Farenheit 451

[Bill Ferny]

I am most definitely advocating censorship!

Certainly those of you who are arguing for the absence of all censorship aren’t advocating that pornography should be available to minors, or that there is nothing wrong with minors being involved in the production of pornography.

Well that is a bit extreme. From the educator’s perspective, censorship is a daily affair, and a necessary exercise. As I said, educators need to determine what is productive and counter-productive to basic indoctrination. They must weigh the free exchange of ideas with the individual student’s ability to freely exchange. If someone is reading LotR in class when they should be reading Emily Dickinson, and the teacher kindly informs that student to place the correct book on the desk, that is censorship. Insisting that students have a firm basis in algebra before attempting trigonometry is censorship. A teacher that tells a student that Marvel Comics are not adequate material for American Literature book reports (whether you agree or disagree) is practicing censorship.

Censorship is one of the primary responsibilities of the parent. Parents make judgments daily about what they want and do no want their children exposed. This isn’t that most parents do not want their children to avail themselves of the opportunity to tackle controversial issues. Its because parents realize that there are some things their children are not prepared to handle in a mature and rational manner, and that there are some things that are just plain dangerous. For example, I don’t allow toy guns in my house. It’s not that I’m pro-gun control and never want my children ever (for their whole lives) make a choice about owning or using a firearm. It’s just that I don’t want my children to think of firearms as things to play with. That is censorship at its height, and I think, given the day and age, a very responsible piece of censorship on my and my wife’s part.

Teach children to evaluate for themselves and censorship becomes unnecessary.

Teach children to evaluate, to make judgments (between good and bad) = censuring, for that is exactly what censuring is. Teaching children to evaluate for themselves is teaching them the art of censorship, thus censorship won’t go away, it is passed on. The goal is to teach them responsible, reasonable, censorship.

Refusing to expose children to ideas that are controversial may seem like the thing to do in the short run, but in the long run it is dangerous and ignorant.

Responsible censorship is the art of determining when and when not a person is able to deal with that controversial material. You can not teach children the art of evaluating for themselves, if you don’t give them first the tools to do so. Going back to the toy gun theory. I hope that my children will have a certain set of values in place, such as guns aren’t toys, so that when they do come across a real firearm they will know that it is a dangerous tool and not something that might be fun to point at another kid.

To censor works of literature, film or television is to reduce human beings to the status of automata, who mindlessly follow whatever idea is put into their heads without thought or question.

Human beings in our society (I’m speaking as an American) have been reduced to the status of automata. In general, the public is pretty much mindless. How can this be in a free society? It is a failure of the educational system, a lack of liberal arts in our high schools and colleges, political correctness, and rampant materialistic consumerism. The very tools that we need to censure responsibly are lacking. We also flood our kids with so many controversial issues and notions without first giving them the tools to deal with them, that they have no choice but to follow the loudest voice in the cacophony, which is more often than not the advertisers. I’m not saying that irresponsible, simple minded, censorship is not a contributing cause, but the censorship that is responsible, that emerges from debate, knowledge, values that go beyond the material, and good old common sense is something that can be used, must be used, to rectify dumbing-down of modern society.