with a question
Write your initial answer
Develop your answer
Refine your thesis statement

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What is a thesis statement, placement of the thesis statement, step 1: start with a question, step 2: write your initial answer, step 3: develop your answer, step 4: refine your thesis statement, types of thesis statements, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about thesis statements.

A thesis statement summarizes the central points of your essay. It is a signpost telling the reader what the essay will argue and why.

The best thesis statements are:

Concise: A good thesis statement is short and sweet—don’t use more words than necessary. State your point clearly and directly in one or two sentences.
Contentious: Your thesis shouldn’t be a simple statement of fact that everyone already knows. A good thesis statement is a claim that requires further evidence or analysis to back it up.
Coherent: Everything mentioned in your thesis statement must be supported and explained in the rest of your paper.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

The thesis statement generally appears at the end of your essay introduction or research paper introduction .

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts and among young people more generally is hotly debated. For many who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its many benefits for education: the internet facilitates easier access to information, exposure to different perspectives, and a flexible learning environment for both students and teachers.

You should come up with an initial thesis, sometimes called a working thesis , early in the writing process . As soon as you’ve decided on your essay topic , you need to work out what you want to say about it—a clear thesis will give your essay direction and structure.

You might already have a question in your assignment, but if not, try to come up with your own. What would you like to find out or decide about your topic?

For example, you might ask:

After some initial research, you can formulate a tentative answer to this question. At this stage it can be simple, and it should guide the research process and writing process .

Now you need to consider why this is your answer and how you will convince your reader to agree with you. As you read more about your topic and begin writing, your answer should get more detailed.

In your essay about the internet and education, the thesis states your position and sketches out the key arguments you’ll use to support it.

The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its many benefits for education because it facilitates easier access to information.

In your essay about braille, the thesis statement summarizes the key historical development that you’ll explain.

The invention of braille in the 19th century transformed the lives of blind people, allowing them to participate more actively in public life.

A strong thesis statement should tell the reader:

Why you hold this position
What they’ll learn from your essay
The key points of your argument or narrative

The final thesis statement doesn’t just state your position, but summarizes your overall argument or the entire topic you’re going to explain. To strengthen a weak thesis statement, it can help to consider the broader context of your topic.

These examples are more specific and show that you’ll explore your topic in depth.

Your thesis statement should match the goals of your essay, which vary depending on the type of essay you’re writing:

In an argumentative essay , your thesis statement should take a strong position. Your aim in the essay is to convince your reader of this thesis based on evidence and logical reasoning.
In an expository essay , you’ll aim to explain the facts of a topic or process. Your thesis statement doesn’t have to include a strong opinion in this case, but it should clearly state the central point you want to make, and mention the key elements you’ll explain.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

The thesis statement is essential in any academic essay or research paper for two main reasons:

It gives your writing direction and focus.
It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.

Without a clear thesis statement, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.

Follow these four steps to come up with a thesis statement :

Ask a question about your topic .
Write your initial answer.
Develop your answer by including reasons.
Refine your answer, adding more detail and nuance.

The thesis statement should be placed at the end of your essay introduction .

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Censorship and the Public Schools

The First Amendment: Protecting Parents and Children from Caesar

Dr. Richard Baer, Ph.D.

Dr. Richard Baer, Ph.D., is director of the program in Agricultural and Environmental Ethics at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. A long-time student of religious-ethical problems in education, Dr. Baer has written extensively on the negative impacts of public education on First Amendment freedoms.

The stench of a burning book in its own way is as repulsive as the stench of burning flesh in the days of Joan of Arc or the Salem “witches.” Censorship destroys and consumes what is best in man: his reason and imagination.

Do you suppose that these words were spoken by Thomas Paine or James Madison or perhaps by the English libertarian philosopher John Stuart Mill? No, they were not. As a matter of fact, they were published less than a year ago by Cal Thomas, an associate of Jerry Falwell and communications director for the Moral Majority. They begin his 1983 monograph entitled Book Burning (1)

Thomas’s words are gripping and interest us particularly when we see them in the light of a second book on censorship which was published in 1983. Protecting the Right to Learn: A Citizen’s Guide is its title, and it was written by Barbara Parker and Stefanie Weiss for the activist group People for the American Way, the organization former TV producer Norman Lear founded in 1980 to counter the influence of the Moral Majority.(2)

Lest you take Cal Thomas’s statement as an anomaly or assume that I have quoted him out of context, let me express my evaluation of these two books as bluntly as possible: In spite of far-reaching disagreements with Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority, as a scholar I find that Cal Thomas’s Book Burning reflects a far more sophisticated grasp of the philosophical and political issues in current public school censorship debates than does the People for the American Way volume by Parker and Weiss. Moreover, Thomas is fairer to opponents and their views than are Parker and Weiss and presents a position more compatible with a pluralistic and democratic republic than theirs.

Some differences between the two books are important but not fundamental. I shall touch on them, therefore, only briefly.

Throughout Protecting the Freedom to Learn, Parker and Weiss, by biased terminology and irresponsibly exaggerated cartoons, regularly attack their opponents as persons rather than limiting the argument to disputed issues. I see little effort on their part to understand why the Moral Majority and other conservative groups are concerned about secular humanism in public schools. Instead, they claim that “the Far Right frequently condemns public schools and organizes censorship campaigns around the drummed-up fear of the ‘religion of secular humanism’” (emphasis added).(3) Let Their Eyes Be Opened, the Christian Broadcasting Network’s TV film on humanism and its influence in the public schools, is “a slick production,” Mel and Norma Gabler’s textbook reviews “allow local censorship groups to rail against passages taken out of context.” And the people who are “making the most noise about the public schools are organized, clever, and crafty.” Cal Thomas is “sharp-tongued,” and Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum is the “self-styled ‘alternative to women’s lib’”

To some extent we might excuse such language in an activist, how-to manual, but nonetheless it clearly does not encourage constructive dialogue. And Cal Thomas’s Book Burning is not totally free of biased language, of course. But overall, the feeling of his book is generous and conciliatory compared with the People for the American Way publication.

This difference in feeling is particularly noticeable if we look at the cartoons Parker and Weiss use. In case after case, when compared with the specific statements Cal Thomas makes defending pluralism and practical compromises, these cartoons are tendentious, inaccurate, and irrelevant—based on errors and misconceptions about the Moral Majority’s position.

Compare, for instance, the cartoon which Parker and Weiss reprint in their section entitled “A Sampling of the Censors’ Victories.” A rather fat, smug, and pompous man (Jerry Falwell, I presume) is shown standing in front of a bare bookcase. He is holding a book with a cross on its cover—perhaps a Bible. The caption reads: “The Moral Majority Library.” That this caricature is irresponsible becomes evident, however, as soon as we compare it to what Cal Thomas actually says in Book Burning: “All we are asking for is balance. I would like to think that I could walk into a public library and find not only works by Gloria Steinem but also those of Phyllis Schlafly.”(5)

In their section “An Overview of Censorship” Parker and Weiss reprint a 1982 Bruce Beattie cartoon. The dialogue between the librarian and her assistant runs like this: “Ban this Book. It’s got a dirty word in it!” “What is it?” “Pluralism!”(6) But compare this with Thomas’s statement from Book Burning: “I want my children to learn about Jewish holidays and Muslim holidays and a lot of other things in school; this teaches them to respect the richness and diversity of religion and cultures.”(7) And later in the same volume, Thomas writes: “It would be absurd to expect every novel or short story or play to be compatible with the Christian world-view. Banning publication or sale of a literary work would be not only unconstitutional, but also antithetical to the Christian concept of freedom.”(8) Public libraries, Thomas argues, “should contain a broad spectrum of books to appeal to the whole community. Libraries serve an open society and should be places of free and open inquiry.”(9)

Just below their statement that the Moral Majority, Phyllis Schlafly, and others of the Far Right “spend considerable time, energy, and money encouraging censorship and attacking public education,” Parker and Weiss reprint a Berke Breathed Bloom County cartoon that shows a book burning. Holding a burning torch and a bullhorn, the leader of the event admonishes the crowd, “Keep it orderly, folks . . . I will not have an uncivilized book burning here!” In the second square he intones, “Okay . . . the Kurt Vonnegut pile on the left . . Steinbeck on the right and the demonic rock record pile in the middle!”(10) But when we look at this reference and the cartoon and compare them to what Cal Thomas writes, the contrast is jarring. In addition to the statements I have already pointed to, he states in Book Burning that “students should have contact with all varieties of literature at some point in their education. This includes writers like Kurt Vonnegut, Ernest Hemingway, and Scott Fitzgerald.”(11)

Disconcerting discrepancy

How can we explain this disconcerting discrepancy between the picture that People for the American Way presents of the Moral Majority on the issue of censorship and the actual statements of Cal Thomas in Book Burning? Could it be that Thomas’s views are sharply at odds with those of the Moral Majority, for whom he works as communications director?

A superficial response would point to all the difficulty of mutual understanding among groups as different as the Moral Majority and People for the American Way. Or it might note that Jerry Falwell at times makes extreme statements, which do not square easily with his more considered views on particular issues.

My own judgment, however, is that Parker and Weiss—along with most liberal writers who have dealt with the problem of censorship in the public schools—have been unable to understand such people as Cal Thomas properly because they have not adequately grasped four basic structural dimensions of American public schools. Indeed, these features of public schools are so fundamental that we may not be able to resolve public school censorship disputes within our current public school system. As important as they are, these features of our public schools are seldom mentioned in censorship discussions.

CRITICAL STRUCTURAL FEATURES OF AMERICA’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS

1. America’s public school system is a government monopoly with a captive student audience.

Although in theory people have the right to choose private schools for their children, in actuality, apart from Catholic parochial schools and other privately subsidized systems, only the affluent have the option of choosing for their children alternative private schools with values and practices more closely suited to their own basic beliefs. This means that most parents—apart from heroic and often impossible sacrifice—simply have to send their children to public schools. The system is monopolistic in that only government schools are eligible to receive tax monies for general support. We have what Professor Stephen Arons of the University of Massachusetts describes in his book Compelling Belief as “a system of school finance that provides free choice for the rich and compulsory socialization for everyone else.”(12)

2. America’s public schools are government schools.

In a strict sense, public school teachers, administrators, and other employees are representatives or agents of the state. Thus the appropriateness of the term “government school.” But the term is also suitable for another reason. This is because the dichotomy of public-private in relation to schools is misleading. If we lump together all private elementary and secondary schools, they are about as accessible to the general public as are public schools. Specifically, taken as a class, they are as well integrated racially, socially, and economically as are public schools. Admittedly, this is in large part because of the splendid record of Catholic parochial schools, but the point is nonetheless worth noting. It is a serious mistake to equate “public” with “government-sponsored” or “government-financed.” To be fully accurate, we should describe schools as “government schools” or as “non-government schools.”

3. It is a myth to think of America’s system of government schools as a network of local schools or to think of these schools as functioning in loco parentis, that is in the place of or on behalf of parents.

Over the years, America’s public, that is, government, schools have increasingly come to be run by state and federal government agencies rather than by local school boards. State boards of education have become more and more powerful in matters of curriculum, textbook selection, and the certification of teachers. And the federal government has increasingly required local schools to follow its mandates in non-curricular matters or else be cut off from substantial federal aid.

If education is learning about the great formative ideas of a culture, if it is achieving competence in a variety of academic disciplines, then it is totally misleading to think that local communities or parents control this process. Twenty-two states choose textbooks on a statewide basis. In New York State, it is basically the State Board of Regents that controls the high school curriculum. Schools of education exercise powerful influence over curriculum, and, to their dismay, parents have learned that it is exceedingly difficult, frequently impossible, successfully to counteract state pressure to incorporate courses in sex education or in such fads as Values Clarification into the local school curriculum. The federally-funded National Institute of Education exercises great power over what kind of research on education will be undertaken, and increasingly state and federal courts determine what schools may and may not do in relation to a broad range of curricular and non-curricular matters.

4. America’s government monopoly school system cannot rightly be described as a “marketplace of ideas,” as is frequently done in public school censorship disputes.

When classical libertarian theorists have talked and written about censorship, they have for the most part had in mind a marketplace of ideas similar to the popular image of the economic market. One person is free to “sell” ideas by saying or printing what he wants. Others are free to “buy” these ideas (that is, hear or read them) or not, as they choose. In such a situation, censorship is a very serious matter, for it disrupts the marketplace. Ideas no longer flow freely, and the system breaks down. Most critics of fundamentalist “censors” have mistakenly assumed that the public schools are also a genuine marketplace of ideas.

The actual situation in public schools, however, is that all textbooks, library books, curricula, films, and other educational materials are pre-selected by teachers, state agencies, and schools of education. Thus in a real sense they are censored. (Publishers also have substantial influence in this process). One could use the term “precensored,” but that is probably too weak. As every woman who accepts a proposal of marriage knows (or, at least should know), to say “yes” to one man is to say “no,” that is, to exclude, many others. Thus, although to censor, in one sense, is to rule out or forbid specific works from consideration (and thus is a negative action), whereas to select means to identify and include specific works for consideration (and thus is a positive action), in another sense, all acts of selection involve a kind of implicit censorship: One cannot say “yes” in such a situation without also saying “no.” Inclusion necessarily involves exclusion. Of course, this is particularly true in a government monopoly school system with a captive student audience, a school system which in its entirety is a kind of closed forum and is not a genuine marketplace of ideas.

Actually, the real problem in relation to elementary and secondary schools—that is, schools which typically serve minors—is not that such pre-selection or censorship takes place, but rather that it is government rather than parents that controls the process. Even the great libertarian thinker John Stuart Mill argued in his On Liberty that it is proper for teachers to direct the schooling of minors, for full freedom is appropriate only for people “in the maturity of their faculties.” Freedom for minors has to be limited for their own good—to prevent them from harming themselves. Yet, these limits should not be arbitrary or unnecessarily severe, for freedom is a precondition for personal growth for youth as well as for adults.

The power of Mill’s analysis is apparent when we contrast it with the typical defense of freedom found in anti-censorship writings by educational professionals. In response to the question, “After studying censorship for several years, what do you fear most?”, Professor Edward B. Jenkinson of Indiana University responds:

I fear that students might lose the right to learn, the right to read, the right to explore ideas. . . . I certainly hope that my children will not have to grow up in a society in which they are denied the right to study any subject, to read any book they deem worth their attention, and to speak out on any topic they think worthy of discussion.(13)

Jenkinson’s statement is eloquent, but even Mill would have objected to it, for children simply are not mature enough to make all or most of their own decisions about what to read. I know of no public school, moreover, that even remotely intends to grant them such freedom.

In states such as Texas and California, teachers must select textbooks from approved lists, at least if their classes are to receive free textbooks from the state. But even where such state approval is not required, textbooks are typically chosen by the teacher and not by the pupil. Hence they are already censored by the time the pupil sees them. Again, in this instance the image of the marketplace of ideas is not relevant. Students do not stand in front of the newsstand and pick out their own texts and library books.

In school libraries, furthermore, with few exceptions, the librarians choose the books to purchase, not the students. In very few schools, if any, do the students have major responsibility for book selection, and most educators would argue that they should not have such responsibility, for the great majority of students are not yet mature enough to recognize what is educationally valuable.

Structural features

The importance of these four structural features of public schools should be underlined. To begin with, a government monopoly school system with a captive student audience—a system which in significant curricular matters is no longer locally controlled, and which, especially at the pre-college levels, is no genuine marketplace of ideas—will almost always be experienced as coercive and oppressive by various dissenting minorities. Such a system will inevitably be at odds with some of their fundamental beliefs and values. John Stuart Mill makes this point forcefully when he writes in the aforementioned essay:

That the whole or any large part of the education of the people should be in State hands, I go so far as anyone in deprecating. . . . A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body.(14) (Emphasis added).

It is odd, to say the least, that most liberal humanistic educators and groups such as People for the American Way and the American Civil Liberties Union (which sometimes draw heavily on the thinking of Mill) are singularly silent about this passage when they discuss censorship problems and questions of family choice in education. Indeed, because such fundamental ideas are ignored, much of what is written by PAW and the ACLU and many of their actions in relation to public school censorship disputes is unfair, misleading, or irrelevant. For instance, why is it that when blacks or women press for removing racial slurs or sexual stereotyping from textbooks the liberal press typically does not call them censors, whereas when Catholic or Evangelical Christian parents try to rid textbooks of what they believe to be obscenities or object to statements critical of Christian values, this pejorative term is used? Is there “good” and “bad” censorship depending on one’s particular beliefs and world view?

Compared with changes that major textbook publishers demand of prospective authors in the attempt to rid books of sexist and racist language, the activities of conservative textbook critics have been only mildly successful. McGraw Hill’s Guidelines (their euphemism for “You’d better write it our way or else!”) for Equal Treatment of the Sexes’s (15) puts powerful pressure on authors—whatever their own scholarly judgments about the issues may be—to portray men and women in a stereotypical unisex manner, irrespective of what social reality in America actually is. The fact that perhaps 80% of all Americans oppose women being drafted for military combat, or that a great many thoughtful Americans—including prominent psychologists—believe that men and women as groups differ psychologically and intellectually as well as physically, and that these differences are caused by hereditary as well as environmental factors: all such facts apparently are to be hidden from unsuspecting school children.

The arrogance of such publishers’ guidelines is hard to describe. As much as anything, they leave an aftertaste not unlike that of various fascist and Marxist attempts to purify language along ideological lines. They reflect a degree of confidence about what is and what is not good for society in the matter of defining maleness and femaleness that is depressingly similar to the certainty of post-World War II planners whose highway and urban renewal projects weakened the social fabric and destroyed the aesthetic integrity of so many American cities. And they become almost amusing when ideology runs roughshod over meaning, as in McGraw Hill’s recommendation that the presumably sexist statement “The average American drinks his coffee black” be replaced by “The average American drinks black coffee.”(16)

But why do the ACLU and People for the American Way have so little to say about censorship of this sort? Why do they focus on censorship by conservatives and virtually ignore these even more successful efforts by liberals to censor textbooks? In contrast to conservative protest, much of which has been that of outsiders objecting to establishment policies, liberals in this case have been able to persuade publishers to use their established economic power to pressure authors either to comply or else not to get their manuscripts published.

As Cornell Professor Kenneth Strike argues, “it is hypocritical and question begging to hold that people who attempt to influence the curriculum in ways consistent with their views of what is educationally worthwhile are censors because they are in a position where they can influence decisions only by protesting them. Powerlessness cannot define censorship.”(17)

Professor Allan Glatthorn of the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education writes that:

We are locked in a struggle over the fundamental principles of freedom and liberty. It is not simply the struggle to defend our professional freedom to choose books. It is the larger struggle to ensure that the public school classroom remains a forum for free inquiry. If angry parents can turn the public school into a closed system for inculcating their narrow vision, then surely we are all in trouble.

Glatthorn hopes that “new leaders will have the vision to realize that academic freedom is truly a non-negotiable demand.”(18)

Such comments, however, are not helpful. Public schools at the elementary and secondary levels have never been “a forum for free inquiry,” and it can only confuse the censorship debate so to describe them. And regarding academic freedom, Glatthorn himself recognizes earlier in the same article that “the classroom is not a newsstand, the English textbook is not a girlie magazine, the teenager is not the adult.”(19) Of course, Glatthorn is correct in saying this. To take an admittedly extreme case, I do not know of a single public school where a seventh grade teacher would be permitted to bring thirty copies of Hustler magazine to class for the day’s social studies lesson. Nor do I know of any public schools where teachers have an absolute right personally to choose textbooks, curricula, and library books. For a teacher even to want such freedom, when dealing with other people’s children, is presumptuous. Insisting on such a view of academic freedom would presumably mean that the teacher was convinced that his values were clearly superior to those of the parents or of society as a whole and furthermore that he was justified in using the coercive power of the state to enable him to disseminate his superior values.

Library Bill of Rights

Or, to turn to another aspect of the censorship problem, by failing to distinguish between school libraries that serve children and public libraries that serve adults, the Library Bill of Rights, put out by the American Library Council, espouses a policy most Americans would likely find unacceptable. It states that “materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.” It also insists that “libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues” (emphasis added).(20) I support these statements wholeheartedly in relation to public libraries, insofar as these libraries serve adults. But to apply them directly to school libraries that serve a captive student clientele of children would, I think, be unacceptable to most Americans.

Take the case of sex education curricula which list books by sexologist Wardell Pomeroy in their lists of recommended books for further study. Does the fact that this same author has an article in the November 1976 issue of Penthouse Forum magazine describing the positive value of incest have no bearing on whether or not his other books should be recommended for further reading?(21) Are Catholic parents to be labeled “censors” for objecting to a school library purchasing his books? Or, regarding the presentation of all points of view, does this include books for junior and senior high school students which recommend child pornography or sado-masochistic sexual practices? If we take the Library Bill of Rights at face value, then parents would have no legitimate reason to object to such choices. By not paying attention to the structural dimensions of the public school, the American Library Association appears to espouse a position which most Americans, in my judgment, will not and should not tolerate.

Failure to recognize that public schools are no genuine marketplace of ideas but are instead a state monopoly with a captive student clientele is one of the chief reasons dialogue over the public school censorship issue has become so difficult and at times nearly impossible. Steven Pico, one of the plaintiffs in the Pico v. Island Trees censorship case, writes in the Foreword to Protecting the Freedom to Learn that “responding to the hypocrisy of censorship in a free society is not an easy or comfortable task.”(22) His basic argument, he says, is

that a pluralistic democracy is founded in the trust that people choose best for themselves when given a variety of alternatives. No citizen or group has the right to use its private absolutist standards of right and wrong to prescribe what ideas should be available to a free people.(23)

But Pico shows absolutely no awareness of the structural features of the public school censorship problem, particularly the fact that government elementary and secondary schools are not genuine marketplaces of ideas but are rather largely-closed forums serving students, at least some of whom are present because no other choice is economically feasible for their parents. If taken at face value, his words lend support to those who argue for the disestablishment of the entire public school system rather than to those who engage in the dubious enterprise of tagging opponents with the labels “censors” and “book burners.”

QUESTIONABLE ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT EDUCATION AND RELIGION

An adequate analysis of censorship disputes in government schools demands a grasp of these structural features of the school system. But it is also necessary to understand that defense of the present system of government schools typically depends on a number of doubtful assumptions about what constitutes good education and about the relation of values and religion to education.

1. The first assumption: It is legitimate to require a child to be exposed to a multiplicity of values rather than to only a few.

This presumably democratic procedure, among other things, is supposed to make the child more tolerant of other people’s points of view. Advocates of this position emphasize the importance of opening the minds of young children to new ideas and to new values. But why is such a procedure considered good? Actually, we just as often want students to make up their minds, to hold onto certain truths firmly. I do not want my students to keep an open mind about whether Paris is the capital of France rather than, say, of Italy. They have nothing to gain by doing so. Nor do I want them to be open-minded about whether justice and equality are worthy goals for society. That one of these propositions is a question of fact and the other a matter of value is not crucially important, unless we make the prior philosophical judgment that facts can be known to be true or false but values are merely matters of opinion. In both cases I intend to teach my students the truth of these propositions and to urge them to adjust their lives accordingly. Of course, it is good to keep an open mind on questions that are still open questions. But life will be far simpler and more productive for those who make up their minds about certain issues. To deliberately choose to live in bewilderment and perplexity when reasonable answers are available is no great virtue, and, if persisted in, such a stance makes a meaningful and productive life impossible.

Obviously, what constitute open and closed questions is dependent on our basic world view. But even so, there is no sure way to sort out the one from the other, and we will do well not to overemphasize the certainty of our knowledge claims. And, clearly, we should not discourage the child from asking questions or expressing doubts. If, after telling a student that the earth is round, I get the response, “But it looks flat to me!”, I will give reasons for my statement. Likewise, if a child questions the importance of justice, tolerance, and equality, I will try to help the child understand why these values are important to a democratic society. But I do not want the child to go away thinking that what she believes about the shape of the earth or the appropriateness of justice, tolerance, and equality is just a matter of personal preference.

The position that the child should be exposed to a multiplicity of values furthermore presupposes that, for the sake of what is viewed as a good cause, the state has the right to violate the parents’ wishes for the child’s moral and religious development. This position also prejudges the very difficult psychological question of how much exposure to diversity of values is good for the moral development of the child.

In the important 1969 case, Tinker v. Des Moines School District, the Supreme Court, defending the students’ freedom of speech, declared that “in our system, state-operated schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism.”(24) Students, the court emphasized, “may not be regarded as closed-circuit recipients of only that which the state chooses to communicate.”(25) But, insofar as the justices did not address the question of the monopoly nature of the school system, their analysis is misleading. For dissenting minorities, the term “only” (“only that which the state chooses to communicate”) may not be of critical concern. Such minorities rather worry that many educators tend to treat students as “closed-circuit recipients” of everything (sex education, Values Clarification, humanistic values) “the state wishes to communicate.” If so, is not this also a form of totalitarianism? As Kenneth Strike asks, “Why should the state have the right to compel parents to submit their children to a curriculum which may lead the child to defect from the parents’ values?”(26)

The desire to expose the child to a multiplicity of values is frequently based on a philosophy of ethical subjectivism and the belief in a radical split between facts and values. Since we cannot know which values are true and which are false or which are better or worse, why not expose the child to many values and let her make up her own mind? The censor then is seen as the one who hinders this process. Since the truth about values cannot be known in any case, no one should be so arrogant as to think he knows that a particular value, or obscene expression, or disputed English text will be harmful to a child. If all value judgments are personal and subjective, then parents who object to the will of the majority as interpreted by the educational bureaucracy are simply being capricious and arbitrary. They are pitting their own subjective preferences against those of the democratically established authority. They deserve to be called “censors” in the pejorative sense of the term.

People who take this position hold that only facts can be shown to be true or false and that values are matters of personal feeling and opinion. All values, they believe, are subjective and relative. Sometimes the term “situation ethics” is used to describe such a philosophy, but the term “subjectivism” is more appropriate. Philosopher Bertrand Russell was a subjectivist in ethics. The Logical Positivists went even further, taking a totally non-cognitivist position in ethics. They believed that if something could not be verified empirically, that is, by sense experience, it should be considered neither true nor false. It is non-sense—that is, cognitively meaningless.

Ethical subjectivism is widely adhered to today in academic circles, even though most professional philosophers do not accept the position. They realize that radical subjectivism paralyzes ethical discussion. Ironically, however, a great many students and faculty still hold to a subjectivist position with unquestioned allegiance. When students try to end a discussion with the comment, “But that’s just your value judgment,” they apparently intend to say: “Since you are just expressing your feelings, that is, your own personal opinion, your point has no general relevance for others.” When a student says, “Don’t press your values on me,” he, in effect, is saying: “Hold off! I have to make up my own mind and decide for myself what is right and wrong or good and bad.”

Odd comments

To understand how odd such comments are, try to imagine how strange it would sound if I said: “Oh, that’s just a fact judgment,” or if I said, “Don’t press your facts on me. I have to make up my own mind whether water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen or not.”

In a world where we cannot know which values are better and which are worse, it may make sense to expose students to many different values, so that they will likely find some which appeal to them and which they can accept. Clearly, however, we would not apply this same tactic in teaching chemistry or geography, for in these disciplines we believe there are right and wrong, or, at least, better and worse answers.

But perhaps ethics is not as totally different from natural science and social studies as is often assumed. Both science and ethics typically start with certain basic assumptions about the nature of the world, the functioning of the human mind, and so forth. Both ways of thinking assume the law of non-contradiction and depend for their success on the prior commitment of practitioners to truth telling. Neither can make any progress at all if it starts with initial skepticism and doubt.

What constitutes knowledge in ethics is both similar to and different from what constitutes knowledge in a natural science, but the differences are less striking than many assume to be the case. Christian and Jewish ethicists characteristically believe that their foundational beliefs are directly related to God’s self-revelation in history, but the extension and application of these beliefs that constitute the professional task of the theological ethicist depend on a disciplined use of reason that is not dissimilar to that typical of other academic disciplines.

Also, it is important to remember that we can believe in the existence of objective values or even moral absolutes without at the same time insisting that we have an absolutely certain knowledge of what these values or absolutes are or of how they should be applied in every situation.

At first glance, ethical subjectivism sounds like a tolerant philosophy, one appropriate for a democratic society. No one will try to tell others what is good or right for them. Each individual will have to decide on her own individual values. But the presumed appropriateness of ethical subjectivism for a democratic society is misleading. To be specific, if all values are subjective and matters of personal feeling, then this must also include the values of justice, of tolerance of people who hold dissenting views, of freedom and equality, even of democracy itself. Presumably, at another time or another place, people might decide they felt better about being unjust, tyrannical, intolerant, and so forth. But as Americans, we believe that these values rest on a surer foundation. We believe they are fundamentally true, and that we possess certain inalienable rights, quite apart from what individuals happen to think about these issues at any given moment in history.

Many teachers and professors of education do not seem to be aware that on the metaethical level—that is, the level of discourse which deals with the nature of ethics as such—they are simply indoctrinating their students in the position that all value judgments are subjective and relative. Thus, for instance, in How Porcupines Make Love: Notes on a Response-Centered Curriculum, Alan C. Purves writes: “an individual [student] will respect the responses of others as being as valid for them as his is for him. He will recognize his differences from other people.” Correspondingly, “the teacher must encourage the student to tolerate responses that differ from his.”(27) But surely this position is open to question. In a democracy, we should teach students to be tolerant of persons who hold differing views. But why should students or teachers be any more tolerant of a wrong answer to a question about morality—say the morality of murder, rape, racism, or treachery—than they should about a wrong answer to a science or geography question, unless, that is, they have already decided in favor of the metaethical position that all values are subjective and not matters of truth or falsity?

Not only does the subjectivist position fail to supply an adequate basis for a democratic and pluralistic society, but state coercion in basic value formation—as a means of furthering tolerance and democracy—ought to strike us, at least, as odd. Moreover, if we cannot actually know which values are worthy of assent, then this logically includes the value claim that it is good to expose the child to more rather than fewer competing values.

2. The second assumption—shared also by the courts: It is possible to achieve a religion-neutral curriculum in the public schools and thus not violate basic First Amendment rights of students and their families.

Get Bible readings, prayers and Christmas carols out of the schools. Refer to Christmas as the “winter holiday,” and don’t even mention Easter. And by the alchemy of secularization, you will have schools that are either religion-free or religion-neutral.

But this is wishful thinking. It simply does not hold up under close analysis. All education involves assumptions about the nature of the good life and the good society, and these in turn entail specific educational goals and practices. We might ask, for instance: What is the purpose of life? Is it, as many humanists believe, to fulfill oneself, to satisfy oneself, to seek the maximum personal happiness possible? That is one goal, to be sure, but it stands in direct contradiction to the goal of the Judeo-Christian heritage, which teaches that the purpose of life is to love God and serve one’s neighbor. Inasmuch as the humanist position deals with ultimate dimensions of human existence—the meaning and goals of life—it is just as clearly metaphysical or “religious” as Judaism and Christianity.

Educator and philosopher John Dewey clearly recognized this truth 50 years ago when he wrote in A Common Faith of his own humanistic philosophy: “Here are all the elements for a religious faith that shall not be confined to sect, class or race.” Dewey then concluded that “it remains to make it explicit and militant.”(28) It is easy to find his words prophetic. Today, when we look at the pervasive humanistic assumptions of much of sex education, school counseling, and teaching methods such as Values Clarification, we can easily conclude that many public schools have put Christianity at a state-sponsored disadvantage.

Significantly, when the courts began to rid the public schools of religion, most humanist writers stopped referring to their own philosophy as “religious.” Moreover, they argued that their position was based on reason—and thus was fundamentally different from Christian beliefs, which they held to be based on dogma and superstition.

But dropping the label “religious” appears suspiciously opportunistic, and when the humanist argues that his ethics are based on reason we should subject his claim to the kind of tough criticism that Nietzsche brought to the discipline of philosophical ethics. In section 335 of The Gay Science, in a few witty and compelling paragraphs, he gives the death blow to the Enlightenment quest to establish a rational basis for an objective morality. Nietzsche’s analysis should make us hesitant to accept the conclusions of humanist Sidney Hook. Hook argues that humanist ethics deserve to be taught in the public schools, because they are based on reason, whereas Christian ethics, grounded as they are in dogma and superstition, should be excluded from the public domain. But he quite fails to realize that terms like “science,” “reason,” and “rational,” rather than being purely objective or descriptive, are almost always used in an evaluative or normative sense.

A specifically Christian rebuttal of the position that public schools can achieve religious neutrality would hold that the attempt to divide life into the realm of the secular and the sacred (except in a pragmatic and political sense as a dimension of a working pluralistic culture) is theologically suspect. Because Christians should value the freedom of all people, including both those who hold one or another set of religious convictions and those who understand themselves and the world in secular terms, Christians can wholeheartedly support a political system which distinguishes between the sacred and the secular, even though the distinction is theologically problematic for them. Such valuations and such support need not conflict with Christian affirmation of and commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord of all life, including the domain of education and the realm of the secular, for Biblical teaching stresses that commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord must always be an act of freedom and in no way coerced.

Certain curricular developments within government schools clearly show the “religious” nature of secular and humanistic education. In his book Psychology As Religion, Paul Vitz argues that such popular psychologists as Abraham Maslow, Erich Fromm, Rollo May, and Carl Rogers have placed the individual self, rather than God, at the center of things. Individual self-fulfillment becomes the goal of life.(29)

Rogers’s influence can easily be detected in Values Clarification. Advertised as a noncoercive and neutral way to teach values in the public schools, Values Clarification in fact indoctrinates students in a very specific secular and humanistic understanding of the nature of humanity, ethics, and the goal of life. As in the selfist psychologies described by Vitz, Values Clarification simply assumes that the purpose of life is self-fulfillment and maximizing one’s own happiness. Further, it assumes that all values are subjective and relative and that we cannot know the truth or falsity of specific value statements. The method presupposes a radically non-Christian view of human freedom: Quite ignoring any concept of sin or bondage of the will, Values Clarification teaches that individuals are genuinely free to choose the good and to structure their own lives as they please. But such an assumption is by no means obviously true.(30)

That government schools are not religiously neutral can also be seen in most public school sex education curricula, which are dominated by secular and humanistic values. Sex is portrayed as largely, if not entirely, for one’s own personal pleasure. Such curricula, moreover, often take strong pro-homosexual and pro-abortion stands, and often reflect a barely-tolerant attitude toward the traditional values of premarital and marital fidelity. Authors avoid such terms as “normal” and “abnormal,” preferring to speak of “alternative sexual responses” and “alternative life-styles.” Bibliographies and recommended readings in such curricula largely ignore texts by Catholic or Evangelical Christian writers, listing mainly secular, atheistic, and humanistic authors.

It might be objected that it is always possible to remove offending elements such as Values Clarification and humanistic sex education from government school curricula. This could be done. But this would still not produce schools that were religiously neutral, for the heart of the problem lies not in these recent curricular supplements but rather in the fundamental assumptions, values, and goals of the entire curriculum. When math and science are emphasized in a school and theology and church history ignored, this pattern relates to assumptions about the purpose of schooling and the nature of the good life. Math and science prepare one to be economically competent, to be successful in competing (the Latin root is the same) for the material goods and social status of this world. Bible, theology, music, poetry, and art are not considered helpful in preparing one for such competition, and they are not much emphasized in government schools. Computer courses will inevitably win out over classes on prayer or the devotional life in our present public schools. Physical education will take priority over spiritual formation. The concerns of the secular world will leave little room for religious concerns or things pertaining to the world to come.

Religiously neutral?

It is simply naive to consider such basic decisions religiously neutral. Law schools and medical colleges were not neutral towards blacks and women when they largely ignored them in the admissions process. They actively favored white males (it also helped if you were not a Jew or a Catholic) over any potential competitors. Similarly, when government schools favor one set of subject matter over another and deliberately de-emphasize and even exclude certain subjects from the curriculum, they are by no means neutral.

The original intent of the establishment clause of the First Amendment was to prohibit the federal government from favoring one denomination over others by establishing it as a national church. It was not to put all religions at a disadvantage in their competition with humanism, secularism, and atheism, which is precisely what has happened in public schools over the past several decades.

Indeed, the historical data from the earliest years of the republic point to the government’s favoring of religion as such. Education in religion was a high priority in early American history. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, for instance, in dedicating federal property in the territory for schools, described the rationale of these schools in these terms: “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of learning shall forever be encouraged.” In 1789, the same Congress that wrote the Constitution reaffirmed the ordinance. In the years immediately following the Revolution, 12 out of 13 states taxed their citizens to underwrite the preaching of the Gospel and the building of churches. Today, largely on the basis of court decisions that have little to do with the historical meaning of the First Amendment, the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme, for what we see in public education today is, in effect, a strong sponsorship (some would say establishment) by the state of secular and humanistic values to the decided disadvantage of Christianity and the entire Judeo-Christian tradition. To consider this present condition as religiously neutral is simply to toy with words.

3. The third assumption: Religion is basically a personal and private affair.

The common liberal assumption is that Americans are free to believe what they want about God, humanity, and society, but it is best that the expression of religious beliefs be confined to the privacy of one’s home or the sacred domain of the church building proper. In other words, don’t let your religion interfere with your duties to the state, and whatever you do, don’t violate other people’s sensitivities by praying in a public school. Personal evangelism is socially crude and embarrassing. Religion belongs inside the church and has no legitimate place at a business luncheon or a faculty meeting. Even bowing one’s head for silent prayer at a restaurant or in a university dining hall is no small cause for embarrassment.

The authors of Society, State, and Schools, one of the most important books written to date on the subject of Christians and the public schools, point out that the historical roots of this privatizing of religion go back at least as far as Thomas Jefferson.

The distinction between public and private religion was at the heart of Jefferson’s thought. In his Enlightenment rationalism, public religion referred to what he assumed to be a universal morality, while private religion described the sectarian beliefs of such groups as Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists. The sectarians, Jefferson concluded, were unenlightened individuals who did not comprehend the universal truths of religion.(31)

Jefferson believed that sectarian religion could disrupt society, if it were not kept private. At the same time, he was convinced that society had to be supported by a common “non-sectarian” morality and religion. But this “distinction between a public non-sectarian religion and a private sectarian religion was not as self-evident as it was self-serving,” the authors of Society, State, and Schools conclude, because it allowed Jefferson’s religion to “lay claim to the public life of the country.”(32) All other religious expressions, for him, belonged only in the private realm of individual conscience, family, or church.

The privatizing of religion is a curious phenomenon. It calls to mind certain Soviet attitudes toward religion. Soviet citizens have a good deal of religious freedom to believe and think what they want—in the privacy of their own heads, and, to a lesser extent, in specified, licensed churches. But the priest is forbidden to draw out the political and social implications of Christian theology, and all public demonstrations of religious belief are severely circumscribed. The penalties for overstepping these bounds are severe.

The attitude of many liberals today toward religion, curiously, is rather like the common interpretation of how the Victorian age thought about sex. In general, best not to talk about religion, but if you do, it is far better to talk about Buddhism or Native American religion than about faith in Jesus Christ. In much the same manner, Victorians were extremely private about their own sex lives but felt fewer inhibitions about discussing the sex life of South Sea Islanders or New Guinea natives, and at a somewhat later date The National Geographic could show bare-breasted women and largely naked bodies—so long as they were not Americans or Europeans.

If the discussion appears to have strayed from the censorship issue, it is important to recall the basic argument: The question of censorship probably cannot be resolved within the present system of public schools, for this system is a government monopoly with a largely-captive student clientele, and it is no genuine marketplace of ideas. The problem becomes even more intractable when it is simply assumed that it is legitimate to require a child to be exposed to many values rather than to a few, that all value judgments are subjective, that a religiously neutral curriculum is possible, and that religion is basically a personal and private affair.

My own judgment is that the only way adequately to resolve the problem of censorship in government schools will be to change the structure—particularly the financial structure—of the entire system. A few minor adjustments here and there simply will not suffice. Indeed, Stephen Arons of the University of Massachusetts argues that “the present political and financial structure of American schooling is unconstitutional.” He contends that “most judges and legislators have not perceived the centrality of school socialization to the lives of families and the raising of children; neither have they acknowledged the relationship between the formation of world views in children and the expression of opinion protected by the First Amendment.”(33) Arons concludes that “if the First Amendment protected only the communication and not the formation of ideas, totalitarianism and freedom of expression could be characteristics of the same society.”(34)

Dean Herbert W. Titus of Christian Broadcasting Network University also considers America’s public schools unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds. He argues that government schools are not consistent with a long and impressive history of U.S. Supreme Court rulings on freedom of the press and speech. “State legislatures and boards of education,” he writes, “have consistently adopted laws and regulations that require certain points of view to be taught to the exclusion of others.”(35) And such teaching takes place in a government monopoly system of schools. Many parents have no realistic economic choice but to submit their children to such government-ordered instruction.

Titus asks us to review this situation in light of such court pronouncements as the following from Police Department of Chicago v. Mosley, a case which dealt with picketing or demonstrating on a public way near a public school building: “. . . [Government] may not select which issues are worth discussing or debating in public facilities. There is an ‘quality of status in the field of ideas,’ and government must afford all points of view an equal opportunity to be heard.”(36)

We also read in Mosley “that, above all else, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content. . . The essence of this forbidden censorship is content control.”(37)

Government as censor

If we were to examine government schools in light of such First Amendment court pronouncements, they would, to put it mildly, fare very badly. Government is totally in charge of curriculum and content in such schools, teachers are agents of government, and many students attend these schools only because of economic necessity. Viewed in light of the assumption in Tinker v. Des Moines that a public school classroom is a public forum available for free speech activities, and in light of the Court’s statement that “it can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,”(38) the following words from Mosley are particularly significant: “Necessarily, then, under the Equal Protection Clause, not to mention the First Amendment itself, government may not grant the use of a forum to people whose views it finds acceptable, but deny use to those wishing to express less favored or more controversial views.”(39)

Indeed, the irony of Tinker is that while it takes what in some ways is a very liberal view regarding students’ First Amendment freedom of speech rights, on the other hand it quite overlooks the far deeper government censorship involved in including and excluding ideas and values from the curriculum, deciding what subject matter will and will not be taught, and determining educational goals and processes. One could also argue that the certification of teachers, far from being simply a matter of ascertaining professional competence, is value-laden to the core and necessarily involves a degree of censorship. People with “wrong” ideas may find it difficult to be certified, especially in fields such as History and English. The Court in Mosley, although it clearly did not have schools qua schools in mind, well understood the censorship potential of the State’s power to license: “Similarly, because of their potential use as instruments for selectively suppressing some points of view, this Court has condemned licensing schemes that lodge broad discretion in a public official to permit speech-related activity.”(40) The full force of this opinion becomes evident when we reflect on the fact that virtually no teacher is permitted to teach in a government school without prior government certification. And not a few government bureaucrats insist that teachers in non-government schools should also be government-certified as well.

It might be objected that schooling for minors is not possible at all without teachers determining curriculum, setting goals, and generally supervising what will and will not be taught. This objection is sound. But rather than concluding from this that government schools should be excluded from First Amendment freedom of speech court rulings, it would be more consistent to hold that government should stop operating schools. It is easy for us as Americans to see the evil of a government-run newspaper such as Pravda, but, under less benign government than we have at present, the danger of government-operated schools could be just as great. Indeed, the very fact that most public school students are impressionable minors, makes government control of these schools even more serious in some respects than would be the introduction of official government newspapers.

A second objection to my application of First Amendment freedom of speech court rulings to government schools might be that there is a compelling state interest in seeing that children are educated. I freely grant this point. But, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly stated in relation to First Amendment rights of citizens, compelling government interest in such cases should be met by the least burdensome means. Otherwise, the regulation or statute in question may be struck down because “less drastic means” are available.(41) In Shelton v. Tucker the Court held that “even though the governmental purpose be legitimate and substantial, that purpose cannot be pursued by means that broadly stifle fundamental personal liberties when the end can be more narrowly achieved.”(42)

I see no problem in government requiring minimum levels of competence in reading, writing, and mathematics. Also, a strong case can be made for requiring basic knowledge of American history and of how American political institutions function. But as our non-government schools clearly have established, this state interest can be met totally apart from government’s actually operating schools. Government’s role, beyond defining such compelling state interest, should be limited to funding education.

As Titus points out, “the Supreme Court has held in a long line of cases that government cannot intrude upon the homeowner’s function as editor of what he will hear at the door of his home.”(43) How ironic that these same individuals, if they are parents who cannot afford non-government schools of their own choice for their children, must by law submit their children to the curricula of government schools. They are permitted to protect themselves from the unwanted intrusion of ideas and values into their lives, but they may not protect their children! The particular irony of Tinker is that it boldly affirms students’ rights to freedom of expression in public schools (some would say to the detriment of school discipline) but almost totally fails to reach the far more fundamental issue of the way in which the entire system of government-operated schools threatens the First Amendment rights of families and their children to freedom of speech.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND A FREE SOCIETY

If my previous analysis is correct, then radical change is needed in America’s system of schools if freedom of conscience and freedom in teaching and learning is to be fostered. It simply is not possible to preserve the First Amendment rights of various minorities in our current government monopoly system.

Parker and Weiss, in the “Introduction” to Protecting the Freedom to Learn, speak of making it possible for children “to be able to go to public schools where they can learn how to think, not what to think.”(44) But such a distinction, when made in relation to censorship disputes, is naive, for, as we have seen, all education entails assumptions about human beings and the world in which they live. And these inevitably impact on both the how and the what of education.

The 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that every person has a right to free education at the “elementary and fundamental stages.” But, even more significant for my argument here, it also maintains that “parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children” (emphasis added).(45) Obviously, America’s government monopoly school system is not compatible with such an emphasis on parental choice.

No government schools

In contrast to Parker and Weiss’s statement that “all parents have a responsibility to be aware of their children’s education experiences and to work with the [public] school system,”(46) my own judgment is that genuine freedom in teaching and learning will be possible only when government gets out of the business of operating schools altogether. I see no way the full integrity of the First Amendment can be preserved so long as government can control the certification of teachers and the curriculum of schools. The situation becomes intolerable when government also holds an effective monopoly in the funding of education such that some students have no realistic economic choice but to attend government schools.

For obvious reasons, however, I am not sanguine about the possibility of such a drastic change taking place any time in the near future. Thus, from a pragmatic standpoint, reformers should not concentrate on abolishing government schools but rather on disestablishing them by gradually withdrawing direct support from them and implementing a universal tuition voucher or entitlement system, roughly analogous to the GI bill instituted during World War II. Such a move would do away with the need for “censorship” and would allow a true pluralism. Parents who were dissatisfied with the curricula of public schools could afford to enroll their children elsewhere. They would no longer need to play the role of the critic and the protestor, or, from the perspective of many within the public school establishment, the censor.

Another possibility would be to provide funds directly to private schools, whether these were religious or secular. This pattern is used in Canada, Israel, and a variety of European nations, but in the United States it is unlikely that it would be seen by the courts as compatible with the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

In a voucher system, government (local and/or state, with possible federal assistance) would provide tuition vouchers which parents could redeem for their children’s education at schools of the parents’ choice. Both government and non-government schools could accept vouchers. Ideally, the dollar value of vouchers would be inversely related to family income levels—thus permitting poor families to bid for high quality education—and adjustments would be made for local cost-of-living differences and for the differing costs of vocational and academic curricula. Appropriate prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of race and national origin could and should also be built into the system.

Vouchers would probably create healthy competition for both government and non-government schools and thus lead to greater efficiency, but their prime justification would be related to freedom of conscience. Parents would no longer be forced to send their children to schools whose values and practices offended, even violated, their deepest religious beliefs or their deepest convictions regarding social and political values. Some parents, for instance, believe that the present school system is far too competitive; or that it emphasizes science and math too much and music, art, and literature too little; or that it does not sufficiently stress environmental values. Vouchers would for the first time permit these parents to exercise genuine choice in their children’s education. On the college and university level, all students would be able to afford real alternatives. They would be able to choose for themselves the kind of learning they wanted. They would not be forced, as at present, to attend government schools with curricula they did not appreciate or approve of.

Clearly vouchers could create problems of their own. Racist parents might attempt to manipulate the system to resegregate schools. Some have speculated that a voucher system could result in the least capable students being abandoned (the term “warehoused” has been used) to the public schools. In these areas (and with other problems that might arise) voucher supporters would have to make absolutely clear their commitment to equality, justice, and nonracist policies. Also, many private schools prefer to maintain a better racial balance than they now have but cannot afford sufficient scholarships to do it. And we must not forget that public schools have not been notably successful in achieving racial balance.

In contrast to speculation about such problems, however, the coercive nature of our public school monopoly is a present reality for dissenting minorities. If Arons is correct, the unconstitutional nature of our present public school system is not a projection for the future. It is a real and very disturbing problem for many parents today. If government can control the enculturation and basic value formation of children during 10 to 13 years of schooling, then how can the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech and religion be a fully meaningful concept? If People for Public Education is correct in its judgment that “only through a deep commitment to public education may we aspire to the full development of each child’s unique talents and may we provide equality of opportunity to all of our children,”(47) then, in my judgment, the future for religious and political minorities in America looks very bleak and genuine pluralism likely will not long survive.

Even if government schools are disestablished through the implementation of a universal voucher system, the government schools which survive disestablishment—precisely because they are public and not private—must become more genuinely pluralist in curriculum, structure, and goals. Rather than trying to rid the schools of all religion and thus in effect giving a state-sponsored advantage to the “religion” of secular humanism and the philosophy of atheistic materialism, government schools which survive disestablishment should permit differing values, world views, and religious beliefs to exist side by side. In such circumstances, widespread accommodation and compromise would be essential. No longer at a state-sponsored disadvantage, Christian and Jewish beliefs and values would be substantially represented in the curriculum. In line with the Equal Access legislation signed into law during the summer of 1984 by President Reagan, Christian, Jewish, or Islamic religion clubs, along with secular and humanistic groups, would be permitted in the schools as extracurricular activities. Some classes might begin with prayer, others without prayer, and thus both those who pray and those who do not would have to respect each other’s beliefs and basic life commitments. At some school functions and banquets a prayer would be said before the meals, at others not. The emphasis placed on different subjects and value positions in the curriculum might be roughly proportionate to the size of different local constituencies and their degree of interest in these matters. Tolerance of people holding unpopular views and a willingness to live with messy compromises would be essential. Overall such a scheme would far sooner do justice to the spirit of the First Amendment than do the largely secular and humanistic curricula of present-day public schools.

For roughly 100 years Protestant-Christian-Unitarian values were given a privileged position in the public schools. This was not a good time for Jews, Catholics, or atheists. These groups found the public schools religiously oppressive, and some—in order to preserve their own integrity and freedom of conscience—sent their children to their own private schools, sometimes at great personal sacrifice. From perhaps 1930 to 1960, government schools in America involved a fair amount of compromise: there were some prayers, Bible readings, and Christmas carols, but also increasing evidence of secularism, scientism, and humanism. The mixture constantly changed and was never ideal for any single group. Jews, for instance, often were at a disadvantage, particularly in parts of the South.

The radical change in this situation of compromise came not from the emergence of Christian fundamentalist protest or the Moral Majority but from the pressure of individuals such as Madelyn Murray O’Hair and groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union to get all religion out of the public schools. In their attempts to purify the schools, however, O’Hair and the ACLU failed to realize that what remained after Christian beliefs and practices were forced out would itself also be religious. Whereas Christianity dominated the public schools from their earliest years till perhaps 1930, from roughly 1960 to the present a secularizing humanism has come to play a very similar role. Dewey’s prophetic words were coming true. Here was a new “religious faith.” It was indeed becoming “explicit and militant.”

Insofar as the ACLU and the courts have failed to realize the inescapably religious nature of education, their activities have been largely misdirected and, in my judgment, have tended to undermine the very First Amendment freedoms they were ostensibly fighting to preserve. Indeed, most moderns tend to view education largely within the context of bureaucracy, efficiency, and value neutrality rather than as a deeply personal, spiritual, and religious matter, an experience that demands freedom of a radical sort. That public education aspires to value neutrality, a focus on the “facts,” and a rejection of a specifically Christian world view, however, does not mean that it can escape making its own value judgments and committing itself to an alternative world view. It is not even possible just to focus on the “facts,” for as most philosophers of science well know s all observation is theory-laden. What counts as a “fact” for specific persons or communities is inseparably dependent on their particular world views. Traditionally, Jewish and Christian theologians have made a similar point. The most important question may not be: Do you believe in God? but rather: Which God do you believe in? From a Christian perspective, if God is not served, we will create our own idols!

A PLEA FOR FAIRNESS

Although in the long run, resolution of public school censorship disputes will require new thinking about the nature of schools, education, values, and religion, in the immediate future parties to such disputes must learn to treat each other with fairness and respect. Both accuracy and fairness, for instance, demand that the responsibility for public school censorship disputes not simply be laid on protesting parents. The claim is frequently made that censorship attempts are on the rise. In one sense this claim is accurate. But this may be entirely misleading. “Perhaps what is on the rise,” writes Kenneth Strike of Cornell University,

is a power shift from parents and the local community to educational professionals who are able for the first time to successfully impose views of the curriculum which are at odds with local values. It is not that parents are suddenly eager to impose their values on the school. They have done this all along. Rather, conflict arises from the fact that teachers are more willing and able to resist parental wishes.(48)

In other words, it may be the teachers, not the parents who are claim-jumping.

Controversies become polarized

Typically, censorship controversies have quickly become polarized. The lack of formal education on the part of many protestors has made dialogue difficult at times. The “bills of particulars” Norma and Mel Gabler have submitted at state-sponsored textbook hearings in Texas not only have sometimes engaged in overkill by focusing on trivial details but also have reflected extremely conservative political and economic views many public school critics do not share.

Yet, contrary to the pronouncements of most educators and media writers, my experience is that the major responsibility for such polarization rests with school authorities (teachers, administrators, and boards) and not with protesters and groups of concerned parents. The media have also been less than fair in their treatment of censorship controversies. Often their reporting has quite obviously sided with school authorities.

Such was the case in the fall of 1974 in Kanawha County, West Virginia, when parents—mostly Protestant fundamentalists with little university education—objected to the textbooks chosen for the local school system. The media and almost all professional education organizations portrayed the protesters as anti-intellectual extremists who were in close touch with national right-wing pressure groups. They were portrayed as censors and bookburners who had little appreciation for the democratic and pluralistic traditions of America.

But as George Hillocks, Jr., of the University of Chicago, later demonstrated in an article in School Review, the situation in Kanawha County was not so simple. His examination of the disputed texts clearly showed that many of the fundamentalist parents’ criticisms were justified. Texts routinely portrayed Christians and Christianity in an unfavorable light. “Sometimes,” writes Hillocks, “the deprecations of Christianity . . . are explicit. More often they are implicit, and therefore more dangerous: Sunday school depicted as a tedious bore, a minister characterized as self-righteous, photographs of churches in obvious states of decay and collapse.”(49) Books for older students presented mainly pessimistic and gloomy assessments of the human situation, directly contradicting the more hopeful and positive views of parents and church. Hillock writes:

Intentional or not, the anthology certainly emphasizes a particular view of man and, in part, a modern existential view—that man has nothing beyond immediate existence. That view, in turn, is based upon the philosophical and scientific ideas that knowledge must be derived from evidence accessible to the senses and judged in terms of probabilities. Obviously, such concepts lead to rejection of the basic tenets of orthodox Christianity.(50)

Hillocks concludes his thoughtful analysis with the judgment that “there is little question that the reading selections and the study materials [in the Kanawha County school system] have been generated from assumptions about human existence that are vastly different from those held by fundamentalist Christians.” He finds this particularly disquieting in light of the “monolithic system of public education prevalent in this country.”(51)

Not only have school authorities often made it well-nigh impossible for protesting parents to gain a fair hearing, but they have also at times refused to provide parents with adequate information about school practices and have hindered or denied access to curricula and lesson plans. In some instances they have been rude and insulting to textbook critics.

Also, college and university professors of education have sometimes been less than helpful. Their use of terms like “reign of hysteria,” “intellectual terrorists,” and “strident and sophisticated campaign of intolerance” in reference to censorship disputes seems exaggerated, to say the least. Not infrequently, they have patronized protesting parents, as does Professor Kenneth Donelson of Arizona State University when he writes: “Obviously, a censor should be treated politely and fairly, and his objection considered fairly by a committee.”(52) The remark seems well-intentioned, but if Donnelson had followed his own advice he would not have tagged protesting parents with the pejorative label “censor” in the first place, for its negative flavor so prejudges the entire encounter that rational discussion and fairness are virtually precluded. Cornell Professor Dorothy Nelkin uses the far more neutral terms “book watchers” and “textbook critics.”(53)

Admittedly, protesting parents sometimes have exercised poor judgment and bad taste in their use of language. Certain fundamentalist Christians may themselves feel comfortable talking about the “the power of Satan” or using phrases like “the devil made me do it,” but for them to employ language of this sort in public debate in relation to their opponents is both naive and unjustifiable.

The question of fairness also comes into play in connection with what might be termed the “burden of proof” problem. When parents object to obscenities in English textbooks, teachers will often respond “But can you prove that these really will harm your children?” Obviously, such “proof” is not easy to come by, and, of course, the definition of “harm” is seldom clear. One would need to ask, among other things: What period of time are you considering—a few months or years, a lifetime, eternity? And other parents may believe that using obscene language or being exposed to it unnecessarily—particularly at a young age—is wrong in principle. That is, they may prefer to view the issue in terms of basic rights and wrongs, not in terms of a utilitarian calculus of harm and benefit.

But why not shift the burden of proof? Would it not be just as legitimate to turn the question around and ask the teacher: “Can you prove that these obscenities will not harm my child?” Or, taking a principled approach, the parent could ask, “Can you prove that it is right for 11th or 12th graders to read materials of this sort?” Clearly, when the questions are put in this way, it is evident that neither side—teachers or parents—can prove the correctness of their position. Both views rest on basic assessments of human nature and on the acceptance of fundamental beliefs and values.

Indeed, we could easily marshal reasonable arguments in favor of the position espoused by the protesting parents. “When censors condemn some literary works as morally corrupting, we often treat those claims with ridicule,” writes Robert C. Small, Jr., dean of Virginia Polytechnical Institute and State University. But it makes no sense, he continues, “to believe that literature can make people better but that it cannot make them worse. Either it has power or it does not. And if it does have power, then it is to be feared as well as admired.”(54)

A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT CENSORSHIP IS AND IS NOT

One of the major spin-offs of the public school censorship debate could well be a more satisfactory understanding of what actually constitutes censorship. Such a deepening of understanding is not an uncommon result of the kind of basic value, or even paradigm, conflict that we see in these current controversies.

The chief problem with the terms “censor” and “censorship” in our own contemporary society is that the pejorative emotional tone of the terms is clear, but exactly who or what is to be denoted by the terms is not at all clear. Most would agree that a government official who, through one means or another, denies citizens access to printed material, films, or television and radio broadcasting is a censor. Most Americans would also agree that some degree of censorship is necessary in wartime, and typically the courts have permitted communities to censor certain forms of pornography. Parents and schools regularly deny children access to particular ideas and experiences. Almost all parents also must be understood as censors if we take the dictionary definition of “any person who supervises the manners or morality of others.” Indeed, most Americans would fault parents who made no attempt to guide their children in these respects. Or if we take the dictionary meaning of the censor as an “adverse critic or a faultfinder,” then it is clear that no one religious or political group in America has a monopoly on the term.

The deepest irony of current public school censorship controversies is that most of those who freely apply the term to others may themselves be censors at a more profound and fundamental level. By giving their support to a monopoly system of government schools, these people help maintain an institution which is inherently coercive with respect to dissenting minorities, an institution which routinely censors (often by omission) subject matter and ideas which do not have government approval. Within such a system, as my analysis has made clear, it is precisely those who lack power to effect change through established mechanisms who often must protest, disagree, or “censor” in order to maintain their own integrity and not violate their own consciences.

To be sure, there are a few religious zealots and political ideologists of both the Far Right and the Far Left who would like to use the public schools simply to promote their own doctrines. But my perception is that the great majority of Catholics and Protestant Fundamentalists do not want to use the public schools in this way. As we have seen, Cal Thomas does not believe the public schools should be used to preach the gospel. Rather what many so-called “censors” are, in effect, saying to the government school system and to local school establishments is: “Get off our backs! Stop forcing our children into the ideological mold that you deem best for them. Stop requiring them to read those books and adhere to that curriculum which you have chosen and to which you have given the stamp of approval.”

It is also my perception that many, if not most, of these so-called “censors” would, if given the option, gladly trade our present government monopoly system of financing schools for a voucher system that would allow parents genuine choice regarding the kind of education their children received.

But it is precisely at this point that the National Education Association, People for the American Way, and the many other organizations committed to our present system of government monopoly schools say in effect: “No! Vouchers would destroy public education. In a democracy, the majority knows what is educationally best for children, for all children, for your children. We support the government’s effective monopoly in schooling, the right of the majority to require your children to study state-prescribed curricula taught only by government-certified teachers in government-operated schools. But we are not censors. It is you who dare to object to the wisdom of the majority who are the censors and book burners!”

Obviously, this is not literally what supporters of our present system of public education ever would say. But, it is how dissenting ideological and religious minorities hear and experience the majority’s position.

Supporters of the present public school system, rather, would put forward the argument that public schools are necessary to prevent social and political fragmentation, to strengthen community values, to guarantee equality, non-discrimination, and justice. As already noted, they would argue that exposing the child to a multiplicity of values and experiences rather than a few narrow, bigoted, and parochial values and beliefs will strengthen pluralism and respect for people who hold to differing beliefs and world views.

But it is critically important to understand that at the structural level these defenders of one system of government-financed schools are quite willing to use the coercive power of the state to maintain a system of schools that fosters their vision of good education and the good life. This is to be a “guardian of morality” par excellence!

By contrast, most of those whom People for the American Way labels “censors” and “book burners” do not want to employ the power of the state to force their vision of good education on others. They would be happy to witness the disestablishment of our present government monopoly school system. They would support a voucher plan where parents could make their own choices about schools for their own children.

TWO FINAL QUESTIONS

Two important questions remain unanswered.

1. Will responsibility and authority for the education of and for the inculcation of beliefs and values in children rest primarily with the parents or with the state?

Historically, Americans have opted for the parents. Public schools have been understood to function in loco parentis, in the place of or on behalf of the parents. But recent trends suggest that the state is expanding its power over children at an increasing rate.

Admittedly, almost all Americans believe that the freedom of parents to make decisions about their children’s education should not be viewed as absolute. Children need to be protected from potential parental negligence and abuse, and furthermore the state has a compelling interest in making sure that its citizens become economically competent to function in a modern technological society (so that they will not become wards of the state dependent on public welfare) and also sufficiently knowledgeable to become effective citizens in a democratic society. These state needs can be met by requiring schools to offer instruction and maintain minimum standards in basic subject areas such as reading, writing, math, and civics in order to be eligible to receive vouchers.

Already in the initial establishment of government-operated schools in the first half of the 19th century, however, the state expanded its power over children beyond what might reasonably be defined as compelling state interest. And with the increasing centralization of power in government schools—power to choose textbooks, determine curriculum, and set standards—the idea of local control of public schools and of the schools functioning in loco parentis has become a comforting but grossly inaccurate myth.

To be sure, parents make mistakes at times regarding the education of their children. Some of these mistakes will harm children. It would be good if such harm could be avoided. But to give excessive power to the state is to take a far greater risk, namely the risk of tyranny, state indoctrination, loss of freedom, and destruction of genuine pluralism.

We have already noted the emphasis in the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights upon parental involvement in choosing the kind of education their children should have. The Second Vatican Council uses similar language when addressing the question of educational freedom: Civil authorities should see to it that children can be educated “according to the moral and religious convictions of each family.” Also, when choosing schools for their children, parents should be “genuinely free to follow their consciences.” Thus civil authorities should make sure that no school monopoly develops. “For such a monopoly would militate against the native rights of the human person, the development and spread of culture itself, the peaceful association of citizens, and the pluralism which exists today in very many societies.”(55)

Considering the fundamental importance of true family choice in education, it may be that Christians and others concerned about the survival of genuine pluralism should seek a Constitutional Amendment that would formalize the kind of educational rights mentioned by these two important documents.

If the state’s monopoly in education were to be broken by disestablishing public schools and turning to a system of universal education tuition vouchers, parents would be free to choose for their children the education they considered most appropriate for preserving the religious beliefs and values of the family. My judgment is that parents, rather than educational professionals or bureaucrats functioning on behalf of the state, should be permitted to judge which values are best to impart to their own children. This does not mean that parents would do the actual teaching. They would in most cases need professional assistance. But they would keep control of the process. Nor does it mean that professional teachers would not exercise their own judgment and practice their special skills. Sensitive parents would recognize teachers as professionals and would understand the folly of interfering too much in the teaching process. Rather, by choosing schools for their children that fit well with the parents’ values and that appeared capable of meeting the particular needs of their children, parents would, in effect, be entrusting their children to the teachers, administrators, and others who made up the staff of these schools.

Contracts between parents and schools would be made in an atmosphere of freedom, for power would no longer reside mainly in the hands of the state and of the school as a representative of the state.

Just as in an earlier age Americans decided against the establishment of a single national church by the federal government (a principle later extended to the individual states), so today there is the possibility of choosing away from our system of government-established schools in favor of educational freedom. And the need for such a move becomes increasingly acute as local control of public schools increasingly gives way to centralized bureaucratic government control and to control by the courts.

2. How much freedom are the political majority and those in power willing to give to dissenting minorities, to people who hold different points of view from those of the majority?

Are we as a nation really committed to pluralism, to the preservation of differences, or do we believe that government—acting on behalf of the political majority and through the bureaucratic structures of the educational establishment—knows best how to educate and socialize children? And do we adequately appreciate the role of structural pluralism? Liberal educators often tend to see pluralism in terms of the individual student’s right to free expression and freedom to read and learn what he or she wants. But surely this is naive, for pluralism almost certainly will not survive if it is dependent on individuals making isolated value choices. If we have learned anything from sociology, it is that values are related to communities and that, therefore, enabling structures are necessary if a tradition is to survive and flourish.

One argument made against educational vouchers is that such a system would lead to excessive fragmentation of society. Everyone would do his or her own thing. People would likely commit themselves to all sorts of strange goals and values, and society would not be able to hold together. Significantly, this is roughly the same argument that was presented more than 200 years ago against those who wanted no federally established church in America. Society would fall apart and become a collection of contentious fragments. People would be taught and would commit themselves to all sorts of strange beliefs. Yet we know that this did not happen. On the contrary, the establishment-prohibition has led to great freedom and creativity in American culture. We have become a truly open society, at least in comparison to most nations of the world.

Of course, one reason why the non-establishment of a national church did not lead to social fragmentation is precisely that government schools gradually came to provide the social glue that in earlier forms of society was provided by a common religious frame. One of the chief motivations for establishing a system of government schools was to counter what was felt to be the pernicious and potentially divisive influence of the hordes of Roman Catholic immigrants entering the United States during the first part of the 19th century. Public schools would teach these foreigners correct values and would initiate them into the American way.

Curiously, political liberals today who support a system of government schools because of their worry about social fragmentation should we disestablish this system, at the same time tend to favor bilingual education for Hispanics and others. And many conservatives who are open to or in favor of disestablishment and educational vouchers oppose bilingual school programs. Perhaps this suggests that the critical issue which demands closer scrutiny is not that of fragmentation per se but rather the question of whether the state can be genuinely neutral about religion in government schools. Liberals by and large think it can and thus dismiss Catholic and Fundamentalist criticisms of public schools as misguided and as an outgrowth of right-wing political commitments. But, in actuality, both school supporters and school critics are, for the most part, concerned about potential social fragmentation.

The danger of excessive fragmentation of society would be lowered by the establishment of minimum standards in the basic subject areas noted above. Furthermore, with the pervasive and extensive influence of television, movies, and the mass media in general, individuals can isolate themselves from the ideas, beliefs, and values of the society as a whole only with considerable effort.

Are we Americans willing to let people think for themselves; to preserve their particular religious, social, and moral traditions; and to take charge of the education of their own children? Distressingly, many educators seem more intent on wanting to improve and reform society by controlling the schooling of other people’s children than they seem to be committed to basic freedom of speech and basic freedom in teaching and learning. The same people who criticize the fundamentalists for being censors and bookburners and who speak a great deal about academic freedom appear not to be willing to let people take charge of their own education and the education of their children. They want to maintain majority control of the schools even if this is experienced as coercive and oppressive by dissenting minorities. Their argument that racism would increase or that society would become too fragmented under a voucher system sounds suspiciously like a rationalization for their continued control of the public schools. On the other hand, voucher advocates must be sure that their own motives are honorable. Establishing a voucher system as a means of guaranteeing freedom of conscience and preserving genuine pluralism is defensible. Attempting to preserve economically and racially segregated schools is not.

Education can be viewed primarily as a means of imparting technical skills to children which will enable them to function effectively in a technological, control-oriented society. It can be seen as an opportunity to reform society by influencing children. But it can also be understood mainly in terms of the freedom of the human spirit, in connection with the right of each tradition to survive and flourish, and in light of America’s historic commitments to religious liberty and freedom of conscience. Rather than glibly labeling protesting parents “censors,” we need to understand that we face far more serious and fundamental issues. As a nation conceived in liberty under God, we must address in a new way what it means as a free people to educate our children.

Cal Thomas, Book Burning, Westchester, Illinois: Crossway Books, 1983, p. 13.
Barbara Parker and Stefanie Weiss, Protecting the Freedom to Learn: A Citizen’s Guide, New York: People for the American Way, 1983.
Id. at p. 18.
Id. at pp. 22, 30, 56, 58.
Thomas, supra n. 1, p. 26.
Parker and Weiss, supra 2, p. 9.
Thomas, supra n. 1, p. 50.
Id. at p. 73.
Id. at p. 76.
Parker and Weiss, supra 2, p. 11.
Thomas, supra 1, p. 79.
Stephen Arons, Compelling Belief: The Culture of American Schooling, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983, p. 211.
Edward B. Jenkinson, “Dirty Dictionaries, Obscene Nursery Rhymes, and Burned Books,” in Dealing with Censorship, James E. Davis, Urbana, Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English, 1979, p. 12.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Quoted from Selected Writings of John Stuart Mill, ed. Maurice Cowling, New York: New American Library, 1968, p. 220.
Guidelines for Equal Treatment of the Sexes in McGraw-Hill Book Company Publications, Alma Graham, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974.
Id. at p. 12.
Kenneth A. Strike, Review of Dealing with Censorship, James E. Davis, Urbana, Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English, 1979, in Harvard Educational Review Vol. 50, no. 3 (August 1980), p. 435. Exact wording is taken from an unpublished draft of this review, p. 6.
Alan Glatthorn, “Censorship and the Classroom Teacher,” in Dealing with Censorship, 52.
Id. at p. 81.
Quoted in Parker and Weiss, supra 2, p. 111.
Wardell B. Pomeroy, “A New Look at Incest,” Penthouse Forum, 6, No. 2 (November 1976), pp. 8-13.
Parker and Weiss, supra 2, p. 5.
Id. at pp. 5-6.
393 U.S. 503, 511 (1969).
Strike, supra 17, p. 436.
How Porcupines Make Love: Notes on a Response-Centered Curriculum, Alan C. Purves, New York: John Wiley, 1972, pp. 31, 37.
John Dewey, A Common Faith, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934, p. 87.
Paul C. Vitz, Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self-worship, Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 1977.
Richard A. Baer, Jr., “Teaching Values in the Schools: Clarification or Indoctrination?”, Principal, 61, No. 3 (January 1982), pp. 17-21, 36. See especially references to other evaluations of Values Clarification in end notes. See also Richard A. Baer, Jr., “Parents, Schools and Values Clarification,” The Wall Street Journal, Vol. CXCIX, No. 70 (April 12, 1982), p. 22.
Rockne McCarthy, Donald Oppewal, Walfred Peterson, and Gordon Spykman, Society, State, and Schools: A Case for Structural and Confessional Pluralism, Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 1981, pp. 82-83.
McCarthy, et al., supra 31, p. 83.
Arons, supra 12, p. 198.
Id. at p. 206.
Herbert W. Titus, “Education, Caesar’s or God’s: A Constitutional Question of Jurisdiction,” Journal of Christian Jurisprudence (Symposium: Church Family, State, and Education), 1982, p. 169.
408 U.S. 92, 96 (1972).
Id. at pp. 95-96.
Tinker v. Des Moines, 393 U.S. 503, 506 (1969).
Id. at p. 97.
Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U.S. 479, 488 (1960); United States v. Robel, 389 U.S. 258, 268 (1967).
364 U.S. 479, 488 (1960).
Titus, supra 35, p. 176.
Parker and Weiss, supra 2, p. 7.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Standard of Achievement, United Nations Office of Public Information (U.N. Publ. No. 62.1.9), 1948, Article 26, pp. 37-38.
Parker and Weiss, supra 2, p. 19.
Id. at p. 112.
George Hillocks, Jr., “Books and Bombs: Ideological Conflict and the Schools-a Case Study of the Kanawha County Book Protest, – School Review, 68, No. 4 (August 1978), p. 642.
Id. at pp. 649-50.
Id. at p. 650.
Kenneth L. Donelson, “Censorship in the 1970s: Some Ways to Handle It When It Comes (And It Will),” in Dealing with Censorship, 165.
Dorothy Nelkin, Science Textbook Controversies and the Politics of Equal Time, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1977, chapter 4 and elsewhere.
Robert C. Small, Jr., “Censorship and English: Some Things We Don’t Seem to Think About Very Often (But Should),” in Dealing with Censorship, 59.
The Documents of Vatican II, Walter M. Abbott, New York: Herder and Herder and Association Press, 1966, pp. 644, 645.

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Censorship and the First Amendment in Schools: A Resource Guide

Please note, newer and updated resources are available from the National Coalition Against Censorship , including:

Book Censorship Action Kit
Responding to Book Challenges: A Handbook for Educators
Defend LGBTQ Stories: A Resource

The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) is an alliance of more than 50 national non-profits, including literary, artistic, religious, educational, professional, labor and civil liberties groups. They have engaged in direct advocacy and education to support First Amendment principles. NCAC is unique in that they are national in scope, but often local in their approach, as they work with community members to resolve censorship controversies without the need for litigation.

NCAC presents the following collection of materials on the topic of censorship in schools for the use of students, educators and parents everywhere. This information is not intended as legal advice. If you are embroiled in a censorship controversy, we hope you will consult the resources below for guidance — if you need additional assistance, please contact us .

Introduction: Free Speech, Public Education, and Democracy

The First Amendment and Public Schools A. The First Amendment B. The Public Schools

Censorship A. Understanding Censorship B. Distinguishing Censorship from Selection C. Consequences of Censorship

How Big a Problem Is Censorship? A. The Numbers B. What Kind of Material Is Attacked? C. What Does "Age Appropriate" Mean? D. Who Gets Censored?

Roles and Responsibilities A. School Officials, Boards and State Mandates B. Principles Governing Selection and Retention of Materials in Schools C. Complaint Procedures

Censorship Policies National Education Association (NEA) The National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association (NCTE/IRA) Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) American Library Association (ALA) National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC)

Avoiding Censorship in Schools A. Policies and practices designed to respect free expression and encourage discourse and discussion are rarely, if ever, disturbed by courts B. The decision to remove material is more vulnerable, and often places motivation for the removal at issue since actions motivated by hostility to particular ideas or speakers is not permitted C. The deference frequently shown school administrators with regard to the curriculum is not always accorded when a dispute arises over material in the school library

Introduction: Free Speech, Public Education, and Democracy

This document describes in practical terms what the right to freedom of expression means for the public schools. We hope it provides students, teachers and administrators with a deeper understanding of their constitutionally guaranteed rights and responsibilities, as well as renewed respect for the power of free expression to enhance the educational experience.

Our founders recognized that public schools are a vital institution of American democracy. But education, they also knew, involved more than reading, writing, and arithmetic. Education in a democratic society requires developing citizens who can adapt to changing times, make decisions about social issues, and effectively judge the performance of public officials. In fulfilling their responsibilities, public schools must not only provide knowledge of many subject areas and essential skills, but must also educate students on core American values such as fairness, equality, justice, respect for others, and the right to dissent.

Rapid social, political, and technological changes have escalated controversy over what and how schools should teach. Issues like sexuality and profanity have raised questions for generations, but they are even more complicated now, when most school communities bring together different cultural traditions, religions, and languages. Thus, educators frequently face a daunting task in balancing the educational needs of a diverse entire student body while maintaining respect for individual rights.

The First Amendment establishes the framework for resolving some of these dilemmas by defining certain critical rights and responsibilities. it protects the freedom of speech, thought, and inquiry, and requires respect for the right of others to do the same. It requires us to adhere to Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’ wise counsel to resort to "more speech not enforced silence" in seeking to resolve our differences.

The First Amendment and Public Schools

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

-First Amendment of the United States Constitution ratified December 15, 1791.

A. The First Amendment

The potential for tyranny and abuse of government authority particularly worried the Framers. In a letter to James Madison, December 20, 1787, Thomas Jefferson argued that "a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse or rest on inference." Thus, before enumerating rights, the First Amendment begins by prohibiting government conduct that would obstruct certain rights–i.e., "Congress shall make no law respecting…." These strictures, like most of the Constitution, control only what the government may do, and have no effect on private individuals or businesses, which can do many things government officials cannot.

Therefore, public schools and public libraries, as public institutions, are bound by obligations imposed by the First Amendment and many other provisions of the Constitution. However, the First Amendment applies somewhat differently in schools than it does in many other public institutions.

B. The Public Schools

"The classroom is peculiarly the 'marketplace of ideas.' The Nation's future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to that robust exchange of ideas which discovers 'truth out of a multitude of tongues, [rather] than through any kind of authoritative selection."'

Schools must, of course, convey skills and information across a range of subject areas for students of different backgrounds and abilities. They must also help students learn to work independently and in groups, and accomplish all of this in a safe environment that promotes learning. Given the complexity of these responsibilities, school officials are generally accorded considerable deference in deciding how best to accomplish them.

Recent Supreme Court decisions have made it clear that the right to free speech and expression can sometimes be subordinated to achieve legitimate educational goals. (See discussions of Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier and Bethel School District v. Fraser.) A school is not comparable to a public park where anyone can stand on a soapbox, or a bulletin board on which anyone can post a notice. While students and teachers do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate" (Tinker v. Des Moines), speech is not quite as free inside educational institutions as outside.

This does not mean that students and teachers have no First Amendment rights at school. Quite the contrary . But within the educational setting, the right to free speech is implemented in ways that do not interfere with schools' educational mission. Students cannot claim, for instance, that they have the right to have incorrect answers to an algebra quiz accepted as correct, nor can teachers claim a right to teach anything they choose.

A. Understanding Censorship

Censorship is not easy to define. According to Webster’s Dictionary, to "censor" means "to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable." Its central characteristic is the suppression of an idea or image because it offends or disturbs someone, or because they disagree with it. In many countries, censorship is most often directed at political ideas or criticism of the government. In the United States, censorship more often involves social issues, and in schools it is commonly directed at "controversial" materials.

Advocates for censorship often target materials that discuss sexuality, religion, race and ethnicity–whether directly or indirectly. For example, some people object to the teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution in science classes because it conflicts with their own religious views. Others think schools are wrong to allow discussion about sexual orientation in sex education or family life classes, and others would eliminate The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the English curriculum because of racist language.

Most pressures for censorship come from parents who disapprove of language or ideas that differ from their personal values, but demands can emerge from anywhere across the religious, ideological, and political spectrum. The range of "controversial" topics appears limitless: religion, science, history, contemporary and classical literature, art, gender, sexuality, "one-worldism," health, multiculturalism, and so on. Many demands appear motivated by anxiety about changing social conditions and traditions– from feminism to the removal of prayer from schools, or the emergence of the gay rights movement.

Censorship demands require educators to balance First Amendment obligations against other concerns — maintaining the integrity of the educational program, meeting state education requirements, respecting the judgments of professional staff, and addressing deeply-held beliefs in students and the community. Educators are on the strongest ground if they are mindful of two fundamental principles derived from the Supreme Court’s First Amendment decisions:

1) educators enjoy wide latitude in exercising their professional judgment and fulfilling their educational mission if their decisions are based on sound educational and pedagogical principles and serve to enhance students' ability to learn;

2) The decisions most vulnerable to legal challenge are those motivated by hostility to an unpopular, controversial, or disfavored idea, or by the desire to conform to a particular ideological, political or religious viewpoint.

Pursuant to these principles, lower courts generally defer to the professional judgment of educators. This sometimes means that courts will uphold a decision to remove a book or discipline a teacher if it appears to serve legitimate educational objectives, including administrative efficiency. However, administrators and educators who reject demands for censorship are on equally strong or stronger grounds; most professional educational organizations strongly promote free expression and academic freedom. Access to a wide range of views, and the opportunity to discuss and dissent, are essential to education and serve schools’ legitimate goals to prepare students for adulthood and participation in the democratic process.

It is highly improbable that a school official who relied on these principles and refused to accede to pressure to censor something with educational value would ever be ordered by a court to do so.

There are practical and educational as well as legal reasons to adhere as closely as possible to the ideals of the First Amendment. School districts such as Panama City, Florida and Hawkins County, Tennessee have been stunned to find that acceding to demands for removal of a single book escalated to demands for revising entire classroom reading programs. The school district in Island Trees, New York encountered objections to 11 books in its library and curriculum, including Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Black Boy, by Richard Wright, and The Fixer by Bernard Malamud. Other jurisdictions have been pressed to revise the science curriculum, the content of history courses, sex education, drug and alcohol education, and self-esteem programs. Experience has shown far too many times that what appears to be capitulation to a minor adjustment can turn into the opening foray of a major curriculum content battle involving warring factions of parents and politicians, teachers, students and administrators.

B. Distinguishing Censorship from Selection

Teachers, principals, and school administrators make decisions all the time about which books and materials to retain, add or exclude from the curriculum. They are not committing an act of censorship every time they cross a book off of a reading list, but if they decide to remove a book because of hostility to the ideas it contains, they could be. As the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and International Reading Association (IRA) note, there is an important distinction between selection based on professional guidelines and censorship: "Whereas the goal of censorship is to remove, eliminate or bar particular materials and methods, the goal of professional guidelines is to provide criteria for selection of materials and methods."

For example, administrators and faculty might agree to take a discussion of evolution out of the second grade curriculum because the students lack sufficient background to understand it, and decide to introduce it in fourth grade instead. As long as they were not motivated by hostility to the idea of teaching about evolution, this would not ordinarily be deemed censorship; the choice to include the material in the fourth grade curriculum demonstrates this was a pedagogical judgment, not an act of censorship.

Not every situation is that simple. For example, objections to material dealing with sexuality or sexual orientation commonly surface in elementary and middle schools when individuals demand the material’s removal with the claim that it is not "age appropriate." On closer examination, it is clear that their concern is not that students will not understand the material; rather, the objecting adults do not want the students to have access to this type of information at this age. If professional educators can articulate a legitimate pedagogical rationale to maintain such material, it is unlikely that an effort to remove it would be successful.

Of course, hardly anyone admits to "censoring" something. Most people do not consider it censorship when they attempt to rid the school of material they consider profane or immoral, or when they insist that the materials selected show respect for religion, morality, or parental authority. While parents have considerable rights to direct their own child’s education, they have no right to impose their judgments or preferences on other students and their families. School officials who accede to such demands may be engaging in censorship. Even books or materials that many find "objectionable" may have educational value, and the decision about what to use in the classroom should be based on professional judgments and standards, not individual preferences. Efforts to suppress controversial views or ideas are educationally and constitutionally suspect.

"The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations." –– Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. at 535 (1925).

C. Consequences of Censorship

What's so bad about getting rid of materials containing profanity? Many people don't want their children using that kind of language, and believe that seeing profanity in books or hearing others swear encourages youngsters to do the same, especially if the act goes unpunished. Yet profanity appears in many worthwhile books, films, and other materials for the same reasons many people use it in their everyday language–for emphasis or to convey emotion. As Shakespeare’s Hamlet says to the players, the purpose of drama is "to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature."

Works with profanity often contain realistic portrayals of how an individual might respond in a situation, and some teachers intentionally select such materials to remove the allure from cursing. But even minor use of profanity has not shielded books from attack. Katherine Paterson's award-winning book Bridge to Terabithia contains only mild profanity, but it has been repeatedly challenged on that ground, as have long-acknowledged classics like Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. Profanity, however, is only one of many grounds on which books are challenged. Almost every classic piece of literature—including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, The Diary of Anne Frank and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet —has been challenged for some reason, in some place, at some time.

As these examples illustrate, censorship based on individual sensitivities and concerns restricts the knowledge available to students. Based on personal views, some parents wish to eliminate material depicting violence; others object to references to sexuality, or to racially-laden speech or images. Some parents oppose having their children exposed to fiction that doesn’t have a happy ending, teach a moral lesson, or provide noble role models. If these and other individual preferences were legitimate criteria for censoring materials, school curricula would narrow to only the least controversial—and probably least relevant—material. It would hardly address students' real concerns, satisfy their curiosity or prepare them for life.

Censorship also harms teachers . By limiting resources and flexibility, censorship hampers teachers' ability to explore all possible avenues to motivate and "reach" students. By curtailing ideas that can be discussed in class, censorship takes creativity and vitality out of the art of teaching; instruction is reduced to bland, formulaic, pre-approved exercises carried out in an environment that discourages the give-and-take that can spark students' enthusiasm. Teachers need latitude to respond to unanticipated questions and discussion, and the freedom to draw on their professional judgment, without fear of consequences if someone objects, disagrees or takes offense.

When we strip teachers of their professional judgment, we forfeit the educational vitality we prize. When we quell controversy for the sake of congeniality, we deprive democracy of its mentors.– – Gregory Hobbs, Jr (dissenting in Board of Education of Jefferson County School District R-1 v. Alfred Wilder )

Censorship chills creativity and in that way impacts everyone. In a volume titled Places I Never Meant To Be , author Judy Blume, whose books are a common target of censorship efforts, collected statements of censored writers about the harms of censorship.

According to one frequently censored author, Katherine Paterson: "When our chief goal is not to offend someone, we are not likely to write a book that will deeply affect anyone."

Julius Lester observed: "Censorship is an attitude of mistrust and suspicion that seeks to deprive the human experience of mystery and complexity. But without mystery and complexity, there is no wonder; there is no awe; there is no laughter."

Norma Fox Mazur added: "…where once I went to my writing without a backward glance, now I sometimes have to consciously clear my mind of those shadowy censorious presences. That's bad for me as a writer, bad for you as a reader. Censorship is crippling, negating, stifling. It should be unthinkable in a country like ours. Readers deserve to pick their own books. Writers need the freedom of their minds. That's all we writers have, anyway: our minds and imaginations. To allow the censors even the tiniest space in there with us can only lead to dullness, imitation and mediocrity."

Censorship represents a "tyranny over the mind," said Thomas Jefferson—and is harmful wherever it occurs. Censorship is particularly harmful in the schools because it prevents student with inquiring minds from exploring the world, seeking truth and reason, stretching their intellectual capacities, and becoming critical thinkers. When the classroom environment is chilled, honest exchange of views is replaced by guarded discourse and teachers lose the ability to guide their students effectively.

How Big a Problem Is Censorship?

A. The Numbers

Censorship occurs every day. Sometimes it's obvious even if no one uses the "C" word. Sometimes it's invisible—when a teacher decides not to use a particular story or book or when a librarian decides not to order a particular magazine because of fears about possible complaints. No one can quantify this kind of "chilling effect" and its consequences for education. After discovering his 2007 novel Boy Toy fell prey to such "self-censorship," acclaimed YA author Barry Lyga called it " sort of a soft, quiet, very insidious censorship, where nobody is raising a stink, nobody is complaining, nobody is burning books…. They’re just quietly making sure it doesn’t get out there ."

The American Library Association (ALA), which tracks and reports censorship incidents, records a problem of significant magnitude, and they estimate that for each incident reported, there are four or five that go unreported. ALA states that between 1990 and 1998, 5,246 challenges were reported to or recorded by its Office for Intellectual Freedom. During the 1995-1996 school year alone, there were 475 challenges to educational materials, according to People for the American Way (PFAW). Both PFAW and ALA report challenges from all regions of the country and most states.

B. What Kind of Material Is Attacked?

Almost 70% of censorship demands are directed at material in school classrooms or libraries. Most of the remainder are aimed at public libraries. Parents lodge 60% of the challenges. The ALA offers an instructive analysis of the motivation behind most censorship incidents:

"The term censor often evokes the mental picture of an irrational, belligerent individual. Such a picture, however, is misleading. In most cases, the one to bring a complaint to the library is a concerned parent or a citizen sincerely interested in the future well being of the community. Although complainants may not have a broad knowledge of literature or of the principles of freedom of expression, their motives in questioning a book or other library material are seldom unusual. Any number of reasons are given for recommending that certain material be removed from the library. Complainants may believe that the materials will corrupt children and adolescents, offend the sensitive or unwary reader, or undermine basic values and beliefs. Sometimes, because of these reasons, they may argue that the materials are of no interest or value to the community."

Of more than 5,000 challenges recorded by the ALA over the past eight years, 1,299 challenges alleged the materials' content was "sexually explicit;" 1,134 objections concerned "offensive language" in the material; 1,062 alleged the material was "unsuited to age group;" 744 complained about an "occult theme or promoting the occult or Satanism;" and 474 concerned objections about homosexual issues or "promoting homosexuality." Other reasons for objecting to materials included nudity (276), racism (219), sex education content (190), or anti family sentiments (186).

While demands for censorship can come from almost anyone and involve any topic or form of expression, most involve concerns about sexual content, religion, profanity or racial language. Many incidents involve only one complaint, but can nonetheless trigger a contentious review process. Often, parents who support free expression do not step forward to the same extent as those seeking to remove materials, leaving school officials and teachers relatively isolated. It is then their task to carefully assess the pedagogical value of the materials, to avoid simply giving in to angry demands that could undermine educational objectives and invite additional challenges in the future.

C. What Does "Age Appropriate" Mean?

One of the most common demands for censorship involves the claim that certain school materials are not "age appropriate." The term is often used to mean that students of a particular age shouldn't be exposed to the material, not that they are too young to understand it. The objection usually comes up when the material concerns sexuality, reflecting a fear that exposure to this subject undermines moral or religious values. Since many non-objecting parents support informing even young children about sexual matters, it is clear that the content of the material as much as the age of the child lies at the heart of the objection. Acceding to pressure to censor in this situation can be tantamount to endorsing one moral or religious view over another.

Conversely, educators generally use the term "age appropriate" for the point at which children have sufficient life experience and cognitive skills to comprehend certain material. Education proceeds in stages, with increasingly complex material presented as students gain the intellectual ability and knowledge to understand and process it. For this reason, young children usually do not learn physics or read Shakespeare. Similarly, educators may decide that detailed scientific information about human reproduction might not be age-appropriate for six-year-olds, but would be appropriate for 12-year-olds who have been introduced to basic biology.

According to high school teacher Vicky Greenbaum, writing in The English Journal (Feb.1997), the term comes from psychological concepts defining age-appropriate behaviors. She observes, however, that the rationale for psychological descriptions of the age at which certain behaviors generally occur has limited relevance to the selection of educational materials and literature in the classroom. If students understand the sexual allusions in Hamlet , she believes the discussion of it is "age-appropriate." In contrast,

"[a]dults who cling to this vision of youth [as innocent] have a corresponding vision of what’s appropriate, hoping perhaps that if youth are unexposed to certain elements in the world, they will remain pure, and the world will be a better place. Indeed, for such adults a pristine vision of youth often forms a wall between themselves and any adolescents they happen to know. Youth are people already possessing knowledge and vulnerabilities in ways akin to adults, and their greatest need may be for thoughtful consideration or guidance, while making sense of a vast, difficult, not always appropriate world."

Responding to questions about age appropriateness, the National Council of Teachers of English noted that "materials should be suited to maturity level of the students," and that it is important to "weigh the value of the material as a whole, particularly its relevance to educational objectives, against the likelihood of a negative impact on the students. ... That likelihood is lessened by the exposure the typical student has had to the controversial subject."

D. Who Gets Censored?

Between 1982 and 1996, the ALA reported the most frequently challenged authors were Judy Blume, Alvin Schwartz, Stephen King, John Steinbeck, Robert Cormier, J.D. Salinger, Roald Dahl, Maya Angelou, Mark Twain and Katherine Paterson. By 2014, they were Dav Pilkey, Sherman Alexie, Toni Morrison, John Green, Rudolfo Anaya, Stephen Chbosky, Suzanne Collins, Lisa McMann, Gary Paulsen, Jeff Smith and Tanya Lee Stone.

The books targeted by censors included both popular and classic titles, affecting almost every age group. PFAW's list of most challenged books from 1982-1996 included:

John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War
Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Alvin Schwartz, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Alvin Schwartz, More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Anonymous, Go Ask Alice
Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia
Roald Dahl, The Witches

For years later, many of these works were still prime targets of censorship demands.

According to the ALA , the most frequently challenged books in 2014 included:

Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis
Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Justin Richardson & Peter Parnell, And Tango Makes Three
Brian Vaughan & Fiona Staples, Saga
Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Jaycee Dugard, A Stolen Life
Robie Harris , It's Perfectly Normal

Roles and Responsibilities: Promoting First Amendment Values at School

A. School Officials, Boards and State Mandates

The school board's role is to define an educational philosophy that serves the needs of all its students and reflects community goals. Most districts see a role for parents and other community members in this process. Educational advisory boards can also assist educators in discerning the community's needs and perspectives. Open school board meetings can keep the public informed about the school district's educational philosophy and goals, encourage comments, questions, and participation, and increase community support. Although public debate provides opportunities for community input and can assist educators in meeting students' needs and concerns, actual curriculum development and selection are tasks uniquely suited to the skills and training of professional educators.

While curriculum development relies heavily on the professional expertise of trained educators, it is also controlled by state law and policy. Educators' choices are influenced by competency standards, graduation requirements, standardized testing, and other decisions made at the state level.

B. Principles Governing Selection and Retention of Materials in Schools

Sound curriculum development requires that educators with professional expertise decide which materials are educationally appropriate, consistent with the school district’s educational philosophy and goals and state law. School officials also have the constitutional duty to ensure that curriculum development and selection decisions are not made with the aim of advancing any particular ideological, political or religious viewpoint.

Many professional educational organizations and individual school systems have articulated the principles that should ideally govern selection and retention of materials; they uniformly emphasize reliance on the expertise of professional educators in developing materials that will best serve the needs of students. NEA Resolutions state that "quality teaching depends on the freedom to select materials and techniques. Teachers and librarians/media specialists must have the right to select instructional material/library materials without censorship or legislative interference."

Similarly, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) policy on textbook selection emphasizes that its "first commitment" is "preservation of the student's right to learn in an atmosphere of academic freedom," and that "[s]election of materials will be made by professional personnel through reading, listening, viewing, careful examination, [and] the use of reputable, unbiased, professionally prepared selection aids." The NCTE and the International Reading Association advise selecting curricular materials that 1) have a clear connection to established educational objectives; and 2) address the needs of the students for whom they are intended.

Significantly, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) cautions that “"judgment must not be completely subservient to the popular will. Educators' primary allegiance must be to the integrity of knowledge and the welfare of students … materials must never be removed or restricted for the purpose of suppressing ideas."

Policies governing school libraries and classroom resource materials reflect the priority placed on inclusion of a wider range of materials, because of libraries' traditional role to offer choices for all readers. The ALA Library Bill of Rights, first adopted in 1948, recognizes the library's essential role in providing resources to serve the "interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community." With minor modifications, these principles also apply in the school setting.

The considerations specifically relevant to school libraries are identified by NSBA guidelines:

To provide materials that will enrich and support the school's curricula…
To provide materials that will stimulate knowledge, growth, literary appreciation, aesthetic values, ethical standards and leisure-time reading;
To provide information to help students make intelligent judgments;
To provide information on opposing sides of controversial issues so that students may develop the practice of critical reading and thinking; and
To provide materials representative of the many religious, ethnic, and cultural groups that have contributed to the American heritage.

As is true with curricular materials, the ALA cautions that library materials "should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval."

C. Complaint Procedures

Many school districts adopt formal policies and procedures for responding to complaints about materials—and for good reason. They clarify how complaint processes work; help faculty, staff, and administration fulfill their legal obligations; let parents and students know what criteria are used for removing materials and how they are applied; provide opportunities to understand more about community perspectives and values; and protect teachers' academic freedom.

When materials are challenged, schools with well-articulated processes for handling complaints and reviews are more likely to resist censorship pressures than districts that lack such guidelines. Having policies in place and following them scrupulously ensures that complainants will receive due process, and that challenged materials will be judged on their educational merits rather than personal opinion. It is important for teachers and administrators to be familiar with these policies and understand their significant function. Armed with knowledge of these policies, schools officials are less likely to submit to pressure or react with unilateral decisions to remove books.

Different school systems implement complaint procedures in different ways, but most provide that:

Complaints must be made in writing;
Complainants should identify themselves both by name/address and their interest in the material ( i.e., as a parent, student, religious leader, etc.);
Complainants must have read/seen the entire work objected to;
The complaint must be specific about the reasons for the objection;
Complaints should request a specific remedy ( i.e. , an alternative assignment for an individual, or removal/exclusion affecting the entire school community); and
Complaints, standing alone, will not be considered grounds for disciplining teachers or librarians.

It is advisable for policies to contain a statement supporting intellectual and academic freedom, and an explanation of the importance of exposing students to a wide variety of material and information, some of which may be considered "controversial." Policies should also clearly indicate that certain kinds of objections do not provide legally permissible grounds for removal, exclusion or restriction. Disagreement with a specific idea or message—and personal objections to materials on religious, political or social grounds—are the most common grounds for challenges and the most suspect. Such concerns may justify a parent's request that his or her child be assigned alternate material, and if shared more widely they may suggest the need for discussion about how teachers and school officials can better explain the material's educational value, and ways in which any perceived harms can be alleviated, perhaps through inclusion of additional materials. But such personal viewpoint-based concerns, standing alone, rarely justify removal of material, and may raise First Amendment issues.

A committee—often composed of instructional staff, library staff, and administrators, and sometimes including students and parents—ordinarily processes complaints. Their recommendation is usually subject to a review process, but such a committee's professional judgment is entitled to deference if grounded in sound educational and pedagogical principles. Its decision should only be reversed for compelling educational reasons. Materials should never be removed unless the complaint procedures are followed, and materials should never be removed prior to completion of the complaint process .

These principles, if uniformly and consistently implemented, protect students whose right to learn should not be limited by some other individual's or family's preferences. They also protect educators in their exercise of professional judgment, and help insulate them and the school district from legal challenges and community pressure.

School administrators and teachers should work together to develop an understanding about how they will respond if material is challenged, recognizing that it is impossible to predict what may be challenged.
Educators should always have a rationale for the materials employed—regardless of whether they think something is potentially "controversial."
In approaching material that may be controversial, keep parents advised about what material students are using and why it has been selected.
Encourage parents to raise questions about curricular materials directly with their child's teacher, and encourage teachers to be willing and available to discuss concerns with parents.
Schedule regular meetings for parents. In one innovative program in South Carolina called Communicate through Literature, librarian Pat Scales invited parents to the library once a month, without students, to discuss contemporary young adult books that their children might be reading, to understand how the books helped their children grow intellectually and emotionally, and to encourage parents to discuss books with their children. She never had a censorship case, but had many calls from parents asking her to recommend books for their children to address troublesome issues (Pat Scales' book, Teaching Banned Books (American Library Ass’n, 2001) describes this program in detail.).
Involve members of the community in any debate over challenged materials. Broadening the discussion usually reveals that only a small number of people object to the same material or on the same ground, but that if one person’s preferences are taken into account, others will expect the same treatment—making almost everything vulnerable to challenge.
Support the value of intellectual and academic freedom. Conscientious teachers who are unlucky enough to get caught in the middle of a censorship dispute—and it could happen to anyone—deserve support from their colleagues and the community if their choices are educationally justifiable. Without such trust and some latitude, teachers will stick only to the tried and true, or the bland and unobjectionable.

Censorship Policies

Major Educational Organizations Take a Stand for the First Amendment

Many national and international organizations concerned with elementary and secondary education have established guidelines on censorship issues. While each organization addresses censorship a little differently, each is committed to free speech and recognizes the dangers and hardships imposed by censorship. The organizations couple their concern for free speech with a concern for balancing the rights of students, teachers and parents. Many place heavy emphasis on the importance of establishing policies for selecting classroom materials and procedures for addressing complaints. The following summarizes the censorship and material selection policies adopted by leading educational organizations.

National Education Association (NEA)

The NEA is America's oldest and largest organization committed to advancing the cause of public education. Its 2.5 million members work at every level of education. Elected representatives from across the country are responsible for setting policy, which includes resolutions on selecting and developing education materials and teaching techniques. The resolutions embody NEA's belief that democratic values are best transmitted free from censorship and deplore "pre-publishing censorship, book burning crusades, and attempts to ban books from the … curriculum." The NEA encourages its members to be involved in developing textbooks and materials and to seek the removal of laws and regulations that restrict selection of diverse materials.

The National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association (NCTE/IRA)

A 80,000-member organization devoted to improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts, the NCTE offers support, advice and resources to teachers and schools faced with challenges to teaching materials or methods. The NCTE has developed a Statement on Censorship and Professional Guidelines recognizing that English and language arts teachers face daily decisions about teaching materials and methods.

The IRA has 90,000 members worldwide, working in a variety of educational capacities. Its goal is to promote high levels of literacy by improving the quality of reading instruction and encouraging reading as a lifetime habit. The IRA supports "freedom of speech, thought and inquiry as guaranteed by the First Amendment."

The NCTE and IRA have issued a joint statement on intellectual freedom: "all students in public school classrooms have the right to materials and educational experiences that promote open inquiry, critical thinking, diversity in thought and expression, and respect for others."

Their mutual policy sets out four principles aimed at translating the ideals of the First Amendment into classroom reality: (1) to actively support intellectual freedom; (2) to foster democratic values, critical thinking and open inquiry; (3) to prepare for challenges with clearly defined procedures; and (4) to ensure educational communities are free to select and review classroom curricula to meet student needs.

Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD)

The ASCD is an international organization of professional educators committed to excellence in education. Its mission is to "forge covenants in teaching and learning for the success of all learners." The ASCD recognizes the importance of balancing the rights and needs of students, teachers and parents with freedom of expression:

"When challenges arise, school officials should bear in mind that education is governed by the public. ... [Educators] should recognize the value of citizen participation and respect the right of parents to shape their children's schooling. At the same time, educators should insist that, as in other fields, professional judgment must not be completely subservient to the popular will. Educators’ primary allegiance must be to the integrity of knowledge and the welfare of students."

The ASCD stresses the importance of establishing complaint procedures and affirms that materials are never to be restricted for the purpose of suppressing ideas.

American Library Association (ALA)

The ALA , "the voice of America’s libraries," is dedicated to providing leadership for the "development, promotion and improvement of library and information services…in order to enhance learning and access to information for all." The ALA has a widely emulated Bill of Rights affirming all libraries as forums for information and ideas. The ALA's policies stipulate that libraries should provide materials from all points of view; challenge censorship; cooperate with free speech groups; grant access to all regardless of origin, age, background or views; and provide exhibit space on an equitable basis. Drawing on the United Nation's Declaration of Human Rights, the ALA emphasizes the importance of free speech: "We know that censorship, ignorance, and limitations on the free flow of information are the tools of tyranny and oppression. We believe that ideas and information topple the walls of hate and fear and build bridges of cooperation and understanding far more effectively than weapons and armies."

National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP )

Dedicated to assuring that every American boy and girl receives the world's best elementary and middle school education, NAESP sets policy on curriculum and instruction. In its statement on censorship and academic freedom, "NAESP affirms the right of the student and teacher to use a wide variety of curriculum and literary materials and to explore divergent points of view." NAESP also emphasizes the importance of establishing procedures to address selection of materials and challenges to selections. These procedures are to be carried out "professionally and equitably," according to established professional criteria and the values and needs of the community.

National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC)

Founded in 1974, NCAC is an alliance of over 50 national non-profit organizations–including literary, artistic, religious, educational, professional, labor, and civil liberties group—united in their support of freedom of thought, inquiry and expression. NCAC works with teachers, educators, writers, artists and others around the country dealing with censorship debates in their own communities; it educates its members and the public at large about the dangers of censorship and how to oppose them; and it advances policies that promote and protect freedom of expression and democratic values.

Avoiding Censorship in Schools

Efforts to remove books and other materials from the classroom, curriculum and school library represent one of the most significant forms of censorship in the United States. Classics of Western literature like Lysistrata and The Miller’s Tale , the Harry Potter series, celebrations of Earth Day, studies of world religion, discussions of feminism and more have all been challenged. Sometimes these efforts are initiated by a parent or other member of a community; sometimes organizations campaign to change educational norms and practices to reflect their particular views and perspectives. They may circulate a list of "objectionable" books, stimulating challenges in communities around the country.

Local school boards generally have the authority to prescribe the curriculum, within state-approved guidelines. Two Supreme Court cases, Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988) and Bethel School District v. Fraser (1986) grant administrators considerable discretion in deciding what is educationally suitable. For example, lower courts upheld action against one teacher for permitting violations of school policy against profanity in teaching creative writing ( Lacks v. Ferguson Reorganized School District (8th Cir. 1998) and against another for staging a dramatic production with controversial content ( Boring v. Buncombe County Board of Education (4th Cir. 1998). However, courts defer to administrators and educators equally when their decisions promote, rather than suppress, speech—as when schools administrators elect to include controversial materials in the curriculum ( Monteiro v. Tempe Union High School 9th Cir. 1998).

The outcome of censorship cases often depends on the factual context, how competing interests are balanced, and in some cases motive. As a result, decisions vary widely, and the same action can be upheld in one district and struck down in the next. This can be confusing, but a few rules of thumb are available:

A. Policies and practices designed to respect free expression and encourage discourse and discussion are rarely, if ever, disturbed by courts

They may be challenged by students or parents who are offended by certain books or other materials with racial or ethnic content (e.g., Monteiro v. Tempe Union School District (9th Cir. 1999), or with content that offends religious beliefs (e.g., Altman v. Bedford Central School District (2d Cir. 2001). However, it is rare that a court will order educators to remove materials that have legitimate educational purposes, even if they cause offense to some. Many schools will offer students alternative assignments in such cases.

B. The decision to remove material is more vulnerable, and often places motivation for the removal at issue since actions motivated by hostility to particular ideas or speakers is not permitted

E.g ., Campbell v. St. Tammany Parish School Board (5th Cir. 1995). As the Supreme Court has observed: "If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable." Texas v. Johnson , 109 S. Ct. 2533 (1989).

C. The deference frequently shown school administrators with regard to the curriculum is not always accorded when a dispute arises over material in the school library

Under a 1982 Supreme Court ruling, school administrators may regulate library content based on "educational suitability," but may not do so to suppress ideas or instill political orthodoxy ( Board of Education v. Pico ). Noting the importance of "the regime of voluntary inquiry" that characterizes the library setting, as distinct from the "compulsory environment of the classroom," the Court has affirmed students' right of access to a broad range of information "to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding." Observing this distinction, lower courts tend to inquire more searchingly into decisions to remove library materials, and to order materials restored when there is proof of an impermissible motive ( Case v. Unified School District (D. Kans. 1995); Campbell v. St. Tammany Parish School Board (5th Cir. 1995).

Useful information is available from the American Library Association, including the Library Bill of Rights, Tips for Library Directors, and Tips for Young Adult Librarians:

Make sure the library has an up-to-date selection policy, reviewed regularly by your library board, which includes a request for reconsideration form.
Have the request for reconsideration form available at your major service desk.
Work with your trustees (school board representatives) to ensure that they know and understand the library’s policies.
Model the behavior you want staff to practice. When confronted by a parent or other individual who wants an item removed or reclassified, listen carefully to what is being said (and what is not). Respect that person's right to have an opinion, and empathize. Keep the lines of communication open to the greatest possible extent.
Work with your frontline staff (reference librarians, circulation, support staff, etc.) to make sure they understand the library's policies.
Build a good working relationship with your local media before controversy arises. Provide them with positive, upbeat stories about what the library is doing.
Put key contacts on the library's mailing list. The time to build these relationships is before you need them.

Once a school district accedes to a demand to censor, it can become increasingly difficult to resist such pressures. Once one perspective is accommodated, those with a different view come to expect similar treatment. Listening to community concerns and taking them into account in structuring the educational environment is not the same as removing material because someone does not agree with its contents. School officials always have the legal authority to refuse to censor something. They may need to do more to help members of their community understand why it is the right choice for children's education.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License

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Censorship and the Public Schools

Censorship and the First Amendment in Schools: A Resource Guide

Table of Contents

Introduction: Free Speech, Public Education, and Democracy

The First Amendment and Public Schools

How Big a Problem Is Censorship?

Roles and Responsibilities: Promoting First Amendment Values at School

Censorship Policies

National Education Association (NEA)