Adopted: July 1993
Revised: January 2017
Download 603.2.2.4P - The Right to Read
An open letter to the citizens of our country from the National Council of Teachers of English:
“Where suspicion fills the air and holds scholars in line for fear of their jobs, there can be no exercise of the free intellect…A problem can no longer be pursued with impunity to its edges. Fear stalks the classroom. The teacher is no longer a stimulant to adventurous thinking; she becomes instead a pipe line for safe and sound information. A deadening dogma takes the place of free inquiry. Instruction tends to become sterile; pursuit of knowledge is discouraging; discussion often leaves off where it should begin.”
Justice William O. Douglas, United State Supreme Court:
Adler v. Board of Education, 1951
The right to read
The right to read, like all rights guaranteed or implied within our constitutional tradition, can be used wisely or foolishly. In many ways, education is an effort to improve the quality of choices open to all students. But to deny the freedom of choice in fear that it may be unwisely used is to destroy the freedom itself. For this reason, we respect the right of individuals to be selective in their own reading. But for the same reason, we oppose efforts of individuals or groups to limit the freedom of choice of others or to impose their own standards or tastes upon the community at large.
The right of any individual not just to read but to read whatever he or she wants to read is basic to a democratic society. This right is based on an assumption that the educated possess judgment and understanding and can be trusted with the determination of their own actions. In effect, the reader is freed from the bonds of chance. The reader is not limited by birth, geographic location, or time, since reading allows meeting people, debating philosophies, and experiencing events far beyond the narrow confines of an individual’s own existence.
In selecting books for reading by young people, English teachers consider the contribution which each work may make to the education of the reader, its aesthetic value, its honesty, its readability for a particular group of students, and its appeal to adolescents. English teachers, however, may use different works for different purposes. The criteria for choosing a work to be read by an entire class are somewhat different from the criteria for choosing works to be read by small groups.
For example, a teacher might select John Knowles’ A Separate Peace for reading by an entire class, partly because the book has received wide critical recognition, partly because it is relatively short and will keep the attention of many slow readers, and partly because it has proved popular with many students of widely differing abilities. The same teacher, faced with the responsibility of choosing or recommending books for several small groups of students, might select or recommend books as different as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Jack Schaefer’s Shane, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, Pierre Boulle’s The Bridge over the River Kwai, Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, or Paul Zindel’s The Pigman, depending upon the abilities and interests of the students in each group.
And the criteria for suggesting books to individuals or for recommending something worth reading for a student who casually stops by after class are different from selecting material for a class or group. But the teacher selects, not censors, books. Selection implies that a teacher is free to choose this or that work, depending upon the purpose to be achieved and the student or class in question, but a book selected this year may be ignored next year, and the reverse. Censorship implies that certain works are not open to selection, this year or any year.
Wallace Stevens once wrote, “Literature is the better part of life. To this it seems inevitably necessary to add, provided life is the better part of literature.” Students and parents have the right to demand that education today keep students in touch with the reality of the world outside the classroom. Much of the classic literature asks questions as valid and significant today as when the literature first appeared, questions like “What is the nature of humanity?” “Why do people praise individuality and practice conformity?” “What do people need for a good life?” and “What is the nature of a good person?” But youth is the age of revolt. To pretend otherwise is to ignore a reality made clear to young people and adults alike on television and radio, in newspapers and magazines. 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 frustration people experience, books about people not only as they are but as they can be. English teachers forced through the pressures of censorship to use only safe or antiseptic works are placed in the morally and intellectually untenable position of lying to their students about the nature and condition of mankind.
The teacher must exercise care to select or recommend works for class reading and group discussion. One of the most important responsibilities of the English teacher is developing rapport and respect among students. Respect for the uniqueness and potential of the individual, an important facet of the study of literature, should be emphasized in the English class. Literature classes should reflect the cultural contributions of many minority groups in the United States, just as they should acquaint students with contributions from the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
The Threat to Education
Censorship leaves students with an inadequate and distorted picture of the ideals, values, and problems of their culture. Writers may often represent their culture, or they may stand to the side and describe and evaluate that culture. Yet partly because of censorship or the fear of censorship, many writers are ignored or inadequately represented in the public schools, and many are represented in anthologies not by their best work but by their “safest” or “least offensive” work.
The censorship pressures receiving the greatest publicity are those of small groups who protest the use of a limited number of books with some “objectionable” realistic elements, such as Brave New World, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, Johnny Got His Gun, Catch-22, Soul on Ice, or A Day No Pigs Would Die. The most obvious and immediate victims are often found among our best and most creative English teachers, those who have ventured outside the narrow boundaries of conventional texts. Ultimately, however, the real victims are the students, denied the freedom to explore ideas and pursue truth wherever and however they wish.
Great damage may be done by book committees appointed by national or local organizations to pore over anthologies, texts, library books, and paperbacks to find passages which advocate, or seem to advocate, causes or concepts or practices these organizations condemn. As a result, some publishers, sensitive to possible objections, carefully exclude sentences or selections that might conceivably offend some group, somehow, sometime, somewhere.
The Community’s Responsibility
American citizens who care about the improvement of education are urged to join students, teachers, librarians, administrators, boards of education, and professional and scholarly organizations in support of the students’ right to read. Only widespread and informed support in every community can assure that
- enough citizens are interested in the development and maintenance of a superior school system to guarantee its achievement;
- malicious gossip, ignorant rumors, and deceptive letters to the editor will not be circulated without challenge and correction;
- newspapers will be convinced that the public sincerely desires objective school news reporting, free from slanting or editorial comment which destroys confidence in and support for schools;
- the community will not permit its resources and energies to be dissipated in conflicts created by special interest groups striving to advance their ideologies or biases, and
- faith in democratic traditions and processes will be maintained.
References:
- National Council of Teachers of English, reaffirmed November 2012