How Can Literature Not Be Taught In Schools

Different literature is often banned in schools and one of the main causes of this is because of what is considered inappropriate language for the students. Most texts should not be banned or challenged due to profanity and should stay incorporated in the curriculum by teachers for students to learn from due to the learning and lack of negative consequence that they cause. The largest group to request books to be taken out of curriculums is upset parents and many times it does cause the school to have to remove it. Parents might object to the language in a book and not want their children exposed to it but many important novels such as The Kite Runner and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time ("Top"). These books both are much
more than the profanity that was cited to ban them. The Kite Runner is a novel that discusses a mature topic and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time showcases a character with asperger syndrome that is beneficial for students to understand the thought process of someone with autism. With over 1,200 books challenged due to offensive language from 2000-2009 a lot of classrooms were affected by this ("Top Ten Frequently Challenged Books Lists of the 21st Century"). It is important to look at the impact that this censoring has on the parents, teachers and students. In a school environment profanity is used frequently for emphasis and attention so profanity in a book would not have an impact on that.
In a school environment it is impossible to control everything that a students is exposed to and hears.When a book is banned due to profanity it is to control what a students hears yet in a school worse language is heard everyday. If a book is read in a class it is not as though it is encouraging every event that occurs; after a student reads Shakespeare they are not going to go out and talk in Early Modern English. A concerned parents may assume that being exposed to language will have an impact but it would be due to their environment no the book they read in english class. Having profanity will not increase the likelihood that a students will curse. In fact, in a typical high school environment students hear from 80 to 90 curse words a day which is more than most books banned for profanity have (Glover); and “0.7% of the words a person uses in the course of a day are swear words” (Steinmetz). To be concerned that a book with several swears may have an impact on language of a student seems injudicious because of the everyday setting for a student. When questioned on whether swears read in books during class had any impact on the language used outside of class one students said that, “In the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the n-word is used a lot, and in class nobody wanted to read the word out loud, because we already knew it was
wrong. The book did not encourage us to say it” (Beaulieu). Books do not create a school environment more susceptible to profanity, that is an example of a faulty causality. Due to the amount of profanity that a student hears everyday it would be unrealistic to have books that don’t include any inappropriate language; students most easily relate to what they can identify themselves in. To include books that have diverse and important topics but have characters react in a way in which no profanity is used would be unrealistic. Students benefit when books are read that question the way they think and introduce new ideas. In fact, it may be difficult for students to relate and connect if characters talk in an unrealistic censored way. Students should be exposed to important topics that include realistic but challenging things such as death or war. ("Banned"). To bring up these topics but expect no foul language does not work. The use of racial slangs is a part of history, it would be as though glossing over that part of history to pretend otherwise (Wolfe). In an interview with a parent about how she felt about the language in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn she stated that, “‘I remember reading that in high school and feeling like I knew more about that time period after finishing it. I would be disappointed if something was removed from the curriculum purely from the language in it” (DePalma). It would be wrong to censor out a part of history because of derogatory words that were more of commonplace at that point. Teachers want their students to be exposed to all parts of history and all points of view and to do that it is necessary to read a large variety of books. That variety includes books that were written in time periods where racial slurs were more apparent. Students are taught about the more grim parts of history, so in a similar way they should learn about the more grim parts that can happen in life as they become mature enough to handle it. If they are in a high level class then they have the maturity to match that. If they are placed in a honors class then they have been acknowledged as more mature and able to handle more mature topics. This shows the teacher that they are ready to be exposed to higher level texts that may have profanity. For a teacher to have to change a lesson because a parent may complain ruins all of the other student’s chances to be given a challenging age appropriate text. To not teach a book because of profanity is sheltering a student which may cause them to not be able to be exposed to real world topics. The Kite Runner was the seventh most challenged book in 2014 due to language but it deals with rape which is a topic that is not broughten up in classes but is something that people should be informed about ("Top Ten Frequently Challenged Books Lists of the 21st Century"). Not teaching books that have profanity ruin chances of reading novels that have merit and are considered some of the best books to be written.
The Kite Runner has five swears in it and two of them are when a character referred to Baba is drunk and says, “‘Because if I don’t go down, I’m tearing him to pieces, goddamn him father’” (Hosseini 116). The profanity here is developing his character and showing how in distress he is on a topic. It is used for emphasis and would be less impactful without the swear. In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time swearing is used throughout the novel but this is because it is told from the point of view of a teenager with aspergers so he writes down dialogue exactly as he hears it. However, the main character, Christopher Boone, can not understand emotions so he can, “ not register their feelings, [so he] puts in no exclamation marks” (Mullan). The book starts with Christopher finding his neighbor's dog dead so he goes to look at it which causes his neighbor to react by shouting, “‘Let go of the fucking dog’” (Haddon). To fully capture the events that lead to Christopher’s reaction it is important to have a realistic story. The events that transpire after Christopher is shouted at are informational to how someone with a form of autism views a stressful situation. The language also serves to show how he does not comprehend the tone or implications of what is being said. By not have exclamation marks it is shown that even using
profanity does not cause him to understand that she is being emotional. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time has won many awards such as the Whitbread Book Award, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. The novel would not have won prizes for being a children’s book if it were deemed too profane to read in school. It would be a missed opportunity to leave either of these books out of the curriculum because of several words out of the whole novel. By banning books based off of the language choice is unfair to the students and teachers being directly affected. A parent might think that a book will have a negative impact on their child but the diverse topics that are necessary to be covered for them to mature include profanity (In-Depth). By having uncensored characters and situations a more realistic novel is created allowing students to be able to relate and understand. This does not mean that young children should be reading books that are not targeting their age group. In the same way that history is taught with few details about wars but then more in detail as students get older books should be given out in the same way. As students develop as readers they should be given more advanced topics in a tiered progression to be certain that they would be able to maturely handle it.