Reading these days is
very much taken for granted. We use reading for everything—direction,
entertainment, education, religion and communication. In the middle ages
reading was not taken for granted. Many people were illiterate and those who
could read tended to be the rich and privileged. Books were very expensive and
somewhat hard to come by—they didn’t have any Barnes and Nobles like we have
today—their books were commissioned and hand written until the printing press
was finally invented.
Most
of the reading people did was for religious purposes. The Bible was the most
popular book. If you had any book it was probably the Bible. If you were
reading any other things such as Roman or Greek literature you read it
allegorically—everything was symbolism for religious things. Reading those
kinds of things just for fun and just for the story was frowned upon.
People
also read for communication as we do now. They didn’t have all the technology
that we have today, so letters were the mode of communication. Of course in
order to communicate via letter you need to be able to read which means most of
the common people wouldn’t have been able to communicate over longer distances.
This means that only the rich would have been able to communicate without being
face to face with the person they wanted to communicate with. This, in a way,
is a type of censorship.
Since
the common people couldn’t read or write, they would have had to rely on others—the
church—to tell them what was said in the Bible. The church would have had a lot
of control over the morals of the people in this way. They simply had to tell
them their interpretation of the Bible, what they thought was good or bad, and
the people had to listen. They didn’t have any way of checking whether the
information they were receiving was correct. Today censorship is still around. It
isn’t as blatant as it once may have been but it is still here. In middle
school there were books we weren’t allowed to read because they were not
appropriate for our age group. There are also books that have been altogether
banned from schools because of their content. Generally the books that are
banned have very controversial subject matter in them. However as I have grown
and gotten older I’ve noticed that things are much more available then once
they were. I think our society and our morals are changing, we think it’s
better that people are able to choose what they read rather than be told what
is suitable to read. I don’t think that censorship today really maintains the
morals of our society, I think it more reflects the morals of our society. People
today have so much more access to information that it is not only harder to
censor things but people are also more ready to fight censorship. People today
don’t like to be told what is ok for them to read and what isn’t.
You have a lot of interesting view points that I hadn't considered before. I l never thought of illiteracy as a form of censorship, but it definitely makes sense. If you want people to be limited in what they know or how they act, restricting their method of obtaining knowledge is a good way to do that! It's also true that censorship is kind of dying in a way. Because of the freedoms we are so used to having, we don't want to have anything limited for us. Like you said, we want to choose what we can and can't read.
ReplyDeleteI am so grateful that we can read right from the source especially with things as important as the Bible. That is an interesting form of censorship to have to have everything you have filtered to you by someone who can read who may or may not have pure intentions or possibly just misperceptions.
ReplyDeleteThe note you make about banned books was interesting. In my school I don't know if there were any banned books, but at one point, because of inappropriate content in a required reading, we had the option to read a different book for the same class. I didn't necessarily feel infringed upon by the book with bad contents presence, but I would never read it. Whether or not that should be included in the library of the school is debatable. But you bring up a good point, that if we don't censor at all, (for example, illicit content in elementary school books) we leave our society open for some very serious problems.
ReplyDeleteGreat points, Emily. I think that people these days will look for any reason at all to not be responsible for making decisions. It's almost like we don't trust people to make the right decisions by themselves. We fool ourselves all too often into "helping" make sure everyone and everything is fair. I think that this is necessary in the early years, but like you said, as we get older, we kind of realize for ourselves what is reliable and what is not. Very interesting.
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