Censorship as Patina
A patina is a layer or coating that appears on metals or other surfaces as a result of age or exposure to elements like chemicals or weather
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Sometimes, as when it is used to describe wood furniture, the word patina has positive associations, as it indicates a mellow surface that comes with waxing and care, lending "character" to a piece. Other times, however, the word refers to undesirable surfaces caused by corrosion. Nicks, cracks, or crusts cover a more desirable and valuable layer. It is from this latter meaning of the word that we draw our second metaphor.
We see censorship as patina when book challenges and banning serve to cover, hide, or obscure the ideas that are important for deepening concepts, seeing from different perspectives, and understanding universal qualities of humans and events. Many of us who teach literature do so because of the power of books to stretch and open minds to new ways of looking at the world and to new experiencesalbeit vicarious.
Like Freedman and Johnson (2000), we are aware of the "power literature has to engage young people in deliberate questioning, genuine dialogue, and critical reflection" (p. 358). It is through literature that a child can learn how the world beyond his window works or an adolescent can discover personal attributes that she can weave into who she wants to be.
Good literature can also expose human frailty and historical injustice; Willy Loman's story (in Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, 1949), can be a cautionary tale, as can the one told by Scout Finch (in To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee, 1960). Donelson (1993) pointed out the great power of books: "Some books challenge us, make us think, make us wonder, make us doubt" (p. 17). It is these books, Donelson says, that make reading so importantbut also so dangerous to those who would indoctrinate instead of educate:
Education implies the right of students to explore ideas and issues without interference from anyone, parent or teacher or administrator. Indoctrination implies the right to force onto students certain values determined by what purports to be the dominant culture.... Banning books or screening out "dangerous" issues or "controversial" ideas from classroom discussion typifies a school dedicated to indoctrination. And when the rights to inquire and question and even doubt are denied young people, education inevitably degenerates into indoctrination, (p. 15)
When teachers and librarians are forced by challenges from parents or interest groups to remove books from their curricula and library shelves, they must subordinate their pedagogical knowledge about the importance of sharing timeless ideas from good literature to their instincts for self-survival. Thus, these challenges, or the censorship that too often grows out of them, act like a patina, a layer of corrosion that effectively seals beneath itself the wealth of our nationthe values and ideas that we live by in a democratic society.
A challenge to Briar Rose in Vermont in 1999 nearly became just such a seal when a mother of a middle school girl asked that Yolen's book be pulled from the school library, thereby removing itand its important lessons about prejudice, hatred, and injusticefrom the reach of all the students in the middle school.
Claiming that the book "doesn't have much to say about the Holocaust," the mother said, "The book features widespread profanity and sexual themes...." After a public hearing, a specially formed challenge committee comprised of parents, townspeople, and educators decided to keep the book in the library.
An editorial commenting on the case and its subsequent conclusion in the Barre, Vermont Times Argus (Teaching Tolerance, 1999) commended the decision and reminded the newspaper's readers how important ideas about diversity like those presented in Briar Rose could be to young people living "in such a homogeneous state" as Vermont.
Further addressing the mother's claim that the book made her daughter feel uncomfortable, the editorial continued: "And yet this is the active ingredient in all education: To experience the collision often violentbetween one's own view of the world and the world's view. By postponing that collision, we do our children no favors". The editorial makes clear that hiding the unpleasant or unjust beneath a veneer of denial or distortion of facts does not protect young people, but merely makes them unprepared for what life will present in the future.
Censorship as Patina
By: endeavor
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