Let the kids read!

By: Jenna Noguera

June 10, 2022

People put up a fight when others try to take away their guns, but where is the outcry for people taking away the right to read, to learn? For the past 20 years there has been a serious uptick in book banning, which is negatively affecting children.

Books can be literary “windows” or “mirrors” for readers. A literary window shows readers something about a topic they know nothing about or don’t understand. A literary mirror shows readers something about a topic they can relate to because they’ve experienced it. A book about parental abuse has value either way.

By not allowing children to read books on heavy topics, such as racism and abuse, we aren’t educating them on these important topics. Parents say they don’t want their children to learn about these topics because they don’t think they have the emotional maturity for it.

In the 1982 Supreme Court case Board of Education v. Pico, Justice WIllaim Brennan said that school boards could be violating the First Amendment rights of students if they took books off of library shelves. By banning books about sex, racism, abuse, etc, we are not educating them about what life is like today, and that is putting them at a disadvantage.

In a 2014 study taken place in Italy and the United Kingdom, researchers found that elementary and high school students were more sensitive towards people in the LGBTQ+ community, refugees, and immigrants after reading “Harry Potter.” J.K. Rowling's series is about a boy who is different from the rest of his peers.

The books that are being banned are taking away the opportunity for children to learn about different life experiences. By taking away their right to read these books we are stunting their social-emotional development.

The author of the frequently challenged novel “Neverwhere”, Neil Gaiman stated that fiction lets, “You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. You’re being someone else, and when you return to your own world, you’re going to be slightly changed. Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals.”

A study that was published in Basic and Applied Psychology discovered people were less likely to make broad judgments about race after they had read a book about a Muslim women. We learn about history so we don’t repeat our past mistakes, we read books so we have an understanding of ourselves and the world.

When a group of parents believe that their children shouldn’t be reading a certain book, they come together and lobby for banning the book for the entire class, or school. This is a disservice to the other kids in the class who are getting the opportunity to learn taken away from them.

These parents are the ones who are raising what I call, “iPad kids”, who are constantly on technology. While many parents have restrictions on screen time, kids still find ways to see things their parents don’t want them to. While parents might be monitoring what their kids read at school, they have the Internet in their hands, where they can find information about these topics and worse.

Parents should be allowed to have a say in what their kids are reading, but I don’t think it should affect other kids. A solution to this would be giving a list of books with controversial topics to parents at the beginning of the school year, and letting them choose whether or not their children can read it.

I found myself through the books I’ve read throughout my life, and I believe they have given me a new perspective I otherwise wouldn’t have found. I can’t imagine who I would be today if I hadn’t had the opportunity to read the books I had. It’s a scary world that today children don’t always have that freedom.