One of the reasons that we are reading Crank during the same week as our discussion of censorship is that last fall the book was challenged and Ellen Hopkins became very vocal about the issue of censorship.
Hopkins wrote a play-by-play on her livejournal, beginning with an entry on September 17 and extending through the next several months. After reading the book and Hopkins' entries, what do you find to be either persuasive or not persuasive about the school's choice to cancel her visit? What issues and values are at stake?
You might also browse the American Library Association page on censorship for more information on the history of censorship in schools, intellectual freedom, and concrete steps teachers, librarians, and other community members can take if a book is challenged. Are there any resources or ideas that might help us make sense of the challenges to Crank?
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I don't agree at all with the school's decision to pull Hopkins' books, but I can see why they did so. There is this really pervasive idea in our society that we need to "protect" our children, maintain their innocence as long as possible, even though the very nature of our media and entertainment is completely counter-productive to that. The parent who sparked the controversy was worried about the age-appropriateness of the books, which is understandable, but here's the thing: kids aren't nearly as naive as adults like to think they are. My mom is a psychologist and a middle school counselor in a town with an almost entirely white, middle class population, and she has a sizable number of students who are struggling with drug, physical, and sexual abuse (both their own and their family's). These are kids, 11, 12, 13 years old, dealing with very adult, very “age-inappropriate” issues, and their experiences are happening whether we like to acknowledge it or not.
ReplyDelete“Innocence” is being lost at an increasingly young age and, whatever the opinion is on that, the fact remains that we can't expect to protect our children by withholding information from them. Books like Hopkins' have the potential to seriously effect children from all walks of life, as she said, and what they should be viewed and used as are tools for opening communication in both schools and families about these issues. How individual families choose to use them is their choice, or even to not use them at all. The schools, however, have a responsibility to educate their students, and to provide them with the greatest possible variety of experiences and opinions—even ones we might not appreciate ourselves. Banning these books doesn't eliminate the controversial problems they discuss; it aggravates them, by banishing sex, drugs, and abuse to the realm of shadow, silence, and shame.
I feel very strongly that the act of trying to shield children from some of the darker issues, and actual realities, of our society only makes them more prone to seek out these issues. I can only draw from personal experiences, but I know that when I wasn't allowed to do something it only made me want to do it more. It all started with "The Simpsons". My father thought that it was inappropriate for me to watch in elementary school. So what did I do? I went to friends' houses religiously at 5pm to watch it.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that I am guilty now of underestimating the knowledge-base of children. You never view yourself as a young person when you actually are. When I think back on my first cigarette in 4th grade and see an actual 4th grader now, I think, wow I was really mature at that age. Because I don't see a 4th grade me smoking a cigarette, I see what I thought of myself at the time. We always seem to feel older than we actually are (I'm having a hard time explaining this). A friend of mine that teaches kindergarten at a Montessori school woke me up to the fact that children are much more knowledge than I make them out to be. She speaks to them just like she would to me and they never show an ounce of confusion or irritation, in fact, just the opposite.
There are obvious acts that you don't want you're children participating in that you should tell them is wrong. But with that must be communication. Telling me not to smoke cigarettes or drink without any sort of communication leads me to believe that there is some fun event that I'm not invited to just because people think I'm not mature enough yet. My opinion is that there are no issues that have age-appropriate requirements. Communication as early as possible should lead to the most positive outcomes.
I haven't given much thought into issues of censorship before, simply because I haven't come into contact with any circumstances that involved censorship. I knew this book was not looked highly upon by some educational institutions, but I had no idea of the extent. I read Ellen Hopkins' blog entries about beginning to get censored, and I was just angry. It started with one parent at one school, and suddenly the whole district is outlawing her. People reacted to quickly to what they heard, and made decisions about getting the book off the shelf before they even took the time to read the book and see what it was about.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the earlier posts, I think that keeping issues like addiction in the dark only encourage students to seek them out more. A book is a safe place to explore some of the darker issues in our society in a way that is controlled. "Crank" definitely isn't a book encouraging kids to try meth; Hopkins does a beautiful job with really looking addiction in the eye and showing the worst parts of it. Students who read this book will get a perspective they probably didn't have before which, I think, will do more to keep them AWAY from drugs, not push them TO drugs.
By censoring her book, parents and teachers were taking away Hopkins' freedom to share her daughter's story (and the story of so many others) with students to give them insight on addiction.