Should some books be banned in schools?
For the second and final AP of the sophomore humanities course Forbidden Books, each student selected their own book that has been banned somewhere to read and write a research paper on whether the ban was justified. I selected Persepolis, a book that has been challenged in many school systems. In the rest of the class we read other books that had been banned or challenged, and worked to think critically on whether these bans were justified. We spent time honing research skills and learning how to find good sources. I hit some road bumps in writing this essay, but I am over all proud of it, and I hope that you enjoy reading, learn something new, and think about your own opinions while reading.
Sterling M. McMurrin, President John F. Kennedy’s Commissioner of Education, once said, “Censorship in the schools that denies intellectual freedom to teachers robs the student of that same freedom. And the freedom to learn is clearly no less precious than the freedom to teach.” Persepolis is an autobiography and series of comic strips by Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian author and director. She wrote the series about growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution in Iran. The book covers her life from around the ages of 10-14. It is a snapshot of a very unique place and moment of time of 1980s Iran, as she is growing up and watching things change in the way all young people do. She belongs to a very politically active family, and the reader sees both the positives and negative aspects of this. She learns from her family and is able to speak her mind, but also sees the harsh consequences, like when her uncle talks to her about torture and later when he is eventually killed by order of the government. This takes us to the problem at hand. In 2013 Persepolis was banned from a number of schools for containing graphic depictions of violence, and arguably for the politics it contained. The book shouldn't have been banned, as it is not very graphic, it is an honest depiction of the life of a preteen/teen, and it teaches on issues necessary to students.
Persepolis has faced many challenges to its availability in the schools of America, with most of them being unsuccessful. It has been ineffectively challenged in schools in Texas, Oregon, and California. In 2013, Persepolis was banned from Chicago Public Schools for all grades seventh and below. It was also required that eighth through tenth grade teachers received training before teaching the book to their students and was unrestricted for eleventh and twelfth graders. The then CEO of CPS, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, rationalized the book’s banning by saying that the book “contains graphic language and images that are not appropriate for general use in the seventh grade curriculum”. (Comic Book Legal Defense Fund)
Those in favor of the ban would point out a variety of reasons that it is not appropriate for a school environment. They cite the fact that there are many descriptions of the violence of war in the book that middle schoolers may not yet be equipped to handle. For example, the quote “They burned down the Rex Cinema tonight.’ ‘Oh my god.’ The doors had been locked from the outside a few minutes before the fire. The police were there. They forbade people to rescue those locked inside. Then they attacked them. The firemen didn’t arrive until forty minutes later. The BBC said there were 400 victims. The Shah said that a group of religious fanatics perpetrated the massacre. But the people knew it was the Shah’s fault!!!” (Satrapi 14-15). Another commonly cited reason are the descriptions of torture of political prisoners. “Ahmadi was assassinated. As a member of the guerillas, he suffered hell. He always had cyanide on him in case he was arrested, but he was taken by surprise and unfortunately he never had a chance to use it… so he suffered the worst torture…”(51). This text is above drawings of a man being burned with an iron, and being whipped (51). Another section that may be cited is one in which Marjane’s mother is discussing the war with her cousin. “It’s awful. Every day I see buses full of kids arriving. They come from the poor areas, you can tell...First they convince them that the afterlife is even better than Disneyland, then they put them in a trance with all their songs… It’s nuts! They hypnotize them and just toss them into battle. Absolute carnage. The key to paradise was for poor people. Thousands of young kids, promised a better life, exploded on the minefields with their keys around their necks.” (101-102).
To some, this would be more than enough to justify a ban of the book. However, it is important to contextualize these scenes within both the rest of the book and history. The drawings are honest, but hardly graphic or deeply disturbing. They are all in black and white, and highly stylized. It depicts some dark and graphic situations, but not in a way that is any more graphic than books officially sanctioned by CPS. The eighth grade CPS history textbook, America: History of Our Nation has descriptions of young people being forced to labor in unsafe factories, in a way that sounds extremely similar to the movie theater fire in Persepolis. “On March 25, 1911, fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Within minutes, the upper stories were ablaze. Hundreds of workers raced for the exits only to find them locked. The company had locked the doors to keep workers at their jobs. Panicked workers piled up against the exits. Firetrucks rushed to the scene, but their ladders were too short to reach the fire. One after another, workers leaped to their deaths. Nearly 150 people, most of them young women, died in the Triangle Fire” (Davidson and Stoff 617). This is just one of a few descriptions of abysmal working conditions children were subjected to, others include pictures of children in mines with coal dust stained faces, and details of diseases that the children were afflicted with. Notably, the CPS history textbook doesn’t not mention Iran or the Shah at all. “The Shah had been a longtime ally of the United States” (936)... “The United States had long supported the Shah of Iran. The Shah was strongly anti-Communist during the Cold War. However, many Iranians opposed the Shah’s harsh, undemocratic rule. … The force behind the revolution was a Muslim religious leader, Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini. Khomeini wanted Iran to return to a very strict form of Islam. The new government banned Western books, movies, and music. New laws limited the rights of women ” (956). The textbook, and by extension CPS, does almost the exact inverse of Satrapi’s school in Persepolis. The textbook says multiple times that the Shah was an ally of America, and only vaguely mentions a flaw of his once, with the nondescript phrase of “harsh and undemocratic rule” (956). When discussing the Ayatollah, who is also portrayed in Persepolis as being a cruel and unjust leader, they detail the actions he took against Western entertainment and mention his actions against the rights of women. In Persepolis, there is a scene in which Marjane is at school and is being presented a one-sided, strictly anti-Shah pro-Ayatollah view of her country. The teacher says “Since the Islamic Republic was founded, we no longer have political prisoners” and Marjane interjects “My uncle was imprisoned by the Shah’s regime, but it was the Islamic regime that ordered his execution. You say we don’t have political prisoners anymore. But we’ve gone from 3000 prisoners under the Shah to 300,000 under your regime. How dare you lie to us like that?”(144). CPS’s history textbook presents the history of Iran in a way that is remarkably similar in method, though different in ideology. The textbook sanitizes the rule of the Shah, and presents his rule as being pro-West and anti-Communist, with his undemocratic actions as an unspecific footnote, and things like the Rex Cinema fire left completely unmentioned. Marjane’s teacher presents the Ayatollah as being perfect, as having freed the Shah’s political prisoners and having taken no more. Both of these descriptions are inaccurate and do not show students the full picture. It is important to note CPS will argue they have not fully banned it. In an interview, Marjane Satrapi said “The worst part is they say that they haven’t banned the book, but each teacher who wants to teach it will have to get some kind of guidance. That means they make it difficult. If I’m a teacher, and I have to go get guidance to teach a book, then I will teach another book. This is just another way of banning it.” (Gomez) By effectively banning Persepolis, CPS prevents students from being able to see the full picture at all.
Commonly when books are banned, those banning them will deny political motivation, because they know banning books for political reasons is not a good look. They often say that it is just because of the way the information is presented, and not actually due to the content. It is imperative to society that citizens do not accept this reasoning. Persepolis was technically restricted for the way it presents violence, but when a look below the surface of the details is taken, it is extremely hard to believe this was the only reason. Persepolis allows its readers to come to their own conclusions, and encourages critical thinking and consumption of what students are taught. When thinking about book banning one must take these lessons it teaches, look deeper at the motive of decision makers, and not accept any less than an exhaustive explanation.
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