The spread of ideas. This was the goal achieved by the invention of the printing press, and now this spread can reach even farther across the globe with the internet. We write and publish and distribute in order to share an idea we want others to hear about. The right to free speech in America allows an open market for idea-sharing, regardless of the intention behind the idea-spreader, be it the best of intentions or the worst—documenting a history to be learned from or indoctrinating ideological extremes. We have the right to share an idea with whoever will listen, with the understanding that whether one agrees with the idea or not is the listener’s prerogative.

Just a few of the books banned

Then why have critical Mexican American Studies (MAS) texts been essentially banned from schools in Tuscon, Arizona? The school officials say they haven’t been banned. The books are still available in the school library. But all MAS classes have been cancelled and all of the related textbooks were confiscated to a storage locker-room.

The right to free speech should logically prohibit all censorship. If I can say whatever I want, I can write whatever I want, and I can do both publicly. But the impulse to ban books seems to come from a slightly different motive: not to keep anyone from writing, but to keep others from reading. Perhaps you think these concepts are the same, but I see some minute difference, though not a charming one. It is somewhere along the lines of Rick Santorum’s “I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts,” even consensually and within the privacy of one’s own home. The analogy is not exact, but where I draw the connection is this: it’s okay for all books (all sexual orientations) to exist, but it is not okay for those books to have any contact with readers (for homosexuals to engage in homosexual relations).

In the case of Tuscon, AZ, the readers are high school students in MAS classes (and now all high school students as the books have been confiscated). What books should be in school curriculums has throughout history been a difficult issue to assess. Education shapes young people into the adults they will become. What we teach them will play a part in molding their minds, and forming their opinions. So, knowing the impressionability of young readers, what values do we want to teach them through books? What values should we teach them? A question made difficult, as it is answered in drastically different ways based on what social institutions one belongs to.

The Tuscon Unified School District (TUSD) believes the MAS program was teaching Mexican American students to become rebels in revealing the wrongs done to Mexican Americans in our history. The AZ Superintendent declared it illegal to teach what he sees as “racially divisive classes.” The MAS classes seemed to attract most Mexican American students, which lead school officials to believe that the classes were indoctrinating students rather than merely teaching students about documented historical events. Free speech becomes a sensitive issue in schools where texts can be used to instruct and just as easily to indoctrinate. But the MAS program in Tuscon was not some military insurgent brainwashing facility, and in banning those books—whether officials admit it or not—they are wiping out a critical part of Arizona’s own history. The group with the harmful agenda here is the TUSD.

The simple truth: books are ideas. And ideas can be frightening things. The best idea can mean risking certain securities you are used to. The worst idea can reveal the easiest path to the greatest pitfall. But all ideas can and should be spread. All warrant individual evaluation. Ideas—books—make us think, and the right ones can make us better people. And just as any idea has the right to exist, it is each person’s prerogative to personally disagree with an idea. But who gets to decide what ideas others can or cannot have access to? What ideas other are “allowed” to consider for themselves? Should anyone have that power?

My feeling: books are meant to be read. I want to hear your idea, regardless of whether or not I agree with you.

Free the books, Arizona.

Your new Beau.