Really, are there ideas in books that you don’t want your children exposed to? That seems over-simplified and cruelly ironic. With insanely caustic ideas in everyday American life like internet porn, guns for sale at Walmart, school bullying, opioids, alcohol, relatively easily available pot, and vaping—a recent stupid choice—all freely allowed, perhaps your concerns might be a bit misdirected?

That children’s “exposure” notion is a familiar description of disapproval. It implies some kind of contamination that greets an otherwise chaste young reader or listener engaged with the “wrong” kind of story or description. It demands that we choose to limit a child’s thinking and allow little, if any, discussion of deviation from idealized normative behavior. 

Banning books or its equivalent, banning thought, means that no intelligent and in-depth inquiry should ever be applied—or allowed. Consequently, we literally force all these pure little darlings to learn many of life’s growing-up lessons not from literature or academia, but on social media from their phones. There, for example, they will be greeted to a most wretched display of sex as violence, dominance, bestial behavior and cruelty—but may have never had read about any of life’s emotionally complex alternative behavior or content.

This is not unlike the “old days” when one learned about sex in the streets. Perhaps like you, as a child or adolescent, I guiltily wondered about this “taboo” subject and had years of lingering questions. Biology classes, health classes and simply maturing helped, but the timing of the answers to my questions was often not quite right, and there always remained some personal ignorance that could have been remedied with a frank explanation or two, maybe from a book? 

When we seek to disallow thoughts and discussion, we reject reason and cheat everyone, especially our children. In life, young people are not unlike naïve consumers on a shopping spree, but with limited purchasing power. Would we urge them to buy quickly and without understanding the implications of their actions? 

In the world of books and ideas, the actions are abstract and precede any trauma that the material actions of life can often bring. Within the world of books, children can come to understand that growing up is always a challenge for every child and that their doubts and struggles to make sense of things are normal; nothing new. As adults, we can only do our best to help guide our children’s journey through their “growing up.” The ammunition for our guidance and theirs is ideas, not the lack thereof.

Support your local library and help ban book bans.

John Pace lives in Honesdale, PA.