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Essays on book banning
Essays on book banning
Censorship's negative impact
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The Experience of WW1 on Australia’s home front led to all Australian men to enlist for war in support of Great Britain ‘the mother country’ meant Australia was at war. The Australian home front was affect due to many effects of WW1 such as, conscription, government power, Gallipoli .Conscription was called on in 1916 by prime minster Hughes, when the Australian army needs troops to fight in war, but there aren’t enough volunteers, he began conscription which is a law that says if you are able to fight, you have to fight. In 1916 prime minster Hughes suggested raising the numbers of Australian troops to maintain the full strength at the front line, by conscripting those who are unwilling or opposed to enlist in war. Conscription affected those
“In a moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” Those are some wise words said by the President during WWII…. Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This quote can relate to a plethora of issues, when one may have to make an impossible choice and one does not know what to do.
It might take away a person’s ability to speak freely, or keep some books from being written. They wanted people’s rights
Since then much has changed, now right and wrong are matters for debate. How do you exactly determine what is right and wrong? Members of the Ku Klux Klan truly believe that whites are superior. Are they wrong for that? Think of a football team that you adore, is it wrong for you to think of that team as the best? No doubt, they are racist.
Censorship prohibits knowledge and information. Censorship is congress attempting to ban specific parts of songs, books, movies, etc. that may contain damaging, or explicit context. A book trying to be banned because of censorship is Night by Elie Wiesel. This book talks about the Holocaust from a victim’s point of view.
However, this is also a direct violation of the First Amendment, which states that “the commitment to free speech is not the acceptance of only non-controversial expressions that enjoy general approval“ (CliffNotes). Despite the fact that in this society the government has complete control over what people see, hear, and even think, an outcome like this is not theoretically possible. At least, not anytime in the near future. Although, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 certainly does serve as a good cautionary tale of what could happen if censorship is taken to the extreme.
Censorship and libraries could be synonyms in the present. With the number of novels and ideas seen and advertised, there are equal amounts of articles hidden behind the scenes or tucked away. Recently, a debate sparked about books involving mature or violent content being allowed in schools. Night by Elie Wiesel is a book about his personal experience through the Holocaust involving death, excessive violence, and the Jewish religion. Sensitive topics such as these lead others to preach the removal of such harsh writing due to their objective obscenity and effects on students.
Censorship is against the constitution. In DiMarco’s “Why I Banned a Book” he states “Access to information is a basic human right not to be tampered with, not to be controlled in any way”. Which is true because no one should be denied to learn something. He then goes on to say a lot of people still didn't know that censorship was a thing.
It wasn’t until the early twentieth century that the laws and legal rights in America regarding the censorship and banning of literature was addressed. The Constitution of the United States of America defines through the First Amendment that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” (U.S. Constitution). Despite the law specifically outlined here, declaring the freedom of speech for Americans, censorship continues to be a reoccurring theme in our culture. Group that trigger and support censorship range anywhere from the government to small private
One of the key principles that make the country great is our freedom to say, write, and read whatever we want. Despite this, countless public figures and schools have chosen to restrict access to certain books, whether it’s in order to protect political correctness or explicit sexual content and violence. Rarely do these people stop and consider the dire effects book banning might have on both students and society as a whole. An author does not write because they are looking to offend someone, they right because they have a story to share. The First Amendment of the Constitution not only works to protect this right to the fullest extent possible, but also serves to protect the rights of the people that choose to be offended by these stories.
And with the current debate on why the school board is banning the book and what’s right for the students, it is honestly more problematic to ban the book than to use the novel as a teaching tool. If they want to teach students about the Holocaust, why teach it any way other than truthfully? Students are already very unaware about multiple tragedies that have occured in their own country. The Every Child Matters movement had a huge spike in popularity last year after multiple bodies of Indigenous children were found and most people were just finding out about residential schools and how poorly it impacted Indigenous people and their future generations to come. So, is the Holocaust the next mark in history that is soon to be forgotten just because America wants to look good and supposedly wants to “protect their children”?
Is Censorship Still a Problem? Censorship may seem to be a problem washed away with the First Amendment of the Constitution, but it is actually a rampant problem in some parts of the country, including the masked target of Vonnegut’s letter You Have Insulted Me. Censorship is actually taking hold of many schools elementary and collages alike, from liberals demanding that all “offensive” texts, flags, statues, arts, and writings be banned and kept away to parents wanting their little babies to be kept out of the way of words. The censorship at hand is much like the early stages of what Bradbury wrote about in his famous book Fahrenheit 451 in which, all books are cleansed from the earth through the quick hands of fire. The passages of Bradbury
By true definition, censorship is the suppression and illegalization of speech, public communication, and other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, or politically incorrect as determined by the government in authority. The purpose of censorship is perhaps to protect the people, however, negative outcomes typically follow when this route is taken to control a governed people. Censorship directly attack the main characters of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and George Orwell’s 1984. Although government censorship was perpetuated to create a whole and perfect society, Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 both demonstrate that censorship brought on by the government negatively controls a community’s thoughts, actions, and their people as a whole.
The government is constantly attempting to take total control over society and its citizens, by regulating what is available, what can and cannot be done, and more. In America, it is believed that the citizens ' First Amendment right to freedom of religion, assembly, press, petition, and speech protects them from being able to be censored by the government and other figures with authority, but that is incorrect. The federal government has censored press on various occasions throughout history, contemporary censorship is practiced in non-governmental organizations and corporations, and in schools, as well as public libraries, books are continuously challenged in hopes of them being removed or banned. Censorship, and the government taking total control of what readers can and cannot read is a danger to society because censorship places limitations on the knowledge and creativity of citizens, hinders their right to freedom of expression, and shelters citizens from the harsh realities that are present in today 's world. Censorship places limitations on the knowledge and creativity of citizens.
The First Amendment states, “…abridging the freedom of speech or of press…” When a book is banned, it is denying the freedom of an author to express him or herself and is denying a person the right to access that book. Although banning books is the freedom to express an opinion against the book, it would hurt the author that wrote the book and make them feel inferior. Taken from I Am Very Real written by Kurt Vonnegut, “You have insulted me, and I am a good citizen, and I am very real.” In this, Kurt Vonnegut is showing how when one of his books was banned, how offended and hurt he was by that one action. The people banning the