Persuasive Essay On Censorship In Schools

“Censor - transitive verb: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Censorship has been around for years in America, but has recently been put in the spotlight due to the amount of censored materials in the news, on the internet, and in classrooms nationwide. The works of Shakespeare, Les Miserables, the theory of evolution, and many movies have become victim to censorship throughout the years (O’Neil, 304). This extreme censorship is detrimental to the freedom of speech and education.
As previously mentioned, censorship is the act of suppressing or deleting information that seems inappropriate or controversial. This can be seen in tremendous amounts on the internet in the U.S,
The banning of books with controversial views is fairly common in schools, including multiple well-known contentious books. Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, is a book about a boy named Huck who is kidnapped by his father. He escapes his arrest and joins forces with a man named Jim, venturing with him down a river, exploring and experiencing new things (Bookrags). According to americaslibrary.com, this book is “now considered a classic novel.” Despite the fact, it is still “one of the most complained-about novels in US schools, according to the American Library Association (ALA)” (Akkoc). One school in particular, Friends’ Central School, located in Philadelphia, “has banned Mark Twain's novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because its use of the N-word was not ‘inclusive’ and made students uncomfortable” (Akkoc). Due to the “negative impact on the community [outweighing] its literary benefits,” students do not have to read the novel in class anymore. Even though the book is no longer read by students, it still has a place in the school library. If students are not exposed to the language of the time period, how will they understand why certain words are used, or where they came