Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Week 12-1 Making the Bold Choice

"Essential Question: What is our responsibility to our students, our profession, and our world when it comes to students' right to read and the intellectual freedom to both consume and create media? It's time to deal with all of those questions about the controversy often caused or threatened by cutting-edge Young Adult literature. In this session, we will engage in a Collaborative Critical Inquiry to learn about the student's right to read and intellectual freedom. We'll also learn about book challenges and censorship. In this session, we'll focus on "Intellectual Freedom and Censorship in a Participatory Culture.” Our guest speaker will be Frances Bradburn, Project Director of NC's New Schools Project, a long-time champion for Young Adult literature and the chairman of the first Printz Award Committee." Censorship walks a fine line between protecting a vulnerable population (usually children) and cutting out essential parts of the human experience just because the current dominant culture considers them offensive, politically incorrect, or extreme in some other way . "...For some people the purpose of education is not the investigation of ideas but rather the indoctrination of certain set beliefs and standards." (from NCTE website) I believe that the importance of the community in the battle of intellectual freedom vs. censorship is understated in the NCTE article. The community has the power to support or discredit acts of censorship. Individuals and special interest groups can campaign for their viewpoints but ultimately it is the community (whose limits are defined by the battle lines drawn between the two sets of advocates). Advocates for intellectual freedom need to be aware of both the forum and their audience in order to effectively make their case. I belive that different communities are entitled to differenct censorship choices but overall an American standard for acceptable amounts of censorship should be apparent. One that supports our values and experiences as a nation. As teachers we should be defining and adhering to this standard including defending controversial choices that will benefits and enrich our students and our community.



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