Book bans are a slippery slope

On Oct. 19 the National Post reported that a large Ontario school board warned teachers that the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, a book listed in the curriculum, should not be read in their classes.

The reasons stated were that the novel contains elements of violence and racism and could therefore be harmful to black students.

Similar accusations could be levelled against Shakespearean plays such as Othello, The Merchant of Venice, and The Taming of the Shrew. In fact, there must be many other authors whose works could now, for one reason or another, be considered as politically incorrect, including Dickens, Hardy, Shaw, Wilde and even Conan Doyle and the inoffensive Jane Austen.

There are also children’s books which contain elements of violence, including The Chronicles of Narnia, Watership Down, and The Wind in the Willows (Pistol for Ratty; Pistol for Mole.)

When I was teaching English literature in high school, I always took the time to explain to my students the historical and cultural context of such works. It seems that the members of the school board do not trust their teachers to be capable of doing likewise.

Have we become a nation of such insecure wimps that we cannot expose our students to any ideas which are different from our own? After books are banned in schools, the logical next step will be to remove them from the shelves of the public libraries.

How soon will this progress to the burning of books, and who will judge which volumes must be consigned to the flames? Or, to be absolutely sure no one is ever offended, perhaps we should just burn ’em all.

Christine Whitaker, Edgeley