5 Replies to “Penguin Authors Stand Up for Free Speech”

  1. This video was really inspirational! Censorship is terrible, and it’s about time people realized that sugarcoating everything for teens isn’t going to help them, just hurt them.

  2. 2 comments:
    1. censorship sucks and I will rail against it in any way I can.
    2. I look almost exactly like John Green.

  3. YES, Censorship sucks, but I really would like for a video like this to acknowledge that people who want to keep ideas out of people’s hands and heads often believe that they are doing it for the greater good. I don’t think we can properly address the harm done by taking books out of the public sphere until we understand that the people on both sides of the censorship issue actually often have very similar goals — they want the very best for their society and the individuals in it. The disagreement is about how to achieve this. This video seems to boil down to “ban censorship” without articulating either the harm done by censorship or what will be achieved by making more stories, facts, ideas, and information available to more people.

  4. I think the problem is that it isn’t up to a select group of people to decide which books should and shouldn’t be available for children, teens, and adults to read. As a teen, my friends and I actively sought out books that had been banned elsewhere for our own reading and if a teen wants to read anything from the Bible, Harry Potter, or a novel by Laurie Halse Anderson bad enough, then they’ll find a way to do so. I think, if anything, it’s up to parents to decide what is appropriate for their child only. If they don’t want their child to read Catcher in the Rye, then they can ban their child from reading it. But for their actions to affect the reading choices of every other teen and adult? It’s a travesty.

    Bottom line: choose what you want to read or what you want your kids to read, but don’t ever think that you’re doing something for the greater good by arguing that those who would censor literature are correct in doing so.

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