Danis, 1

Samantha Danis
Jessica Morton
UWRT 1103-066
18 April 2016

I disprove what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.- Evelyn Beatrice
Hall

America declared independence from Great Britain in 1776, partially due to the fact that
Great Britain denied citizens their natural rights which the Bill of Rights finally granted them.
Those rights, however, have been somewhat taken away from teachers and students in public
schools by trying to protect students from studying materials teachers believe they are ready for,
but parents are fighting against. As those young students have grown older and become college
students, they have started fighting for warnings on materials their professors deem necessary but
they see as possibly able to trigger PTSD. Hate speech is a current topic of debate and one of the
largest issues of censorship because the line between protection and violation of rights is so thin.
Some people believe that censoring speech and banning books is a solution to problems in our
country. However, all that will do is take away the freedoms our country is founded on.
The Bill of Rights became part of the American Constitution on December 15, 1791
when Virginia was the 11th and final state to ratify it (Howard). The Bill of Rights was compiled
by James Madison from proposal by the states during their ratifying conventions. The

Danis, 2

amendments are direct reflections of the desires of the people and their dreams for this country.
The war waged against Great Britain to provide every American citizen with these rights showed
how strongly our founding fathers felt about them; what they fought so hard to build should
never be torn down. The issues brought to light in this essay deal with possible violations of the
rights granted by the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, which reads:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of
the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of
grievances. (Howard)
The first amendment applies to all American citizens in any situation, however it has
been modified as it applies to students and teachers in school. This does not mean students and
teachers have no First Amendment rights in school, teachers just have to be mindful of the
materials they are using based on certain social, political and religious beliefs in their area.
Public schools were designed to provide every American citizen the opportunity to receive a
well-rounded education free of charge in order to become a productive member of society and a
competent voter. Even though students may not be interested in a certain subject, they do not
have the right to elect not to take it. Teachers often receive backlash from parents who disprove
of material being taught because they do not like the language it uses or it contradicts with their
beliefs. The materials are which receive most of the backlash relate to controversial issues such
as: social issues, religious material, political material, gender, sexuality, race, history, art, and so
on. However, if teachers are compliant with the following Supreme Court decisions, then they
will most likely not receive any repercussion for the material that is being challenged:

Danis, 3

1) Educators enjoy wide latitude in exercising their professional judgment and fulfilling
their educational mission if their decisions are based on sound educational and
pedagogical principles and serve to enhance students' ability to learn;
2) The decisions most vulnerable to legal challenge are those motivated by hostility to an
unpopular, controversial, or disfavored idea, or by the desire to conform to a particular
ideological, political or religious viewpoint. (National Coalition Against Censorship).
Access to a wide range of views, and the opportunity to discuss and dissent, are essential
to education and serve schools legitimate goals to prepare students for adulthood and
participation in the democratic process. (National Coalition Against Censorship). So when
teachers are deciding what books/materials to include in their curriculum the whole department
and administrators are making decisions about the materials based on what the students are
capable of understanding and what will be most beneficial to the students receiving the wellrounded education that they deserve. As the rulings from the Supreme Court above state,
Teachers are not allowed to select a curriculum motivated by hostility to a certain idea, so it
logically stands that they have no intent of offending anyone or making anyone upset from
reading/studying the material that they assign. However, parents are challenging books/materials
from a teachers curriculum saying that their children are not ready to talk about certain subjects
or do not want to expose them to certain language, when many students before them have
benefitted from being exposed to the materials being challenged. By limiting resources and
flexibility, censorship hampers teachers ability to explore all possible avenues to motivate and
reach their students. By limiting ideas that can be discussed in class, censorship takes creativity
out of the art of teaching; instruction is reduced to boring, robotic, pre-approved exercises carried
out in an environment that discourages the discussion of important topics that can offend people

Danis, 4

and make them uncomfortable, but the ability to openly discuss difficult topics is vital to
receiving a proper education.
Of more than 5,000 challenges recorded by the American Library Association over the
past eight years (2006-2014), 1,299 challenges alleged the materials content was "sexually
explicit;" 1,134 objections concerned "offensive language" in the material; 1,062 alleged the
material was "unsuited to age group;" 744 complained about an "occult theme or promoting the
occult or Satanism;" and 474 concerned objections about homosexual issues or "promoting
homosexuality." Other reasons for objecting to materials included nudity (276), racism (219), sex
education content (190), or anti-family sentiments (186). (National Coalition Against
Censorship)
The Library of Congress created an exhibit, Books that Shaped America, to study
books that have had a powerful effect on shaping American life, the following are a few books
from that exhibit that have been banned/challenged:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, 1884
Catch-22, Joseph Heller, 1961
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, 1951
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 1953
Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, 1936
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak, 1963

Danis, 5

The new trend that has made its way into colleges across the country is this method of
censorship called trigger warnings. Trigger warnings, explicit alerts that the material they are
about to read or see in a classroom might upset them or, as some students assert, cause symptoms
of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims of rape or in war veterans (Medina). It is just a step
down from banning a book, but it allows students to avoid a book if they know ahead of time that
it is going to upset of offend them without even reading it. Trigger warnings seem to suggest a
certain fragility of the mind that higher education is meant to challenge, not embrace and coddle.
Any kind of blanket trigger policy is inimical to academic freedom. Any student can
request some sort of individual accommodation, but to say we need some kind of onesize-fits-all approach is totally wrong. The presumption there is that students should not
be forced to deal with something that makes them uncomfortable is absurd or even
dangerous. - Lisa Hajjar, Sociology professor at the University of California, Santa
Barbara.
Students who have suffered from serious sexual assault/rape or are veterans of the war
can have serious PTSD and as a country we recognize that those with severe PTSD get help and
have special accommodations made for their circumstances, which is respectable because they
are trying to move forward with their lives and make progress. However, most of the trigger
warnings being requested are on famous literary works. How can a professor teach on history
and war without showing some graphic pictures so their students understand the magnitude of
what historically happened? For certain materials that can cause an episode resulting from PTSD,
such as pictures or videos referencing war or sexual assault/rape, those should be briefly
preceded by a warning, but there is no need for warnings on an entire syllabus or famous literary
works, like Shakespeare.

Danis, 6

There is a fine line between protecting someone from harassment and hindering someone
elses First Amendment rights. Hate speech is defined as speech that attacks, threatens, or insults
a person or group on the basis of national origin, ethnicity, color, religion, gender, gender
identity, sexual orientation, or disability (Dictionary.com). Hate speech is so new that the
definition will most likely change, and it has yet to officially defined in a court of law. The term
hate speech was coined by todays society to describe, simply, a difference of opinion. Because
hate speech is such a new concept there are minimal court rulings using hate speech as just
cause. Hate speech is not the same as fighting words, words that result in immediate or near
future action, which have been cited for legitimate cause in a court ruling. The problem with
trying to censor hate speech is that the current definition is so broad that it would leave people
unable to state that they do not share the same opinion for fear that legal action may be taken
against them because someone felt insulted. Hate speech is currently categorized as free speech
and is protected under the First Amendment. Since hate speech is so new it is difficult to make
laws censoring it since it does not have a concrete definition yet, so censoring hate speech as it
currently stands would be an atrocious violation of the First Amendment right to free speech.
Slapping warnings on books, and censoring speech to the point where people cannot have
different opinions in not the correct way to solve any problems our country may have. The Bill
of Rights was written and put into place so that American citizens can have rights that most other
countries do not give their people. However, those rights are clearly being taken for granted and
used against themselves. Living in a society where teachers are afraid to teach, professors cannot
properly teach their college courses because all of their materials are marked with trigger
warnings that no student can read, and our everyday speech is censored is not the society our
founding fathers imagined when they wrote the First Amendment. Censoring speech and banning

Danis, 7

books is not the way to fix the problems in our country because all it will do is create problems
and grossly violate the First Amendment in many different ways.

Works Cited

Banned Books That Shaped America. Banned Books Week. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.
<http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/censorship/bannedbooksthatshapedamerica>
The First Amendment in Schools: A Resource Guide. National Coalition Against Censorship.
National Coalition Against Censorship. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.
<http://ncac.org/resource/first-amendment-in-schools>
Medina, Jennifer. Warning: The Literary Canon Could Make Students Squirm. The New York
Times. The New York Times Company. 17 May 2014. 18 Apr. 2016.
Volokh, Eugene. No, theres no hate speech exception to the First Amendment. The
Washington Post. The Washington Post. 7 May 2015. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.
hate speech. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 18 Apr. 2016.
<http://www.dictionary.com/browse/hate-speech>