What we gain from listening to those directly affected by the debate.
 | By Peter Catapano Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
A few months ago, when the issue of book banning in schools was heating up, we editors in Opinion did what we usually do: We discussed the latest news and traded ideas on potential guest essay writers. |
The restricting or banning of books, of course, is one of those subjects that raises alarms across the entire political and ideological spectrum. The news of a single school board decision — like the one in February in Tennessee to remove Art Spiegelman's graphic novel "Maus" — often leads to outrage, angry accusations, images of novels being tossed into bonfires and worse. Our challenge was to find a view that would move the debate forward, rather than back into the default arena of partisan rancor and bickering. |
As sometimes happens in the age of remote work, my thoughts about the issue one morning spilled over into my living room. My daughter, a college freshman home for a week of winter break, seemed not to be listening, until I heard her say from the kitchen: Why don't you just get a student to write? |
In a guest essay, Sungjoo Yoon, a senior at Burbank High School in California, recounts his activism in the face of his own school district's ban of five novels, "Huckleberry Finn," by Mark Twain, and "To Kill a Mockingbird," by Harper Lee, among them. He makes his case for a "more principled approach" to debating school book bans and curriculum restrictions and an end to the "political partisanship that buys more into contemporary culture wars than our students' education." |
Most teenagers exist in what can be a frustrating netherworld of human concern: old enough to be able to observe critically the world they are in, but too young or lacking the institutional power to change it. Yoon and others like him have flipped that script by speaking out, taking public action, honing their ideas and participating in public debate. |
Over the years, the idea of representation in journalism and public policy has evolved. We understand as a matter of course today that no issue can be fully understood until the voices of those directly affected by it are heard. No full discussion about race can be had without people of color; debates on aging and health care must include the views of the elderly and the sick. And no proper conversation about the banning or use of books in schools can be had without hearing from the students affected. "Nothing about us without us," is a rallying cry of the disability rights movement, but in its demand for fair representation and inclusion, its application is universal. |
Correction: The Friday edition of this newsletter misidentified the program that provided health coverage to a cousin of Esau McCaulley's. It was Medicaid, not Medicare. |
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