Course:LIBR548F/2010WT1/Censorship Think of the Children

"Won’t somebody please think of the children!?" – Helen Lovejoy, The Simpsons

Impulse to protect children and youth is a common modern justification for censorship. Often, those requesting that a book or medium be restricted or banned will deny that censorship is the goal; after all, they are only attempting to ensure that children are not harmed.

Orgins and Reasoning

Pre-17th Century

There are few examples of this face of censorship prior to the 17th century. Plato invoked it against epic and tragic poetry, literary representations of sexual activity of the gods, and numerous forms of creative art; he thought that youth were indelibly touched by the things to which they were exposed, and vulnerable to having their behaviour and thoughts shaped in undesirable ways. Aristotle similarly argued against exposing youth to “unseemly talk.” However, their views do not appear to have been commonplace.

Philippe Aries placed the modern conception of childhood as a time of pure innocence requiring protective preservation towards the end of the 17th century. Prior to this, he notes, there was little attempt to curtail activity or information around or for children; they were considered gross, lewd, and immune to corruption, rather than innocent of such filth.^[1]

17th Century Onwards

Locke and the idea of tabula rasa, the ‘blank slate’ of children, carried this idea of innocence and the need to protect forwards. As a counterpoint, Puritanism believed children required strict control and training in ‘right behaviour,’ being by nature sinful. Over time, the two have become conflated. Concerns typically centred around sex, especially masturbation; repression and ignorance of the subject were the two main methods of dealing with it. Censorship of writen material was encouraged to prevent youth from becoming weak and immoral through exposure.

The first attempts in the United States to prosecute obscenity on the grounds that it was corrupting and subverting youth were in the early 19th century; in 1821 a publisher was charged with attempting “to debauch and corrupt” the morals of youth through publication of John Cleland's Fanny Hill. By the late 19th century, the morality of youth was seen as central to public support of any censorship campaign.^[2]

Most modern attempts to censor on behalf of children are based in these conceptions of youth, and exposure to sex remains one of the most common objections.

Effects on Libraries

School Libraries

Because they necessarily cater to children and young adults, they commonly receive challenges to remove or censor materials. Selection of materials tends to be vulnerable to a chilling effect from publicized challenges; if a book is known to have created a problem elsewhere, there can be considerable reluctance to add it to the collection. As well, librarians themselves may try to protect children through discouraging certain readings options or limiting access to older children.^[3]

Public Libraries

Similarly to school libraries, they can be pressured to remove challenged materials, place them in the adult section, or restrict borrowing to adults only. For example, in 2006, an Oklahoma House bill would have made state funding contingent on all children’s and young adult books dealing with homosexuality being placed in a special area and limited to adults.^[4]

Internet

The Internet is the most recent target of protective censorship. Many libraries in Canada and the United States use filtering software to prevent children from seeing or accessing sexually explicit materials, nudity, or other ‘adult content.’ However, such filters can be overbroad, catching health-related materials in their net (such as information on sexually transmitted diseases or breast self-examinations). The option to disable filters for adults is often left to local policy or even individual librarians.^[5]

Examples

Three Wishes

In 2006, the Canadian Jewish Congress sent a letter to the Ontario Library Association, and all directors of education in the province of Ontario, requesting that the book Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak be removed from the OLA’s short-list for the Silver Birch program (an independent reading program for children in grades 4 through 6). The book contains the reactions of Israeli and Palestinian children towards the conflict that surrounds them, sometimes in ways that are unflattering to both sides. The CJC claimed the book was unsuited for the age group, noting that the publisher recommend it for children in grade 6 and up.^[6]

And Tango Makes Three

The children’s book And Tango Makes Three discusses a pair of male chinstrap penguins in the Central Park Zoo, who were given an egg to raise. It has been challenged in several schools for discussing homosexuality and being unsuited to a young age group. The American Library Association lists it as the most challenged book of 2006, 2007, and 2008; in 2009, it fell to number two.^[7]^[8]

References

↑ Heins, M. (2001). Not in Front of the Children: "Indecency," Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth. New York: Hill and Wang. pp. 3, 15-19
↑ Heins, M. (2001). Not in Front of the Children: "Indecency," Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth. New York: Hill and Wang. pp. 19-26
↑ Tillotson, L. (2006, September). From the Editor: Choices for Children. Book Links , p. 4.
↑ Goldberg, B. (2006, April). Oklahoma Bill Ties Funds to Gay-Free Kids' Collections. American Libraries , p. 13.
↑ Oder, N. (2005, June 1). RL Libraries Overblock under CIPA. Library Journal , pp. 18-19.
↑ Slade, A. (2006, March 3). Censorship Canada Style. Retrieved September 22, 2010, from AS IF! Authors Support Intellectual Freedom: [1]
↑ BBC News. (2009, October 1). Gay penguins book is most banned. Retrieved September 22, 2010, from BBC News Americas: [2]
↑ American Library Association. (2010). Top ten most frequently challenged books of 2009. Retrieved September 21, 2010, from ALA: [3]