Re: Banned Books

[Joy Branham <Joy_Branham@KPT.K12.TN.US>]

I think that all librarians practice censorship every time they make a book
order and decide to purchase one book and not another.  It's defacto
censorship, of course, but it's just as effective as the actual thing.
There is a very fine line between responsible book selection and
censorship.  I guess I have always felt that when I spend money I will
spend it for the very best I can find.  I've never been afraid of ideas,
but I do think we have a responsibility to young minds that haven't had
enough experience of life to sort through the jungle and recognize the good
and the bad.  Under no circumstances would you hand a bottle of poison to a
child.  What then gives you the right to hand a book to that child that
perpetuates hate?  You don't spout a mouthful of profanity to your students
when you are conducting a class.  Then by what permission do you give them
books that wallow in vulgarities?  Adults can direct their own lives and
their own reading and their own experiences with the media and the
Internet.  Children cannot vote, buy cigarettes and liquor, drive a car,
sign contracts, or change their place of residence on their own.  Why,
then, do we think it is a shocking thing to limit what we place in their
path in a library?  Now, of course, that places a tremendous amount of
power in the hands of a librarian.  It gives me the power to open up ideas
or shut them out totally, to explore new ways or close them off, to try to
develop inquiry and intelligence or to insist on bland homogeneity.  But I
have the supreme confidence (just like everybody else!) that I can do it
better than anyone else, because I am the professional!  I just have to
make certain that I am right!

Joy Branham
Librarian
John F. Kennedy Elementary School
1500 Woodland Avenue
Kingsport, Tennessee 37665

joy_branham@kpt.k12.tn.us

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