- Position‹2 of 3›
- Yes, schools should be able to ban books
- Argument1 of 2›
School books should be banned if they promote hate speech
Hate speech is the public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation. School is the place for young adults to get education and should not be manipulated to be a platform to disseminate hate and violence.
The argument
The argument for allowing schools to ban books is narrower than a general defence of censorship: it applies to books that promote hate speech, and it rests on what a school is for. An educational setting is not a neutral shelf. Material placed in it carries institutional endorsement, and proponents argue that books which display hate do not have a place there for that reason. Hate speech, on this account, is speech that targets a group of people based on their religion, race or gender, rather than criticism of ideas. Its presence in a school library is not simply the presence of a disagreeable opinion among others; it is the school treating the denigration of some of its own pupils as one of the materials it offers them. The mechanism the argument relies on is persuasion. A book makes a case, and it makes it in the reader's own voice, over the length of a sustained reading. Hate speech can encourage readers to agree with the opinions it advances, and agreement is what leads to more hateful thoughts. In an educational setting the effect is not confined to belief: it could lead to children acting out in violence based on the content of the book, with the targets being precisely the pupils the material identifies. The vulnerability of the audience is what distinguishes the school case from the general one. Children are still forming the judgements by which adults discount what they read, and they encounter the material as something their school has selected rather than as something they sought out for themselves. The conclusion drawn is a rule about institutional provision rather than about availability in the wider world. Schools should prohibit books containing any type of hate speech, so that students are not motivated to believe what is being said in them or to repeat it to one another.
Context
Schools must provide access to education on a non-discriminatory basis, prevent harassment that interferes with their educational mission, and socialize students to live and work in a diverse community – and they must do all these things while recognizing that the right of free speech sometimes means the right to say things that are offensive to others. To rise to the level of discrimination, objectionable speech must create a "hostile environment." Under Supreme Court decisions, discrimination occurs only when harassment is so severe, persistent, amd pervasive that it creates a hostile or abusive educational environment and adversely affects a student’s ability to benefit from an education program. Notwithstanding guidelines of the U.S., many schools penalize and suppress speech because it might be offensive to others. On the one hand, this is understandable, as schools strive to socialize students and prepare them to live in a democratic diverse community. Therefore, booking promoting hate speech should be banned.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Restricting books with hate speech is a violation of the First Amendment. People have the right to Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Expression, even if it is opposing another individual or group.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P2] This violates the First Amendment.