Despite this morning’s evidence to the contrary, I still stand by my assertion that spring has more or less arrived. Brush a little of that snow aside and my tulips are right where they were.
In the big wide world: The Oklahoma state legislature proposes taking certain teen books out of the hands of teens. This is worrisome because it’s not just a parent or librarian or two raising a fuss in a particular school district. This is a proposed state law that would severely limit teens’ access to the books written for them. Laurie Halse Anderson has some interesting thoughts here, and you can read what I’ve written on this general subject here. While the AS IF! blog has some proposed actions you can take, those who are not constituents of OK won’t have much say in the matter. If you are not in OK, it is still important to be aware of what’s going on if/when the issue is raised in your state.
4 comments for this post
ah, is this what our place will look like tomorrow? two days after i washed my car?
WOW! Is this what SLC looks like right now???
On the censorship issue, I’m a little undecided. I am against censorship in general, and I find there is already too much of it in newspapers/magazines/TV. Not that they should show dead people like they do on CSI and the like, but that the whole story, or the whole truth is not presented us.
On the other hand, I do think it’s a good move to keep sexually explicit stuff out of children’s hands (be it homosexual or anything else). I think some posters/ads should show a little bit less.
And I understand the precedent it would create for censorship, and I don’t really like it. Farenheit 411, anyone?
Am I missing something?
Francois – The thing is that, in any art form, deciding whether or not something is too explicit is not possible without understanding the entire context of the piece. For example, you would probably agree that nudity on MTV Spring Break is different from nudity in a movie about the holocaust. Young adult fiction is very much the same. There are books that are sexy just for the sake of being sexy, and then there are books that include sex as part of a larger story that may be very redemptive and moving. But laws don’t allow for the finer nuances of context—by necessity, because context is highly subjective…from a practical standpoint you can’t have a panel reading every single book from cover to cover and agreeing which books have context that validates the content. For young children, the gatekeepers should be parents. Yes, some parents fail at this but a law about where to put books isn’t going to fix that problem. As for teenagers, I believe that 14 or 15 is the time for them to start making their own informed decisions about what to read. I know some parents would disagree with me. I say that parents who are involved enough to disagree with me are involved enough to monitor their own kids rather than having the government do it.
Ah, I see your point.
I understand the impracticability of a panel, yet I wished there’d be a simple and effective way to take context into account here.
I think you’re completely right about parents: they should be gatekeepers. I guess I’d vote for a panel-type solution only because I know a lot of parents would fail their kids. Now that’s another debate, and lunch time is over!