November/December 2007
Banned Books: Engaging Students and Teachers
I made the offer to the language arts teachers to discuss Banned Books with their students. Only a couple of teachers initially took me up on it. Mrs. Blaha prepared her class by sharing titles of books that have been banned , and available in her classroom -- ( I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Adventures of Huck Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, and other books considered classics.) Mr. Edwards, a tenth-grade teacher who had just finished reading Of Mice and Men with his classes, was very happy to have the opportunity to expand on banned books with his students. Colquitt County High School requires parents to sign permission slips for their children to read Of Mice and Men. The permission slip requirement generated a lot of questions from his students - Why are we reading a book so bad we have to have permission? Why should we read this at all? Why do our parents get to decide if we may or may not read the book? His students had been discussing the issue for several weeks.
I do always make the point to students that it is not only their parents' right but their parents' responsibility to help them choose what to read until they are adults. And that it will be THEIR right and responsibility when they are parents.
In class discussions, they came up with book titles that they felt were OK to read themselves, but would not want their younger siblings to read right now. They also posed situations where a book might upset someone if it told of a disturbing incident that had relevance to their own life, and that parents would be aware of that situation. Students came up with the example that if a child had been in a bad car accident or a fire, he might become distressed if he read a book about an accident or fire and his parents would understand that he needed to wait till he was older and more ready to read about those occurrences. We do have a number of students who are not permitted to read the Harry Potter books. Teachers and students talked about how it is the right of the parents of those students to make that decision for their own children, but those parents are not requesting that the Harry Potter books be removed from our library shelves or telling others they are not allowed to read Harry Potter.
The students in Mrs.Blaha's class were given the writing prompt and did some independent research on the topic . This is the first year she has taught 11th grade and she feels that the students were more engaged in this particular lesson because it involved a controversial subject that directly impacted them. The assignment about banned books resulted in the best work her students have done so far this year.
Mr. Edwards' students write in journals daily. For about a week, their entries were to be about banned and controversial books. One of their assignments was to watch a video about the parent in Newport News, Virginia who was trying to get the book "Tripping Over the Lunch Lady and other School Stories" removed from Magruder Elementary School. [more]. The school's population includes a number of children whose parents are serving in Iraq and the parent felt that the book included information about war that might upset their children, who are already worried about parents in Iraq. Mr. Edwards' students were to write their opinion as to whether or not that book should be removed.
By the end of the day I worked with Mrs. Blaha, I had a lot of other requests from teachers to share the presentation and discuss banned books with their students. I ended up working with about 35 different classes over the course of several weeks. Whenever I shared the information in the media center instead of in classrooms, students who were not assigned to the class joined in the discussions as did teachers who happened to be in the vicinity. I had a lot of fun with it myself. The display of books that have been banned constantly needed to be replenished...they were flying off the shelves."
Cheryl Youse is the media specialist at Colquitt County High School.
