Dystopian Horror: Banning "Sensitive Materials" is Banning Freedom of Wisdom
- Youth 4 Journalism
- Jun 24, 2023
- 3 min read
By: Joyce Zulueta
Published: June 24, 2023
In a generation where the progress of the youth is the focus of education and the State, it is valid to give them the freedom to know information beyond the four corners of classrooms. However, it is disheartening that it is also the State that is breaking their mantra of greatness and wisdom by passing laws that ban materials that are deemed "sensitive" for the majority of youth.
People may say that taking these deliberate actions is a way to free children from the burden of social issues, but it is a mere act of suppression towards the young. Topics like LGBTQIA+++ can be considered unharmful for educating children if and only if these materials can be used to oppose a tyrannical society. And when sensitivity, which correlates to truth, is banned in the course of learning, then knowledge will never flourish in our youths' education.
The Laws that are made to ban sensitive materials are:
HB 374: Banning of the Bible in Davis School District
HB 2789: Deprivation of budget for schools in Illinois if they are not able to ban sensitive materials used in classes and libraries
SB 1059: Prohibition to publish "sexual materials" in schools in Tennessee
The "Sensitive Materials" that these laws are referring to mostly contain discussions of race, sexuality, gender, and subversion. Even the Bible was banned in schools in Utah because of its presentation of sex, categorizing it as pornography. Lawmakers and supporters claim that such topics are too vulgar and sensitive for children in schools, even though it is in the nature of human beings to be sexually driven. Hence, it is now that it can be perceived that the place where we expect to be open to such discussions and be exposed to the reality of humanity has become a medium of discrimination and oppression.
Further, it is not just Utah, or the US in particular, that does these horrifying takes on literature; it is also experienced in the Philippines. In the year 2022, after the winning of the Philippines' current president, Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr., son of the infamous dictator former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., books with subversive themes and topics were surprisingly banned from libraries and publishing companies by the Commission of the Filipino Language. It was said to promote terror and communism that are quickly opposed by the authors. These authors released a statement imploring their disbelief of the commission's actions and saying that they were killing freedom of expression and showing it directly to the media.
Moving forward, in the material, The Laugh of Medusa by Helen Cixous, she firmly mentioned that no one will ever be able to openly and truly narrate fiction and non-fiction narratives if they are restricted by the norms of society. That we will always and forever be controlled by the hegemony if we are deprived of the freedom of writing in bisexuality, wherein we are able to write about the lives and advocacies of others, may they be the opposite gender or the minority.
Lastly, the banning of such materials results in the infliction of suppressive ideologies not just on adults but also on the growing minds of youth. The state uses schools and libraries as an apparatus to blind the masses and make them believe that their lives are enough as long as they follow the rotten ways of the government and society. The banning of these materials is the significance of a bigger problem in the educational system of countries where they disregard the capacity of their students to learn more of what they know inside the schools. A mere presentation of lack of sympathy to real knowledge.
In essence, this is a call for a movement to be raised and supported to continuously oppose and seek solutions for such dilemmas, as we are more afraid of ignorance than the State itself. And as literature strives further and harder in the arena of technology, let us not deprive our youngsters of the benefit of knowing their advocacies and principles.
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