The withholding of information is a crime against the world. To be deprived of knowledge is a grave injustice to all people. Every citizen of every country deserves a right to know. Oppressive governments and over-protective parents have long attempted to shield the reality of the world by stripping people of their rights to free speech, writing, protest, and self-expression. One of the most common ways of suppressing the public’s knowledge of the world around them is book banning. Whether the pages are burnt to a crisp or simply banished from the libraries, the public suffers as their authorities try to “protect” them. Book banning is detrimental to society.

From the Roman Empire’s Office of Censor circa 443 B.C, to Henry VIII’s creation of lists of banned theology books in an attempt to quell the Reformation in 1526, to Nazi Germany’s mass destruction of the works of Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway, and other Jewish authors in 1933, book banning has been a commonplace form of censoring information from the public (Hull 43-49). Throughout its long history, book banning has taken many forms. The Romans created a position to head their censorship crusade, which eventually became so influential that the holder of said office was “the official upholder of public morals and [was] in charge of prosecuting Roman senators accused of corruption” (Hull 44). Henry VIII chose to use his position of power as king to prohibit the works he saw as detrimental to his kingdom, such as Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses. He prohibited their publication and requiring printing press operators to obtain licenses (Hull 45). Hitler and the Nazis chose a far more direct route, seizing books by Jewish authors or liberal thinkers from homes, schools, and libraries, burning them in massive bonfires (Hull 49).

Even though the First Amendment, ratified in 1791, protects the freedoms of religion, speech, and press, the United States also plays an integral part in book banning’s history. Abolitionist newspapers were shut down prior to the Civil War in an attempt to quell those who wanted to free the slaves. The Sedition and Espionage Acts were passed during World War I to prevent “anti-American” views against the United States government. Countless books, from Shakespeare to Harper Lee, have been banned from American public schools across the country for reasons such as perceived anti-Semitism in the stereotypical Jewish character Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and “offensive language and racism” in To Kill A Mockingbird (Hull 46-54).

In America today, books are banned for similar reasons. Maddie Crum, of the Huffington Post, categorizes banned books into 7 categories: Offensive Language, Sexually Explicit, Homosexuality, Violence, Religious Viewpoint, Drugs, and Nudity (Crum, 7 Reasons...). The most common, sexually explicit material, was challenged 1,238 times from 1990-1998, according to the Office For Intellectual Freedom. Topics following closely behind include offensive language (1,063 challenges), unsuited to age group (1,035 challenges), and occult/satanic material (736 challenges) (Hull 107). Mark Twain’s classic novel, Huckleberry Finn, had been banned countless times from its publication in 1885 for use of the “n-word,” minimizing the true intentions of the story to showcase the relationship between Huck and Jim (Hentoff 20). Also removed from bookshelves for one “red flag” taken out of context include Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (profanity), Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass (religious viewpoint), and Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games series(violence). Director of the American Library Association’s Office For Intellectual Freedom Barbara Jones comments that, “People focus on a word, or a handful of words, and often lift them out of the context of the books” (Jones as qtd. in Crum, The Most Banned...). By banning books for one or two controversial words out of thousands, book-banners further remove information from public consumption.

  Even if not taken out of context, the sheer existence of violence, sex, or other controversial content is enough to garner a challenge or banning, even if the obvious intention is to warn against those acts. Richard Connell’s short story The Most Dangerous Game was banned for acts of violence between two hunters who tire of hunting animals and instead turn to hunting each other. The clear connotation is one of nonviolence, but still  “a Colorado school claimed it ‘only serves to promote school violence’” (Crum, 7 Reasons...). John Green’s smash-hit young adult novel Looking For Alaska, taught in schools across the country, features a very obvious sex scene. Green has stated that the scene exists purely to draw a comparison between physical interaction with a lack of emotional connection to the next scene which features great emotional bonds without physical contact. He challenges groups  that attempt to ban his work, claiming that teens wouldn’t understand or aren’t ready for that information despite the meaning by asserting

  Some people are going to say that kids don’t have the critical sophistication when  they’re reading to understand that, and I have a message for those people: Shut up  and stop condescending to teenagers. Do you seriously think that teenagers aren’t  able to read critically? (Green)

Whether the disputed material was intended as an allegory, a shock tactic, or simply a necessary plot point, people desire to outlaw any and all mentions of content that they deem  inappropriate for the general public.
These people, with the intent of “cleansing” the minds of their community through prohibition of books deemed “unsuitable,” are mostly parents. “According to the Challenges by Initiation, Institution, Type, and Year, parents challenge materials more than any other group” (“About Banned...”). Statistics from the Office of Intellectual Freedom’s database for Initiator of Challenge from 1990-1998 show that out of4,988 challenges recorded, 2,845 challenges were initiated by parents (Hull 109).

As for why she believes adults make up most of the challengers of literature every year, Mary Hull, author of Censorship in America, states, “typically, materials are challenged because adults want to protect young people, and sometimes other adults, from exposure to what they believe are sexually explicit, violent, harmful, or troubling ideas or information” (6). They draw the conclusion that it would drive others with access to said information into “wrong-doing.” In the eyes of some book-banners, when people read George Orwell’s Animal Farm they “head out to the pig farm to kill all the pigs because they’re about to become communist autocrats” (Green). Parents, and administrations, who ban books do so not with the intention of being oppressive, but with greatest concern. They believe that the best way to show their concern is to “protect” their children, and all children, from “wrong and sinful” information.

Book-banners are advocates for eradicating wrong from the world. But, when they attempt to censor content from an entire community that is against their personal beliefs, whether or not the community shares those opinions, book-banners cross a line.The beliefs of one person or group should not effect the availability of information to the public. People who want to ban books do so simply because they don’t want information that contradicts what they believe.  As opinions differ between people, which is the nature of an opinion, book-banners have no clear jurisdiction over what is “right and wrong,” thus nullifying their claims that the challenged books are bad for the general public. However, concerned parents–a vast majority of those on the book banning crusade–have full jurisdiction over what their own children read and are exposed to. If they believe witchcraft in Harry Potter or homosexuality in And Tango Makes Three, to be “unsuitable” for their children, they are welcome to banish those or any novels they please from the shelves of their homes, but when they reach for the shelves of schools or libraries, they must be stopped.

As is stated in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, ratified in 1791, “Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press” (The U.S. Constitution). The banning of books, which is denying the authors of challenged books the freedoms of speech and press, is unconstitutional. In cases of the Supreme Court, such as Board of Education v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982) a New York state board of education banned books they deemed explicit. Students of the junior high and high schools claimed that such an action violated their rights under the First Amendment, and the Court ruled in favor of those whose rights had been violated. In Board of Education v. Pico Justice William J. Brennan Jr. ruled,
Local school boards have broad discretion in the management of school affairs, but  such discretion must be exercised in a manner that comports with the transcendent  imperatives of the First Amendment. Students do not “shed their constitutional  rights to freedom of speech or expression at the school house gate” [Tinker v. Des  Moines School Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 506], and such rights may be directly and sharply  implicated by the removal of books from the shelves of a school library. (Brennan as  qtd. in Hull 96)

By attempting to violate basic human rights secured under the First Amendment, book-banners aren’t only doing wrong in the eyes of those who want access to information they want to prohibit, but they are doing wrong in the eyes of the law.

In order to fully understand a topic, it must be approached from all sides. A complete  censorship–induced bias, what book-banners strive for, creates only biased people. “Our society, especially our younger children, needs to read these books... If we choose to disregard even a highly unpopular opinion, we intentionally choose to live in ignorance, only partially educated in a topic we claim to know so well” (K. Neha). Censoring information available to the public is detrimental to the society as a whole. Had the stories of history been censored, would anyone know the true horrors of slavery, the Holocaust, and countless other topics that might have been deemed “unsuitable for age group?” Book-banning, and censorship as a whole, is a dangerous. Once information is forbidden, one risks the possibility that a whole population might never know the hidden truth.

The banning of the books is harmful. Everyone deserves basic human rights to the freedoms of speech, press, protest, and self-expression. By banning books, although its storied history dates all the way back to Ancient Rome, governments and parents alike continue to desire complete control over the public by withholding information, whether they have jurisdiction to do so or not. The opinions of one person or group should not dictate the opinions of another. People should be allowed to form their own opinions, regardless of one group’s desire to  eradicate that particular topic from the public eye. Without access to all available information and the ability to form one’s own opinion, all people would be narrow-minded robots, never thinking for themselves. An all-access pass to knowledge creates well-rounded, perceptive, intelligent people. By giving people the freedom to read whatever they please, they develop the ability to choose what to believe and what to discard. These better-read people will someday become well-educated adults with the means to make informed decisions.