LatinosUSA

This is not the first time I’ve commented on book banning in this country and my frustration with this insanity. Trying to change history or pretending that current events are not occurring by banning books is not going to succeed now, just as it didn’t succeed during the many attempts in the past.

To this end, I read another article in The Economist about censorship in America. The article noted that book bans are surging in American schools, with roughly 10,000 reported in 2023–24, a fourfold increase over two years. Many targeted titles feature sexual content, teenage trauma, racism, or LGBTQ+ themes, ranging from Sarah J. Maas’s fantastical romances to classics by Maya Angelou (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, if you can believe it) and Alice Walker. Some bans are ironic, such as restricting The Handmaid’s Tale, a novel about women forbidden to read. States like Florida and Iowa have particularly strict rules, sometimes relying on AI tools like ChatGPT to flag “inappropriate” content. Librarians and educators face harassment from organized groups, deterring them from stocking controversial books.

The article included this interesting chart: 

Banning books does not achieve anything and only fuels uninformed debates. 

How can the people of the United States, or any country, receive an adequate education and increase their intellect if we don’t allow the freedom to learn about different aspects of a subject or cultural issue?

Books provide the means to learn and understand different views and perspectives. Forcing our children to learn only half of an issue, the half that reinforces our own biases, is not helpful. They need to learn and understand the whole picture, and books provide that.

My son was assigned Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir as the first book for this semester. I did a little research and found that the book explores the following themes: survival and sacrifice, ingenuity and problem-solving, friendship and cooperation, isolation and resilience, ethics and responsibility, and exploration and curiosity. I decided to read it with him, so I purchased a copy and am in the process of catching up. He’s about 100 pages ahead of me. My hope is to understand what he is reading and perhaps engage him in a conversation about one of these themes.

Instead of trying to ban books, why not read them and then sit down with your children to have an informed discussion about these difficult subjects?

It’s better for them to learn from their parents that there are always two sides to an issue, and that it’s valuable to understand both sides so they can decide for themselves which side they agree with.

To do that, they need to read all kinds of books, not just a curated list supporting a single point of view.

Less banning, more reading—please.