Censoring books is a bad thing

I am glad to see that a school board and an English teacher were finally able to stand up to those conservative parents who are always trying to get rid of books that are being taught in the classroom. In a small town in Indiana, parents were trying to get rid of three books: Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eyes",Bobbie Ann Mason’s “In Country,” and Chris Crutcher’s “Chinese Handcuffs” which they said were too sexual and had too much inappropriate language to be taught in school. Now, I have only read the Morrison book and it is still one of my favorite books I have ever read. It is a great look at the expected stereotypes of girls and how they are supposed to look. It also leads nicely, IMHO, into the unreasonable beauty expectations that many young women are currently exposed. I believe there is a rape scene in the book, if I remember correctly and I know that the main character is friends with three prostitutes , but by 11th grade young people should be able to handle a book with this material. When we expect our children to not be able to handle books that deal with tough issues, than they are not able to deal with the tough issues in real life. Young people are exposed to a lot of sex, violence and rough language on a daily basis in the media and in their environment, so why can't we also expose them to these same types of things in ways where an adult can discuss with the young adults the circumstances in the books. I firmly believe that if we tried to censor every book that had some questionable material according to one person's definition, than there would be nothing left to read.

I also guess that parents who want to censor books, are also probably not readers themselves. I am not sure exactly why I think this, maybe it is that my parents loved to read when my brother and I were growing up and still do and my brother and I were allowed to read whatever we wanted and I have heard similar stories from other people I know. I understand if you are worried about your child and what they are reading especially if you are not familiar with the book, but as one parent I know does, why not read the books that your children are assigned at the same time as your child so that you can interact with them and discuss the book if you are that worried about it. Banning books does not solve the problem, it only creates young adults who do not like to read which is not a good thing, IMHO.

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dirty keyboards, fertile women and minorities who can't swim

So this is basically a roundup of three articles that i have seen that intrigued me and that i wanted to comment on.

First, this article says that our keyboards are dirties than our toilets in the office. Now this makes sense we eat at our desks and people don't wash their hands after going to the bathroom, but dirtier than our toilets now that is disgusting. And remind me to never use a public computer, it just isn't worth it.

This article says that women's voices are sexier when they are fertile. Now this makes no sense to me and sounds like someone made this shit up. The hormones affect your larynx which then affects your voice and although we men cannot really hear a difference, we can hear a difference. Sounds like bullshit to me. Maybe we are just sensing the pheromones or something, but a voice change that is basically infinitesimal and we can hear that or at least sense it, nope not buying it.

Now this article, I really don't know what to make of. It says that the number of black children who can't swim is almost twice the number of white children. As someone who has taught swim lessons at two different points in my life and who thinks everyone should learn to swim or at least feel comfortable around a pool, this is aggravating to me that a whole ethnicity seems to be ignored. The article mentions that much of this traces back to segregation and the fact that not many pools were built for non-white peoples, but still... But then again, I have had friends of many different ethnicities and there does seem to be a larger fear of the water from friends who were African-American, so maybe there is something to it. There is also the fact that many inner city families just do not have the money to afford to pay for swim lessons, they can may be able get a ball or the local recreation department will do basketball or football for the kids for really low prices, but a pool is so hardly ever really cheap or free. But then again I have been at two different YMCAs that have offered free swim lessons for a week right at the beginning of the summer so maybe it is more about letting people know of the opportunities and getting out into the community more to get more people swimming. But when when almost 60% of people who are polled cannot do something that could end their life, we need to see if there are ways we can fix this.