Dear School Boards, I am writing to express my discontent with your decision to ban Sherman Alexies novel The Absolutely

True Diary of a Part Time Indian. While I agree in principle with the decision youve made, in reality, censorship and withholding of knowledge only makes our current societal issues far worse. As an individual who has grown up around small children, I understand how stressful it can be to protect our younger ones from inappropriate subject matter. I completely agree that early on in life, it is wise to play a large role in what goes into those still-developing brains. What I dont understand or agree with, however, is the attempt to protect our adolescents from offensive material. First of all, what does offensive even mean in such a context? Because the adolescent certainly isnt offended when he/she reads a novel about a child being bullied for racist reasons. Nor are they offended when they read about sexual themes; they themselves are just beginning to understand and connect with their bodies. Restricting such knowledge and teaching our adolescents that such things dont happen is not going to protect them. If anything, it is going to make them less likely to be able to deal hardships later on. In the novel, Junior handles his bullies with courage and respect. While it is unfortunate that bullying occurs in our world, simply telling our children to ignore it and pretend is doesnt exist will have a detrimental effect on our society as a whole. If our children were to be able to see the difficult emotions on both sides of the bullying situation, and an appropriate reaction, then it would instill in their psyches an idea of how to deal with such an encounter should one ever happen to them. We should empower our youth; not coddle them until theyre on their own. To illustrate how absurd this censorship truly is, we should look no further than Crook County High School, Oregon. Apparently, one parent was dissatisfied and disgusted with Alexies reference to masturbation in the novel, cited some examples out of context to the school board, and had the book pulled from the library (Baldassaro, 2011). Dear sir/maam: Id like to ask how truly offended you think you wouldve been if you were an adolescent and not a middle-aged man or woman. This information may be shocking to you, but I am going to tell you that 99.999% of adolescents have masturbated before, and are fully aware of how the process works. We truly are delusional if we believe that censoring masturbation is going to stop our children from figuring it out on their own, or if we believe it will somehow make them perverts if theyre exposed to subject matter that includes it. Further, Id like to inquire how many of the individuals involved in banning the book have actually read it in its entirety. As most of you lead very busy lives Im sure, I highly doubt (as does Alexie (Baldassaro, 2011)) that you have a holistic idea of what the book is truly about and what message it conveys. To take something out of context and request a ban because of it is like asking a jury to consider just a single piece of evidence and pay no attention to what all the evidence/facts synthesized together mean. Yet the school boards of Stockton, Missouri and Richland, Washington apparently see this as an acceptable form of democracy. This may sound direct (I mean to offend no one), but if I were to make an assessment of the situation, it seems to

me like those school boards who have made a decision to ban the book are cowards intimidated by overprotective Im-not-afraid-to-sue parents. My only intention in writing this letter is to improve our educational system and our society as a whole. I want to end this mass cultural schizophrenia of trying to censor and suppress subject matter for our children and then expecting them to be ready for anything that comes at them in the real world. Perhaps certain topics can wait a bit for very young children, but we are kidding ourselves if we decide this for our adolescents as well. I strongly disagree with your decision to ban The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, and Ill even go as far to assert that youre wrong: you have not looked at it from the perspective of a young adolescent. Very, very few of you have actually read the book either, and therefore your understanding is limited and your judgment is not sound. While I would implore you to unban the book, that is not my decision to make, so instead Ill ask that you simply acquire all the facts possible, look at the situation from all possible angles, and then make a firm and decisive choice, unhindered by the potential consequences. All the best, Mark Johnson

References Baldassaro, Wolf R. Banned Books Awareness: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. 2011 (11/12/2013) http://bannedbooks.world.edu/2011/06/26/banned-booksawareness-absolutely-true-diary-parttime-indian/