The Many Benefits Of Banning Books

Whenever the mention of banning books comes up in literature or conversation, most people picture the ancient times when books were burned in piles of thousands. While this is an event that only occurred at the beginning of the ban on literature, it is nowhere near the end; In fact, different works of literature are still banned today, whether the novella is a year old or one hundred. Piles of literature may not be destroyed in today’s century, but the inability to read everything published still impacts society in a negative way. There have been numerous reasons for the banning of books that have remained constant, including racism, offensive language, drug/alcohol abuse, and more. The most prominent and unjust reasoning for this ban is that
The act of banning books conflicts with the curriculum teachers are given; The Common Core standards for English Language Arts include the idea that: “... students must grapple with works of exceptional craft and thought whose range extends across genres, cultures, and centuries” (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 35). The common core sets the standards for what students must learn within a span of a couple years (K-5 and 6-12); with the banning of books, however, this curriculum can be inhibited greatly, as many novellas that include “inappropriate sexual content” are ones that expand on topics/genres such as coming of age. These coming of age books often times include the expansion of societal problems teenagers and other adolescents face, which include topics about cultural differences, drug abuse, and sexual orientation/exploration. Works such as Judy Blume’s Forever, Stephen Chbosky's Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian are a small handful of important coming of age books challenged because of their so-called “explicit content.” The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, although a challenged book, spans across different cultures; it is an account on the life of a young Native American boy by the name of Junior who documents the struggles he faced due to his race and culture. Each example presented was challenged mainly for its graphic sexual content and withholding these important coming of age books from the curriculum would damage the selection of literature for the State Standards required to pass. Often times, certain pieces of literature are challenged multiple times within a couple of years; if the status of the pieces continuously changes, the curriculum itself must be redesigned. The possibility of ever-changing