"Free Expression"
See the effects that censorship has on these students and faculty!
A short documentary by Angela Durkan discussing free expression in schools, and the effects censorship has on learning. Listen closely to the differing opinions of students, teachers, and the administration to notice the importance of perspective.
Organizations that are...
PROTECTING FREE SPEECH
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CHALLENGING FREE SPEECH
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Who does censorship affect and how?
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Readers
When I was 10 my mom let me read Clan of the Cave Bear which has sexually explicit content, murder, and abuse. However, it has even larger themes of love, perseverance, and courage. I didn't grow up to be a sexually explicit, murdering, abusive person, rather, I identify more with the second set of themes of love, perseverance, and courage.
The more people (young, old, and in between) that read a variety of literature the more their vocabulary, their compassion for others, and critical thinking skills will grow. Censorship threatens these important life lessons. Compassion for the human experience is one of the most important lessons that reading provides. The novel, Room by Emma Donoghue describes the harrowing seclusion of a kidnap and rape victim as she attempts to survive with her child in captivity. The images and themes are not only important - the narrator loves and cares for her son regardless of how he came into the world - but also allow a glimpse into the mind of one of the most horrific events a person can experience. When novels like Room or Annie On My Mind, a love story between two young women, are censored from young people in the United States or all people in other countries, the life lessons that novels provide are lost. Kris Kodrich an assistant professor of journalism at Colorado State University says, "students need to be aware and respectful of cultural differences" (as cited in Peck 36). She's right. And what better way for students to gain an education about cultural differences than through reading. Texts like Memoirs of a Geisha have sexually explicit images and questionable language, just like novels that deal with American culture, but the educational themes should not be lost to censorship as a result. |
Writers
Censoring the creativity of writers is detrimental to teaching, persuading, and entertaining the masses. Writers are artists. Their pens and paper are ink and canvas and just as an artist may paint a nude, and be celebrated for their artistic genius, so is not the same for writers. Oftentimes, writers create a work of prose or poetry with vivid images, and people become upset with the content, and ultimately work to have it removed or censored. In this way, valuable cultural stories, fiction or otherwise, lessons, illustrations, and themes are taken from individuals for a myriad of reasons. Not only does this process, affect the creative license that writers should have but it also infringes on the rights of the people involved. Under the First Amendment, writers have the freedom to 'speak' in any way they choose, and so is the same with readers and publishers. Furthermore, writers lose money, their livelihood, when their pieces are banned or censored because the censorship allocates a negative connotation on the piece. On the flip side, there are some people who will read the piece, strictly because it is banned, however, this percentage of the population is much smaller. In our class discussion, Andy Barnhart mentioned The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and how that book "is partially responsible for the regulations that the meat industry now has because it showed the deplorable conditions of the meat factories during the industrial revolution" (Barnhart 1). He goes on to explain from a Banned Books Week article he found, titled "Banned Books that Shaped America" by Jan Carmichael, which explains that although the book was useful for a lot of people to be informed about the state of the meat industry, the book "was still banned in Yugoslavia, East Germany, South Korea and Boston because it had socialist views" (Carmichael 1). Although Sinclair wrote a tremendously important book that enlightened a lot of people, censorship made the book lose sales and hinder the amount of people that could benefit from it.
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Publishers
Publishers experience substantial monetary effects from censorship. Publishers are in the business of publishing texts not only because they are passionate about literature, but more importantly to create revenue for the company. When books are censored, the publishing company is affected in that the demand for the book decreases. Furthermore, censorship can create a ripple effect with publishing companies because publishers may refuse to publish a particular novel that may have some of the same controversial subjects as a previously censored piece. In this way, readers, writers, educators and librarians are indirectly affected by the omission or refusal of the publishing company. When a publishing company starts a cycle of publishing only those texts that will not get banned, a misinformed society takes shape. Around the world, this is becoming a bigger problem. In the periodical article, "Censorship By Terror," Mark Fitzgerald describes how U.S. journalists are being scared into not publishing newspaper articles that deal with the terror of the Mexican drug cartels. Fitzgerald explains that there is "increasing pressure on Mexican reporters and newspapers to censor themselves" and then he discovered, "the extent to which the cartels can overpower a community and worries that the fear from drug cartels may even affect U.S. journalists" (Fitzgerald 1). As a result of newspapers publishing articles about the terror of the Mexican drug cartels, those cartels turn against the people who may be responsible. In this way, fear has created a self-censorship which directly affects writers, publishers, and readers.
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