You Decide: Censorship

Client:

Silver Burdett Press

Audience:

Young adolescents

Goal:

Introduce young adolescents to a decision-making process and provide the information they need to form their own opinions about censorship; one of a four-book series, all written by PAI, that will be published in 1998

Role:

Writing

Does street talk belong in school? The school board of Ferguson-Florissant, Missouri, says no. School board rules forbid cursing. But what if students use curses in their creative writing? Should that, too, be banned?

The students, teachers, parents, and school officials of Ferguson-Florissant faced this issue not long ago. A high school English teacher named Cissy Lacks was teaching her students about dialogue. The students read plays; then they wrote their own.

Ms. Lacks encouraged her students to make their plays about the world they knew. For some students, this meant writing about a world of gangs and street violence. These students wanted their plays to sound real. So they made their characters talk the way gang members often do: They cursed.

The students put on their plays for the class. The result? Ms. Lacks was fired. The school board felt she was wrong to let her students write what they did. She had broken the rules on cursing. Some students and parents agreed with the school board. They felt street talk should stay in the streets. Many also felt that street life should stay in the streets; Students should not write, think, or hear about it in school.

But other students, parents, and teachers disagreed. They felt students should be free to write about the world they know. They felt the school should praise Ms. Lacks, not fire her. Her students had taken the first step toward becoming creative writers. They had turned their experience into fiction. This group accused the school board of censorship.

Censorship occurs when someone decides what someone else can or cannot say, write, read, see, or hear. That "someone" can be an individual. Your parents might censor the movies you watch, for example. But the "someone" can also be a government or a group such as the Ferguson-Florissant school board.

Was the school board right to do what it did? If this had happened in your school, what would you think? How would you make up your mind? What would you do?