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How have your various roles based on your age,family background, societal position, religious beliefs and profession influenced your stance on censorship of children’s literature collections?
Module 3.4
I fit a white anglo saxon, middle-class background.
I was in the majority group for my suburb when we moved here, however, that is rapidly changing, and the diversity of cultural backgrounds is increasing. Despite this, I still feel like I am in the majority, so I don’t feel any sense of difference because of my culture.
The library where I work is very diverse and this has highlighted the nature of the collection as being dominantly from a white perspective. Through collection development, I have begun to build resources reflecting our diverse population however texts that offer diverse characters or authors from other countries are in the minority. Toby Rajput’s statement that we should teach critical thinking so we don’t need to remove any books from our shelves (National Louise University, 2012), is a great value. We can appreciate the work of an author, however look at the work as a particular attitude at a particular time.
This idea can help me to encourage students to critically think about the attitudes portrayed in texts and whether they are acceptable today. Awareness of a need to balance our collection is at the forefront of my mind, but it’s also crucial that we analyse the texts we have in the collection considering the values we hold today.
Censorship can be a grey area in collection development in a primary school. A robust policy regarding challenged materials is important, allowing a broad range of texts to be available. However, individuals can have very strong personal opinions that they believe should be common to all in a community. Sensitivity by library staff and the school principal comes into play whilst taking into account free choice in reading.
National Louis University. (2012). Stereotypes in children’s literature [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbxoNDkuHdo
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