My Focus:

Note: This post is dated as to hover over all other posts permantly. It is a brief explination of my journal, and contains a link to a more detailed description in the first post. -dc

Perceptions, most importantly through words, are our doorways into experience, our windows into knowledge. And when someone says that some doorways should be nailed shut, that some windows must be boarded up and sealed away, it is a VERY serious matter... Especially when the same doors and windows offer to some people the experience of beauty.

Censorship is dangerous because it can create and perpetuate the destructive power of ignorance.

Before we remove a perspective from our society, we must first concretely understand WHY we demand such removal... why one thing is horrible and another is useful...

read more:

http://darkphoenix996.blogspot.com/2006/09/banned-books-censorship.html

An Endcap

Since this is the last entry in my blogg for my Teaching Lit. to Adolescents class, and perhaps the last time I ever look upon this page or these words, I find a sort of end cap necessary. I do realize that my journal has been a bit sporadic and at times off of the mark... but for that I blame my recent movement away from a future in Education. Keeping this journal up to date was a struggle in and of itself.

Which brings me nicely to my first point, and that is a critique of the blogg and the RSS reader. Firstly, before this class I had never come in contact with the concept of the RSS feed and it was completely new to me. I have never been much of a fan of reading the news and current events. I am of the persuasion that television news is biased entertainment whose primary mission is to amass more viewers, and not to present relevant and unbiased news information. This would account for the prevalence of news stories featuring more and more ways for Americans to justify their fear, violence, hatred, perpetuation of the schism in social class, and plain good ol' ignorance. Internet news has never been high on my radar of relevance either, and this is largely due to my disheartening experience with the sheer volume of rumor, bias, and unsubstantiated opinion that circulates around on the internet. Not to mention that I feel (perhaps inaccurately) that any "expert" providing commentary on a subject is dubbed "expert" due to their extreme preference for and subsequent research into only one side of an issue. But I'm being caustic here... and pessimistic.

In actuality, my aversion to news on the internet was probably due to the staggering task of sifting through endless reports and articles just so that I could find the couple things that really interested me. The RSS feed allowed me to tap into what I eventually had to convince myself were accurate and unbiased sources where I could specify exactly what kind of information I wanted to receive.

I must admit, though censorship is an issue that is important to me, it certainly isn't a central theme to my life (and incidentally, nether is education anymore). This made my searches through the generally robust list of articles my feed produced for me more of a chore than an interested search. However, I did find an appreciation for the power of the feed. I certainly began to notice the RSS symbol on webpages where I never would have seen them before.

I eventually began to use my feed for other features: RSSing my popular searches for torrents of information that I was looking for, or RSSing whole webpages so I would be notified whenever they updated. Though I do admit that I hardly ever check my feed now that the class is ending, I do not deny the power that the RSS has, and the efficacy the tool would have had for me if I was more inclined to spend more of my life online.

This did bring up an interesting feeling in me though... a new feeling of empowerment... a new resource or tool that I knew I could use in the future. I wondered about this feeling and the positive benefits of giving this feeling (or more importantly, this technological knowledge) to children in schools. I would digress here about why I think technology is immensely important to a growing and learning student, but I feel I have elaborated at length on the subject in my Gates' Lecture response below, and so won't reiterate myself again here.


The blogg was a bit of a different story for me. Once again, I feel that the change in mindset for me, away from the goals and ideals of this course, made the journal lose a bit of its spark for me. I, for one, love journaling. Ever since I was introduced through my now ex-girlfriend back in highschool to the concept of a LiveJournal (which, in retrospect, probably should have been a DeadJournal due to its early - and I suppose current - content), online journaling and I have had a torrid and tumultuous love-hate relationship. I very much enjoy journaling, though may agree more so with Marilyn Manson on the subject:

"People don't keep journals for themselves. They keep them for other people, like a secret they don't want to tell but they want everyone to know. The only safe place for your thoughts is your memory, which people can't take and read when you're not looking - at least not yet. I'm starting to think that if the Internet is the CB radio of the nineties, then the home computer is the trailer park of the soul, a dangerous tool in the hands of idiots. Eventually self-imposed fascism will destroy man as he convinces himself he doesn't have to think anymore."

Though I perhaps don't completely share Marilyn Manson's familiar Apocalyptic pessimism, I do agree that people don't keep journals for themselves. They keep them for other people... especially journals online. I was in denial about this fact for a very long time back in highschool. I figured that I didn't care whether people read my journal or not, and if they were offended or worried about what it contained... well, they were the ones clicking on the link, and they were the ones choosing to read, so it was their fault. However, I later (much later) realized that if I didn't care whether or not people read what I was writing, then why would I incessantly post on my LiveJournal, just to see what kind of comments people would post... the same comments that eventually would fuel a bitter fire of resentment and depression that I was "misunderstood." It was a call for understanding and attention while simultaneously demanding to be left alone. This relationship wasn't dichotomous... it was just denial.

Which brings me, in a kind of round about way-too-much-info-about-myself way to the bloggs in this class.

I think that an important aspect of the online journals should be the fact that other students are reading them. As a matter of fact, I would encourage you to place within the blogg grade of your class, the fact that students actually read other students journals and comment on them. I felt that this was an area that was sorely missing in the whole concept. When first beginning my journal, I remember checking back a couple of times a day to see if anybody had responded to what I had written... to agree or disagree or correct. But nobody did... Not a single comment. And if it wasn't for your brief comments tacked on to the rubric of the assignment (well after the fact of the writing itself, and not specific enough to relate to any one article) I would have had no indication that ANYONE was reading what I was posting. It began to feel like an act of futility... like I was throwing away my words. When I post to my other journal, it functions as a sort of online bulletin board of my creative endeavors (which, of course, are mostly literal). My small "fanbase" accesses them, occasionally comments on them, and talks about them to me later. This process provides energy for me to keep writing. More importantly though, it makes me want to write better. Because the more people you have honestly reading exactly what words you write and thinking about them critically, the more you're going to think about them and the more effort and thoughtfulness you're going to put into it.

Make the blogging experience more communal.


I would say that I think that blogging and RSS feeding in a highschool setting would be incredibly beneficial, if I didn't believe that serious problems inherently lie in the medium itself. As technology has improved, there also grows a greater and greater tendency to misuse and abuse it. Providing children with computers and asking them to do assignments is like giving a hungry artist a piece of cake and telling them to draw it. Eventually the system is going to break down for the more primal (and in the former case, I mean hedonistic) tendencies. I fear that giving students access to e-mail accounts, would make them want to check those e-mail accounts... all of the time... while class should be going on and they should be paying attention. Incorporating community read blogging experiences has wonderful implications which I believe we addressed in class (linked poetry exercise)... but it also could generate a lot of needless gossip and escalate tensions. (I won't get into this here, as I could at length, but I will say this: bloggs are incredibly powerful because they give their users a false sense of anonymity. It allows students to say whatever they want without a face, a voice, or in some cases even a name attached to it. There's no immediate response to be withstood, and denial can make for interesting situations were a student can say, "well yeah, I wrote that about her... but I didn't think she read my journal.)

Let me try to generalize here: I believe there is always inherent difficulty in giving new technology to students because, simply, it generates the desire to use it for other purposes than for the ones intended. I remember when I was in my Computer class in highschool, when we were supposed to be designing a webpage for some project we were working on, I ended up slagging the project and almost failing it so that I could design and maintain a picture archive site, hosted by my school, for screenshots of my favorite game at the time: MechWarrior II.

Even now, maintaining this blogg and using my RSS feed at the ripe old age of 22, and in college and everything, I found it very difficult to keep myself on task, as may be apparent in the meandering and overly elaborate way this final post is weaving itself out of my fingertips as I type here.

For future reference, make sure you tell your students (as I believe you did tell us) to blogg about something that is important to them... something that they want to learn more about, or something that they are passionate about. I eventually found myself gravitating towards censorship and book banning because it struck a chord in me, as someone who has always been a purveyor of literature which has offended or pissed off someone at some time, much to my mother's chagrin, amongst others. I believe even this journal for school did not escape a couple of cuss words intermingled with impassioned tirades about censorship and the way I'd raise my child if I had the enormous responsibility of bringing up a potential serial killer or president of the United States.


1) Make sure people blogg about what is important to them on a personal or scholarly level.
2) Make the blogging experience communal. Encourage or even require that people post comments on other people's journals. Make comments yourself.
3) Usable examples for how to utilize the RSS feed I think would have helped many students for which the concept was foreign (including me). For example, give a handout detailing a step-by-step on how to get each type of source you wanted our RSS feeds to search in. Make these examples in your handout ACTUAL SITES and searches that your students could use if they wanted to.


I would hope that my comments are well received, as are my entries within this blogg. I will be the first to admit that I'm not exactly the most intelligent person when it comes to detail in my arguments. In a way, perhaps I am a quintessential and aggrandized example of the average American: stubborn, opinioned, vitriolic, and ultimately uninformed. Being an ex-Philosophy major (I hope my marital relationships don't follow the pattern of my affinity for dropping majors here at GVSU), I tend to take things in generalities and argue on the principal of things, rather than on specific events or rather than citing specific examples. The flaw of any great philosophy is that it is completely un-empirical and too beautifully amorphous to be testable. But once again, I'm speaking in generalities, and could be spouting wholly unfounded jargon. Perhaps I have a future in politics.

This entire experience has helped me focus though, and I cannot be grateful enough for the new ability to sift through the endless amount of data on the internet and find only what I'm truly interested in. It's a tool that I will definitely use in the future. I hope that my comments here and in class have been worthwhile... pessimistic as they often are coming from the dark corner of yet another chronically depressed Devil's advocate. Though my path has since diverted from the goals and aspirations I feel the course is reaching towards, I am genuinely grateful for ability to at once be a member of a group, and then to be suddenly thrust outside of it, yet still with foot or two within... like a football player catching a touchdown pass in the end-zone right as he's falling out of bounds, praying his toes touch the turf long enough to score the points he needs.

Hey, if the catch looks cool and counts... they all celebrate in the end anyway.

Response to the Gates lecture

I listened to a recording of the Henry Louis Gates lecture (which Bethany was so kind to endow me with).

I am torn here whether to write on what he talked about during the lecture (the history and formation of the Encyclopedia Africano) or the digital-divide. However, as my knowledge is severely limited on the former subject, and I'm opinionated on the latter, I will address the digital-divide.

Gates mentioned in his presentation a brief bit where he went to Microsoft with the project and they told him that they needed to conduct a survey to find whether enough Black families owned a computer (and thus a market would exist for the encyclopedia). Gates didn't reveal the exact numbers (as perhaps they weren't revealed to him) but I was curious as to what criteria Microsoft had for Gates to get his thumbs-up.

I was also somewhat miffed at the implication that only Black individuals would be interested in the Encyclopedia Africano. I for one am very interested in Black culture (particularly how they have progressed from their customs in Africa, to their progression through slavery, to their portrayal now in the media and the culture-gap between Black and White America now). I might really enjoy the Encyclopedia Africano. Perhaps DuBios had was a bit on the mark when he said that information would be what changed minds. I for one and very ignorant and inexperienced with the Black race, and perhaps a bit of information would do me good. However, I'm sure any self-respecting Black individual would tell me that sitting in an air-conditioned room reading an entry of the Encyclopedia Africano spinning from a CD in the computer my parents bought for me is a poor excuse to growing up and out of the ghetto or living on the streets.

I'm not sure how the digital-divide works across the different factors which divide students: race, gender, SES, and geographic location. I do know that there IS a divide though.

A part of me wants to reject new technology's place in the classroom like I am inclined to reject the newest teaching method to hit the market sans-empirical validation through testing. If there's anything that left-brain right-brain transfer and facilitated communication have taught me, it's that the newest strategies and methods certainly don't make them the best ones. The same thing applies to software. The newest program could look very nice and be marveled to work well... but the first release is usually the one with the most bugs as well.

However, (thinking of Gates' Encyclopedia here) I can remember sitting on my computer for hours as a child, looking up entries on my Encyclopedia Britannica '95 edition CD-ROM. Everything from sting rays and ballistic missiles, to lymph-nodes and moving maps of civil war battles. There were also games within the software which I played that were maze-like, offering clues at each turn which you could research with the CD-ROM to find your way through. Looking back on it now, I can't believe that the "teaching" implications for it actually worked on me. I had no idea that I was learning. As far as I was concerned, I was playing a fun game with a wizard, not leafing through the pages of an Encyclopedia.

I also think of how much I've taken the internet for granted. I grew up in a household that has always had computers and the internet (my father is an electronic engineer) and so I forget just how much of the information I have acquired has passed through that fiber-optic line. In middle and high school, the internet was invaluable (as well as my Encyclopedia Britannica and the New Grolier’s Encyclopedia both on CD-ROM) for projects and reports. Since then, I've always been a bit pissed off when I have been *required* to use a physical source (like a real book) to cite when writing papers or doing projects. I always had to go out of my way to actually find a book, and then awkwardly work a citation or two somewhere into the paper.

My sight is very narrow here. It is difficult for me to understand how someone could not know how to use a search engine... utilize e-mail to send files back and forth, set up RSS feeds, search within sites, and find online searchable versions of texts and books. Such a skill is the epitome of the information age with its superhighway... and it seems like a dream that there are those that don't have it, or don't know how to get it.

I always think that most local libraries must have computers for students to use. But even these must have limited or restricted access to sites, not to mention some may lack spreadsheet software or even word processors.

There is inherent difficulty in creating a curriculum which utilizes technology when individuals or the school is severely limited in funding and know-how. However, as schools are supposed to be preparation for the "real world" a.k.a. a college education, and then the workforce, teaching how to properly use the internet, e-mail, and at least word processors seems essential for preparing children for life.

The effort, I feel, must lie in the teacher. I have always believed that where there is a will, there is a way... and by will, I mean pig-headed, stubborn, like a donkey that won't budge determinism (like Gates told about in effort to get the Encyclopedia Africano into production). I feel that if teachers look hard enough and are willing to invest their time and a bit of money into it, technology can be at least introduced into the classroom to get kids started on it. In the meantime, I don't see where funding is going to come from to bridge the digital-divide.

I feel there may be more things involved than just a surplus and void of technology. I think of it like the food problem. I have often heard it said that Americans *throw away* enough food to feed every hungry person on the planet. The problem is, getting that food to them. Food is distributed in surplus to specific areas where demand is higher as well as money to spend. Then there's issues of transportation... It would be getting a lot of people to chip in in a small way that would make a difference... but such a great change of mind or heart for so many people seems impossible.

Why this? Why that?

This article was taken from an online archive of "The Argus," one of the papers serving the Inside Bay Area [of California] updated 09/30/2006. The article was another "I make my children read banned books and I'm proud of it!" generic type of article, but it contained some information that I found interesting:

Books are challenged for many reasons. Of the 6,364 challenges reported to or recorded by the Office for Intellectual Freedom between 1990 and 2000:

-1,607 were challenges to "sexually explicit" material.
-1,427 to material considered to use "offensive language."
-1,256 to material considered "unsuited to age group."
-842 to material with an "occult theme or promoting the occult or Satanism."
-737 to material considered "violent."

Now take a look at this cartoon which I think is pretty accurate: (PIC)

Why do we see such an inversion? Why are books constantly called out on obscene language, sexual or mature situations, and references to the occult while popular television carries them all? TV is littered with mild obscenities across such shows as the sharply occult "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" and "Charmed" (not to mention the new Cartoon Network episodes of "Witch" and the newest incarnation of the Power Rangers titled "Mystic Force") and the heavily sexually charged "Desperate Housewives" "Nip/Tuck" "The OC" and practically all of MTV's programming. And yet "Of Mice and Men," "Harry Potter," and "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" are being publicly burned?

Something is wrong here.

Tell that Venus de Milo hussy to put on some clothes!

This article taken from the New York Times, is one of the first to get me angry in a while.

Ms. McGee, 51, a popular art teacher with 28 years in the classroom, is out of a job after leading her fifth-grade classes last April through the Dallas Museum of Art. One of her students saw nude art in the museum, and after the child’s parent complained, the teacher was suspended. Although the tour had been approved by the principal, and the 89 students were accompanied by 4 other teachers, at least 12 parents and a museum docent, Ms. McGee said, she was called to the principal the next day and “bashed.”

This is outrageous. This, in part, is what turned me so off to teaching in the first place. The fact that an art teacher can get approval to take her students to the distinguished Dallas Museum of Art with 4 other teachers, 12 parents, and a museum docent... and then can be suspended from her teaching job and "bashed" by her superiors because... what, a parent found fine art offensive? Nudity offensive? Does this parent also cover the mirrors inside the bathroom so the child won't catch a glimpse?

Bitter sarcasm aside, this article presents a very startling issue. It seems like all the cards were in place. There were other teacher and parent chaperones. I assume with such a large group there was information sent home, permission slips sent in. Rationally, there was simply no way that a parent could not know that an art museum might feature nudity. And even so, with logic on her side, along with parent approval (except for one), and other teachers present... one parent complains and she looses her job almost instantly. This is unacceptable treatment of teachers everywhere.

The voice of the majority must not be tyrannized... but it certainly should not be elevated to the status of a tyrant itself.

Obscentiy and "Real World" Preparedness

The article I'm commenting on was written by Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe and can be found at : http://www.trinicenter.com/Cudjoe/2006/2409.htm.

It's a very good article concerning an issue with literature to be taught in schools containing cuss words in it. I'm not sure where Dr. Cudjoe is located, but I would place the relevance somewhere in the Caribbean due to his mention of the Ministry of Education (which they have there) and the CXC or "Caribbean Examinations Council." Cudjoe comments on a recent objection to the use of Ian McDonald's The Humming-Bird Tree in their schools. It's nice to know that this type of thing isn't occurring just here in the states.

Cudjoe had an excellent argument which I thought echoed some of the words in my first post or focus:

Apart from the desire to expunge "literary material that is unsavory" to our children, the Ministry of Education must offer a better explanation of what literary material is selected and why. ...William Empson, a famous English poet and critic, has argued that "The main purpose of reading imaginative literature is to grasp a wide variety of experience, imagining people with codes and customs very unlike our own."

I love the fact that he used the word "experience" in his discussion, just as I stressed in my first post.

The main point about the article that I wanted to comment on was the theme which I felt pointed out that a few cuss words are the least of our problems when addressing the issues of our young people.

I think of significant importance is the impact of the media on our children. We're always hearing about such protesting about books like Of Mice and Men being vehemently protested against in the schools... but when was the last boycott of the media that you remember? What really has more impact upon young people? Because I know that I read Of Mice and Men in high school, and I remembered that Lenny was a dope who liked rabbits, George had to shoot him, and it was a sad but beautiful book. I actually didn't remember the obscenity in it at all (along with much else of the book). But you can better believe that I can recite every single lyric of all the misogynistic homophobic violent and degrading music that I was listening to at the time.

In an age when 12-year-olds are getting pregnant in school, 18-year-old males are getting put on the sex offenders list for receiving a blow-job in an empty choir recital room, and whole crowds of students are being put in handcuffs for drug trafficking (all three of which happened in my small suburban town) it seems a bit silly to be putting such emphasis on taking a book with a bit of the F-word in it out of schools because it's "corrupting our youth." It's ridiculous.

If nothing else I believe (and I believe that this article says) that the presence of these type of things in school helps to *gasp* educate people about them! I remember when sex-ed began and was being protested against... people saying that presenting such material in schools would encourage children to engage in sex more frequently, etc. Was there the predicted spike in teen pregnancy and sexual activity? No. In fact, some sources report that sexual activity is lower now than it was when sex-ed was not in the classroom (but such findings must be taken with a grain of salt).

What better place is there but a school - the institution which prepares our young people for the "real world" - to address issues like obscenity, nudity, prejudice, racism, sexism, and the evils that this real world will certainly bestow upon our children? I know I would want my child prepared.

Incorporating the Real World into Fiction

the following quote was taken from an article on WashingtonPost.com titled

Wrestling With the Lessons of 9/11: Teachers Take Varying Tacks to Help Students Grasp Historical Significance

found here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/11/AR2006091101171.html?nav=rss_education

Of bin Laden, students called him a fanatic who sought to build hatred toward this country. One said bin Laden disliked the United States because of its wealth and power. "It's like 'A Tale of Two Cities,' " said Goutham Peddi, 15, a junior, "the powerful against the poor."

I read this bit of the article and it made me start to wonder... could lessons or even sections of curriculum be planned around historical events in our history? It might be more work than the results would warrant, but it seems a reasonable endeavor to think about lessonplans in context of real world events like 9/11 and think of how to meld the two together. This example of how "A Tale of Two Cities" can incorporate into discussion about real world events is a good one. I think that doing this might help bring out aspects of a text that reading-unfriendly students may not have seen. For example, a student interested in politics and law might have an aversion to reading fiction... maybe instruction like this would help to bring a new light of understanding and appreciation for classic and YA pieces of literature.

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P.S. note:
Another piece to support this from this article:

Many students marked the fifth anniversary of the attacks this week with various assignments and classroom discussions. Brian Jeffrey, who teaches English at Los Osos, asked his students to write a journal entry on what their lives were like the day before and day after Sept. 11, 2001. "It's something I ask my students to do every year as a way to compare and contrast the significance of this event in their lives," Jeffrey said. According to Jeffrey, his high school students were relatively young at the time and their memory of the terrorist attacks has gotten hazy. [...] One student recently asked Jeffrey what year the attacks took place. Jeffrey, who is preparing to teach George Orwell's "1984," is hoping to incorporate the book's themes in discussions of civil liberties and the war on terrorism. The English teacher said as each year passes, his students' perspectives on world events change and they tend to be more trusting of the government.

Banning Steinbeck

The following article is taken from a website called Critical Mass, an online journal "dedicated to commentary on the state of American academe" and maintained by Erin O'Connor, an English teacher at the University of Pennsylvania. This particular article is about how parents in an Ohio school district trying to ban John Steinbeck's short classic, Of Mice and Men, which we've just recently begun (or finished for some of us) reading.

http://www.erinoconnor.org/archives/2003/01/banning_steinbe.html


I have mixed emotions about this issue. When I was in highschool I vividly remember reading this book and staying with it in class for at least a week or two. I immensely enjoyed the book... an sentiment which was echoed 7 years later as I finished it last night while the rain came down and pattered against my roof.

I can see a couple reasons why people would want to ban this book:
1. Profanity (108 counted by the Ohio protest group)
2. Racial slurs (12)
3. Use of God's name in vain (45)
4. Sexual content (unabashed references to whore houses and visiting such)
5. Portrayal of women (Curley's wife, prostitutes)
6. Graphic depictions of death including murder (Candy's dog, Lenny's murder)

I wonder if perhaps the reason people wish to ban this book is the reason why this book is so widely read and appreciated. Obscenity and racism exist. People use God's name in vain. Some women are manipulative. Men like sex and there are women who will accept money for it. People are killed for pleasure. People are killed for mercy. And some people are killed for no good reason at all.

There is something "naked" I think, about good writing. There is something unabashed about a good author's ability to take what he sees and put it on the page. We must ask ourselves, why do we read books like this? Are books meant to show us how things should be? Are they meant to change minds? Should they only show us what we're comfortable with, what we wish for, what we think is right?

Again, I feel that the best policy is to know your enemy. If an author wants me to do something about poverty, would the writer give me a nice story about a poor person who is helped by another out of their situation, or does he/she give me a story about one forsaken by all, who eventually dies in a gutter cursing god as they slowly freeze and starve to death. Now I know which story would move me more. I know which character I would be more attached to. I know which story would be "filthier", which one would make me more uncomfortable, which one would move me more.

Why do we include Of Mice and Men in our studies? What do we want to show these growing adults? What do we want them to feel? I think that highschool should be preparation... preparation for college... preparation for life. And in the real world, no amount of flowery, un-obscene, and comfortable language is going to change the fact that people cuss, fuck, and die.

We don't want our kids going out and having unprotected and/or promiscuous sex with each other. But we know that it happens. So what do we do? We teach sex ed. We tell kids "abstinence is the 100% foolproof way to not contract a genital STD" and we tell them what an STD is. We show them disgusting and grotesque pictures of what can happen. We tell them disturbing tales of viruses and bacteria and disease. Why? Because it's necessary to educate. To show how things are in order to stress how things should be.

Without the ugly, the beautiful does not exist. I think Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is both painfully ugly and at the same time elegantly beautiful because it seems to true and real. It stands before us, naked, blatant, and unashamed. And I feel that touch with something so real and beautiful and ugly is worth having, and worth giving to others.

Banned Books

Banned books shrinking
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.strausnews.com/articles/2006/09/08/the_chronicle/news/20.txt

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I've always found it amusing if not interesting when I see people react in such extreme measures, such as banning books. If there's something that I have learned from my experience with my parents, it's that which is off limits that becomes immediately what is most alluring and desirable.

Though, maybe that's just the kind of incentive that these kids need. Or perhaps, the incentive that the parents need as well. For if Robbie Jr. learns that his mother has petitioned in a puritanical rage for Salinger "The Catcher in the Rye" to be removed not only from the school but from the local library's shelves, hopefully he'll wonder why. Perhaps this will be just the push he needs to find the great book for himself and keep it secretly in his back pocket and read it only when nobody's looking... engaged with the text in such a way that only a banned book could ever do. The text becomes his partner in crime.

I remember back a long time ago, I wasn't allowed to read comic books. My mother told me that they were too violent and devoid of substance as literature. I remember asking to go off on my own in the toystores and as soon as her back was turned, I launched myself towards the rippling pectorals of Batman, and voluptuous beauty of Storm and Rogue of the X-Men. And when I read them... I found out that she was right. There wasn't really that much depth to the stories. And it was incredibly violent. But it was just as she had said it was going to be. And I'm no worse off today. And I have more respect for my mother for telling me the truth about how she really felt, rather than just telling me "comics will rot your mind."

Banning books is, perhaps, inevitable. As long as this country will give its citizens the freedom to say whatever it is that they want to say, there will be people saying things that other people will wish to silence. But every opinion, and I mean every opinion matters. The opinion of the Nazis and pedophiles matter. The racist conversations taking place right now in bars across America, that matters. It all matters because it's real and it's there and it's going to be there whether you agree with it or not. It is the discussion of such matters that brings about progress.

It is always good policy to know your enemy. Having a banned books list is a great thing I think. It shows us what we as a society are afraid of. It shows us exactly what we do need to talk to our children about. If you want to ban "The Catcher in the Rye" it is your American right to say so and to try and do it. But don't stop there. Don't place something far away and say, never touch that because I said so. Bring it up bring it close.

As a matter of fact, if you hate it so much, you should probably let your children read it and show them exactly why it's wrong. Show them exactly why it's filth. And if they happen to agree with you, then perhaps we've just moved forward to a consensus between us all. And if not, the discussion you have about your differences may simultaneously as beautiful and ugly as the book itself. And that's what life really is.