Through the last academic school year, book bans targeting “sexual” or “inappropriate” books in US public school have risen by 33%. More than 3000 cases or books being banned have been tracked in 33 states, with 625 bans taking place in Texas, and more bans coming.

Books should not be getting banned in the US.

In the US we have freedom of speech and press, which includes writing and publishing books. Books including themes of violence and abuse have been a main target, as well as mental health, substance abuse, and sexual topics. But mature books should be able to be published because that’s our right in the US. Books including stories with minority representation are also being banned, it is unreasonable to ban these books with no reason in public schools because we have the right to read what we want in the US.

To add on, not only is this suppressing free speech this is also censorship. Banning books with mature topics that might be more difficult to think about is censorship. In school we should be able to explore books of our choosing even if that means it involves more mature themes and topics. Authors are allowed to write about mature topics, as all they are doing is showing readers different perspectives.

More than that, banning books is also shutting down creativity. By banning books this says to authors that they can’t write freely, and must stick to conventional stories if they don’t want their book to be banned. Creativity should be celebrated as writing is an art form, this adds to the decline in creativity that has been proven to be occurring over the past years.

I understand the counter argument that this might expose kids and teenagers to topics they are not ready for or mature enough for, but this fails to think about the fact that other restrictions can be put into place instead of banning books. There are other solutions that are not as radical as banning authors books in school. That is not reasonable or fair to the students or authors.

Across states in the US, banning books in public school is not necessary, people should be allowed to read what they want. Instead, schools could try monitoring which students check out which books and having an age restriction on mature books, that way those who are not mature enough don’t check out the mature books. Or another solution would be getting parent permission, but banning these books all together is not a reasonable solution, and there are other more thoughtful approaches that can be taken.