Title: The Students' Right to Read - NCTE
Headings: The Students’ Right to Read
The Students’ Right to Read
The NCTE Executive Committee reaffirmed this guideline in November 2012.
The Right to Read and the Teacher of English
The Right to Read
The Threat to Education
The Community’s Responsibility
A Program of Action
Procedures for Text Selection
The Legal Problem
Preparing the Community
Defending the Texts
Request for Reconsideration of a Text
References
Statement Authors

Content: Over the course of their schooling, many students are consequently “educated” in a system that is hostile to critical inquiry and dialogue. And many teachers and other school staff learn to emphasize their own sense of comfort and safety rather than their students’ needs. The problem of censorship does not derive solely from the small anti-intellectual, ultra-moral, or ultra-patriotic groups which will typically function in a society that guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The present concern is rather with the frequency and force of attacks by others, often people of good will and the best intentions, some from within the teaching profession. The National Council of Teachers of English, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and the American Library Association, as well as the publishing industry and writers themselves agree: pressures for censorship are great throughout our society. The material that follows is divided into two sections. The first on “The Right to Read” is addressed to parents and the community at large. The other section, “A Program of Action,” lists Council recommendations for establishing professional committees in every school to set up procedures for book selection, to work for community support, and to review complaints against texts. Where suspicion fills the air and holds scholars in line for fear of their jobs, there can be no exercise of the free intellect. . . .