Blog #7

This week's readings on censorship is a familiar issue to anyone involved in education, and one I have thought about, but Elizabeth Noll's article challenged me and drew my attention to aspects of it I have never considered.  Since I fall into the category of people who could be called a "people-pleaser" I know already that I am someone who would self-censor material I choose in a classroom.  I believe that as teachers we are called on to exercise our best judgement, but also stick to what we believe in, so the first question I have would be "Is self-censorship a bad thing?"   I am certainly not going to purposefully choose something that pushes the boundaries or is known to be controversial, but at the same time, I need to choose material that best fit my purposes for a particular unit or area of study and I want to do what we have been discussing in ad-lit, which is be able to choose books that might offer opposing viewpoints or expose a variety of points of view.  In doing this, I very well could choose something that a parent (or anyone) might find objectional.  The statement by the NCTE notes the increase in cases of censorship and the wide spectrum of these objections, which certainly points to the fact that as new teachers entering the field, the chances of any one of us facing this are very high!  In considering the issue of self-censorship, I think that if a teacher makes a well informed decision using the best judgement based on knowing their students in the classroom, they will probably not have a problem.  That being said, I also recognize that it is nearly impossible to know what parent/guardians or students may think about a particular book or what kind of judgements they may make about literature in the classroom.  The other aspect of this is to consider the racial dynamics of the classroom.   I would teach To Kill A Mockingbird differently to an all white class as opposed to a class that is racially diverse.  Webb noted the importance of considering diversity and the comfort/discomfort of a minority student.  I hope to always be sensitive toward a student and consider their comfort level before asking them to speak for all of their race. 
I particularly like the method of Kara, the teacher in Noll's examples whose approach was to face the issue "head on together" (63).   It seems to me that to approach the issue by including the students with teaching about the issue and allowing them to look up different cases and examples of censorship is the best way to create awareness of the issue and also allow them to voice their feelings about books that have been censored.  It would also give me a greater handle on how students respond to literature and what kinds of literature they might like.
In connection to this issue, a long quote from the NCTE statement stood out to me.  "English teachers must be free to employ books, classic or contemporary, which do not lie to the young about the perilous but wondrous times we live in, books which talk of the fears, hopes, joys and frustrations people experience, books about people not only as they are but as they can be" (3).  This quote is important in the context of how censorship limits learning possibilities.   Essentially, by eliminating books or, to not present literature of all spectrums is to "lie" or present only a certain point of view.  Student choice should be directed from inside the classroom with a teacher who knows them and is familiar with what they are learning, not by outside sources that declare certain literature "off limits."  Some students might not want to read a certain book, and in that scenario, I would allow them a choice, but I would never try to tell a student that certain books are off limits.   When I was young and my mother took us to the library, my sister brought home a Harlequin romance, when my mother saw it, she declared it off limits.  Needless to say, my sister was more determined than ever to find out what was in that book and she did!  I hate to admit, so did I, but I think it speaks for itself that human nature, once told something is off limits, has the impulse to find out what it is that is being withheld.  At any rate, it is hard for me to imagine how people find censorship beneficial.
Finally, I really enjoyed reading Feed and making its larger connections with information and how we as humans use information, but I'll admit to really struggling with how Titus treated Violet toward the end of the novel.  Why?!  What was his problem?!  I had to get that off my chest before class on Wednesday.  Maybe he had simply become numb to normal human emotion, and figured Violet could simply be discarded.  I think I was secretly hoping that Violet would successfully resist the Feed.  I'm glad we had to read Feed because it definitely is outside my normal genre, and a book I probably wouldn't have chosen on my own.