Book-Banning: Is It Necessary?

Justin Snay, News Section Editor|March 23, 2023

Audrey Graham

Some of the books deemed controversial are displayed on a shelf in the library, giving access to all LHS students.

Imagine walking through the school library. You go to your favorite section: fiction. However, something is missing. “To Kill A Mocking Bird” is nowhere to be seen. 

This would be the result of the book-banning laws passing. In Indiana, Senate Bill 12 is the legislation in question. The legislation would give parents the ability to report books that they feel are inappropriate for their students.  

Book banning is ridiculous. It deprives us of learning things that are uncomfortable, which is what learning is. Learning is not supposed to make us feel safe. We are supposed to feel uneasy about the topics we learn, especially in a class like history, where we learn how to not repeat the mistakes of empires before us. These book-banning bills popping up around the country make us go back in time. Not forward. 

I do not understand the reason for these bills anyway. If a parent feels the need to not let their student read a book, and if the student also does not want to read the book, then just don’t read it. Parents are getting lazy. They do not want to teach their children how to deal with such topics they feel are inappropriate. When there is a topic that is going to make the child ask a question, the parent needs to parent and teach their child how to deal with topics. Why do we have to go through a process where teachers can get sued for tens of thousands of dollars and go to prison because people want to be safe and not teach their children how to deal with uncomfortable? 

Reading books and absorbing the knowledge within them is so very important. This author cannot stress how important it is to read books that make you feel uneasy. The books that shed light on a potentially dangerous situation you might be heading in

“Any book worth banning is a book worth reading,” author Isaac Asimov said. 

This quote is amazing because it highlights what is so important in this world. Banning a book means only that it threatens those in power. It threatens the status quo. A banned book is a book worth reading. 

As citizens of the world, it is our duty to ensure that knowledge and understanding of what has led our civilization to this very moment are vital to our survival. This author fears that, if we stop and allow more and more books to be banned, we are only setting ourselves up for failure. Setting our future generations up with less knowledge than the ones before to the point where education and knowledge become useless and we are puppets and dummies of the government. 

I urge the readers of the article to support every book, no matter how uneasy it makes you feel. Then perhaps, we can preserve our knowledge rather than destroy it.