ENOUGH C3N$0R$H1P!!!
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March 4, 2010 • Laura Ramirez
Filed under Opinion
A wise man once said, “The only valid censorship is the right of the people not to listen.” There is a time and a place for censorship, and high school censorship can be both beneficial and harmful to our youth. While some topics might be too risqué for a high school environment, high school is meant to prepare students for life, and life includes the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Instead of trying to educate students on the difficult reality ahead, administration prefers to keep us sheltered, choosing to discuss more watered-down, “socially appropriate” topics. Everyday we are confronted with news of controversial subjects such as teen pregnancy, rape, drug abuse, religion, and terrorism, but rarely are we allowed to discuss these topics openly at school. Students aren’t as ignorant and naïve as society makes them out to be. We see what goes on around us and we are confronted with these issues on a daily basis. All students ask for is to have a voice at school, and discuss what is really going on in our lives besides reading, writing, and arithmetic. Censoring school newspapers, prohibiting books, and avoiding discussions of hard-hitting topics, are all examples of how students are constantly being restricted from being educated on life, and how it really is in the “real world”. Allowing controversial subjects to be discussed in school would benefit students in life both now and later on down the road.
Difficult topics will always surround students because being a teenager during this day in time is difficult in it’s self. Discussing these topics would be constructive to our awareness, however there are many people that think it would be more harmful to have fewer restrictions over what is aprpropriate for students to discuss in school. Some parents would rather their children be sheltered from certain subjects, usually due to personal beliefs or religious ideals, and in order to reduce complications with parents, administration censors many aspect of our true daily life. School newspapers are forced to write about watered down subjects instead of what truly interests students, and class discussions get shut down when they reach a certain level. Although I do agree that there are some subjects that just are not appropriate for school, there are still many topics that we should be able to discuss which are currently restricted. Censoring isn’t always a bad thing, but it does have a time and place. Adults need to take a step back and realize that they are sheltering us from things that we are going to experience, whether they like it or not.
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Censoring is just mostly adults making decisions for us. How can we grow up and become adults when we are not given the chance to. Censoring everything that the adults think is inappropriate is like hiding in a nuclear fallout shelter when there is no war going on – it serves no purpose at all. Life would be really simple if you do not take chances. Why should adults choose for us? Is it because they think that they are superior to us? If we really do have rights that are “unalienable”, then we should be young adults instead of having everything done for us like children. People cannot grow up if they are not given the chance…
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