Bold+Choices+Intellectual+Freedom

Making the Bold Choice: The Right to Read and Create, Intellectual Freedom, and Censorship
Harper Lee's //To Kill a Mockingbird//: "The word rape is used several times. Children should not see this in any literature book." Report of censorship rationale, National Council of the Teachers of English: Guidelines on the Students' Right to Read

What is the obvious moral to us today seemed debatable in the 1950s when Harper Lee's //To Kill a Mockingbird// was published. It was cutting-edge for its day and pushed the issue of racism front and center for a society that too often preferred to avoid it.

Yet, at the close of the twentieth century, there are those who would ban the book because the word rape is used. And ten years later, we are celebrating the book as one of the most important ever written (BBC, 2010). Here's one powerful testimonial of a teacher.



In this session we will explore the question of how we can wisely make the bold choices that sometimes need to be made to ensure that we honor the students' right to read and their intellectual freedom to think and create.

Huckleberry Finn is trending (well, no longer trending but still interesting to see what tweeps are saying about the book). . . sudden controversy over removal of offensive language from the new edition of Huckleberry Finn. So is editing censorship????

How about this editing? The Adventures of Huck Finn Kickstarter project and the resulting book -- The Adventures of Huck Finn, the Robotic Edition.