A disillusioned generation

A DISILLUSIONED GENERATION

[REDACTED] — TOO INAPPROPRIATE FOR DEVELOPING MINDS

Written by Darya Jafarinejad

You want to know the easiest way to break a school rule without getting expelled? Go read The Breakways, a graphic novel about an all-girls soccer team. That’ll show Big Brother!

According to the American Library Association, this novel was banned in the 2021-2022 school year in all elementary schools at a Houston school district because it discusses issues regarding gender identity, puberty and race in ways pre-teens can digest—truly a menace to society.

Unfortunately, this graphic novel is only one piece of a very large puzzle in the recent crackdown on educational materials here in the USA. You may think California is exempt from this due to its liberal population, but in reality, the censoring and editing of education is a nationwide problem.

There is the argument that some content is too controversial for ordinary audiences and young students, so censorship is a necessary evil. However, censorship has graduated into manipulation, as by omitting certain truths, the large gaps are then filled in with appalling misinformation. For instance, one of the most prominent lessons we are taught as children is the origin of Thanksgiving: we learned how the pilgrims and the “Indians” (as the correct term, Native American, is not generally discussed) joined in a peaceful communion and they all lived happily ever after. While genocide is a difficult term to explain to children, why do we need to tell them how Thanksgiving started at all?

Because children are still developing and very vulnerable to manipulation if you tell a child early on a false history, they will believe it without challenge or protest. In this way, false histories are perpetuated for generations. Even when the truth is revealed, it is still white-washed, as much of the abhorrent brutality which occurred is still hidden, and only upon conducting deep research are the heinous acts of colonizers revealed. And history books which do detail these intense traumas are, of course, banned by schools.

History is not the sole manipulated subject. Any concept or teaching which falls outside the white, heterosexual, cisgender norm is perceived as dangerous—and in a way, it is.

Nonconforming educational subjects threaten the established societal hierarchy and regulations. Those who benefit from the current system of power are fully aware of this. Comprehensive, inclusive and non-whitewashed education would provide people with essential knowledge, which would significantly empower us. This is why the elite have stuck their grubby fingers into our education—they cherry-pick all the information which portrays them as saviors and omit the mountains of information that doesn’t, in order to keep us ignorant, thus undermining our own power. Then, they use children as a shield to cower behind. “We are doing this for the sake of the children!” they proclaim, “We must not let them be exposed to our previous crimes, so that we may continue to commit those same injustices against them!”

The way modern education is dictated and structured serves to strengthen our ignorance and allow for embellished, harmful doctrines to be implanted in our minds before we are mature enough to question the quality of content we are being force fed.

For example, many classrooms forbid the teaching of LGBTQ+ content. The primary reason- which is very unreasonable- for this prohibition is that children will become confused and corrupt. However, oftentimes, people know from childhood their own sexual orientation and gender identity, and it is precisely this banning of vital knowledge that confuses the children. A child can know that they are queer, trans, etc., but they become confused because they have no means of articulating it, for the word that is integral to their identity is verboten. Children can understand, however, the implicit societal message: you are not welcome here. The lack of knowledge conveys the doctrine that any nonconforming persons are outcasts from society, which generates low self esteem and feelings of isolation from society, harming a person internally. The fact is, the children were never the concern, but rather the religious ideals fashioned by old white men centuries ago were. For some reason, the latter is seen as more worthy of preservation, at the cost of thousands of human beings’ dignity and soul.

Not only are we woefully misinformed, but we are also instructed to despise those facts that challenge the status quo. Whenever the opportunity arises for necessary change in educational settings, a massive uproar ensues, and the misinformed, hateful people the corrupt education system spat out are the ones who vehemently protest any change. While the powerful devise a feast of deception, their star pupils dutifully carry out their dirty work.

Essentially, we are indoctrinated into the adoration and dependency of ignorance.

The issue is only exacerbated when we ban books in educational settings. In Florida, new legislation has legalized the criminalization of containing banned books in classrooms; staff are warned that if they do not examine their bookshelves and replace all books with “state-approved reading,” they can face felony charges. Basically, teachers face prosecution for doing their job: educating kids. Banning books and enforcing heavy, unjust penalties on educators discourages honest and profound conversations about societal flaws that could help stimulate methods of effective change. Books explore a variety of complex issues in intellectual ways, and serve to electrify audiences; they challenge and reconfigure our own values, beliefs and preconceived notions about not only ourselves, but our social environments. Subsequently, we are enlightened as to the flaws pervading our society and seek the appropriate action to engender necessary change, and the specific routes we take are influenced and guided by the material we read. But when books are banned, and by extension, their “controversial content,” we remain stagnant and ignorant.

Also, the censorship of education violates our intellectual freedom and our freedom of thought and expression. By forbidding the discussion of essential topics in classroom settings (from elementary to college), the end result is, effectively, the intellectual degradation of at least one generation. Ignorance of knowledge integral to life—history, gender and sexuality, etc—only ruins any intellectual potential we innately possess. The books which discuss information nonconforming to the current status quo become verboten as well, completely violating our individual right of thought and expression. In fact, the only education we are provided on these subjects is that we must vehemently despise them, and we may only express our thoughts on the matters by protesting any potential inclusion in both curriculums and life outside of campus.

So, read everything you are told not to! Engage in (respectful) conversation about redacted history and forbidden identities! You’d be surprised how much we don’t know we don’t know, and these conversations are vital for the growth of intellectualism in our communities. We cannot allow ourselves to read from blacked out texts or state-approved scripts, for fear of simply devolving into another cog in the machine. Knowledge is power, and it’s about time we take our power back.