Astor Meredith-Goujon

January 7, 2015

Argument Essay 

            I understand that the parents association has asked administration to remove some books from the ELA teachers’ library.  I think that the kids should be able to read what ever they want. But because some kids may not be able to handle all of the books in the library there should be trigger warnings placed on certain books. This would allow kids to know whether a book was suitable or not for them.

            A lot of the time people think that if kids read about murder and taking drugs then they are going to want to try it, which is not true. In the article “Darkness too visible” it says, “Reading about homicide doesn't turn a man into a murderer; reading about cheating on exams won't make a kid break the honor code.” This is very true and shows how people aren’t stupid. Books show the cons of doing bad things they don’t encourage them. If you read a book about a murder and the murderer ends up getting caught or killed would somebody really want to do that? I have read a book about a girl who gets addicted to Meth and had sex at a very early age. I saw all the bad and how much her life sucked and it made me really not want to do any thing in the book that she did. Dark books show people the bad so that they can avoid it.

            Another thing that is good about YA book is that they show kids that they aren’t alone. In a lot of YA books kids are addicted to drugs. Some might say that this might encourage people to take drugs. But at the end of the book the kids usually gets out of their situation and solve their problem. This could help people because the kids will know how to solve their problem and that is helpful. Another good thing about these books is if you have a friend or a family member who is a bad situation the person reading the book can try and get them help. I am reading a book about a kid who is relapsing and is stealing from his parents to get what he wants. When I saw all of the symptoms that he had is scared me. It made me never want to experiment with drugs. People have said that drugs sometimes scare them when they read books where kids are addicted to drugs. But it helps them to understand why people take drugs and how they can help people who take drugs.

            I understand why people would want certain books to be removed from certain libraries. In the article “Darkness too visible” it says, “Yet it is also possible—indeed, likely—that books focusing on pathologies help normalize them and, in the case of self-harm, may even spread their plausibility and likelihood to young people who might otherwise never have imagined such extreme measures.” I think that if someone ends up cutting because of a book they were probably emotionally unstable before reading the book and it’s not the books fault. Books talk about problems and can be interpreted in many different ways. But what books don’t do is they don’t encourage the problems. They try to raise awareness of the problems so that people know about them and they can be solved.

            Banning books is just a way for parents to keep their children innocent. They are uncomfortable with having their kids know about matters that they think are inappropriate. This is not beneficial at all. The reality is that they will know about these matters later in life no matter what. After all the parents know about these matters. Also parents shouldn’t try to ban books in a school library because it’s not the parents’ job to censor other people’s kids. They don’t have the right.