Should schools be able to ban books?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Should schools be able to ban books?
Position‹3 of 3: Banning books is unenforceable
Argument: Books can be read outside of school

Children have access to books outside of school through their home, library, or bookstore.

The argument

The argument turns on the gap between what a school can decide and what a school can actually control. A ban governs the shelves of one institution; it does not govern a child's access to a text. Even if a school bans a book, there are other places and opportunities for children to read it — public libraries, bookstores, and their own home book collections all sit entirely outside the school's authority. Parents are the second link in the chain. Most parents are willing to help their children find books to read, even books a school has removed; they can buy a copy, or take a child to a library to borrow one. A school ban therefore does not sit between the child and the book. At most it relocates the transaction to a parent, a librarian, or a bookseller, none of whom the school can instruct. The conclusion drawn is not that banning books is harmful but that it is ineffective on its own terms. If the stated purpose of a ban is to prevent children from encountering particular content, then a measure that leaves every alternative route open cannot achieve that purpose. A determined reader will simply go around the school and find a different place to read, and the more strongly a child wants to read something, the less the ban will restrain them. What remains of the policy is the appearance of control rather than control itself. On that basis proponents of this position hold that book banning is pointless: there will always be alternative ways to read, which is what makes such bans unenforceable.

Premises

[P1]A school ban does not remove access to a book, since children can still find it at libraries, bookstores, or in their own homes. [P2] Most parents will help their children obtain banned books, so a determined reader can always go around the school to read. [C] Banning books is unenforceable because books can still be read outside of school.

Counter-arguments

A school could be the only place where a child has access to books. Their parents may not have the means to get reading material for the children, or may not want to. They could agree with the school in believing that a banned book should not be read, so they discourage their children from reading. A school could be the only chance children could find a book they truly enjoy reading.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Some children may only have access to books at school.