To censor or not to censor

Censorship has always been a part of our society; books, movies, and images have been banned from society for many years. Why do we sensor our media? The real answer is fear. Fear of infection people, citizens, children with what one person deems as a "bad idea".

This past week we read an article in English class about banning the children's book Babar because of its implications about colonialization. However, I don't believe it is right or just to ban any book that has "negative implications". If we ban one book for this reason, it seems that it would be necessary to ban most books that are out there. Most books have some sort of implications about society and I don't think it is any one person's decision to take away the freedom of speech from a writer.

Another thing I noticed about censorship was that it targets books and novels. If a novel has an idea that could be harmful to society, it is censored. However what about the much more critical written works such as opinion columns? Why can we read highly opinionated articles about a variety of issues in the united States but we cannot read a children's book like Babar in certain places. I believe there is a fear that books with these negative implications will become a permanent and ingrained part of our culture.

Most people at some point in their life have probably completed one of those surveys where you are forced to rank 10-20 different items in order of their personal importance to you. Some items that might be on this list are a healthy life, a good education, a well paying job, a family, a million dollars, a new car, etc. Surveys like these force you to prioritize many things that people desire and life allowing people to take a step back and reflect on what is truly important to them in their lives.

A few weeks ago in English class, we completed a very similar sort of activity. The list of items or desires was relatively similar to what you might see on such a survey. Some of the items included a happy marriage, physical health, an end to world hunger, providing worldwide contraception, gay marriage, no abortion, enough money to never have to work again, etc. However, there was a twist. In this activity, we were hypothetically given 100,000 dollars. Instead of simply ranking each item by importance, we had to divide up our assets and decide how much money we would be willing to give to support each item.

I found this activity very interesting. Usually in these types of surveys when you are simply ranking 1-20, there are only so many ways you can rank the items. The directions are very straightforward. However, there is much interpretation left in this sort of activity. One could choose to divide up their money in millions of different ways. There is no one prototype for how this should be done. Some chose to give at least some money to every category. Some could choose to give all their money to one category. Others may choose to divide up their money into four different categories they thought were most important.