10V4 Mr .Johnson
Ba Rom Yang
Wednesday June 16, 2004

Should those books be banned?

Education must be neutral. In other words, every student has to study
through unprejudiced sources. Every school in not only Korea but
also almost all nations in the world follows this decree--they ban books that
have biases. For that reason, I think that this school has banned 4
books which are concerned with religion. The school's position is this:
if the school puts those 4 books into the critical reading program list,
it may seem that the school is trying to make students believe
Buddhism, Islam or other religions that are mentioned in those selected books.

I can understand the school's position towards religious books.
They can be used to proselytize students, so the school must be careful
about that matter. However, I do not think that the selection of
religious books are quite problematic. Before we consider why we have
to put religious books into the critical reading program list, we
have to know and understand what the critical reading program is and why
it is being done in our school.

In our school, there is a critical reading program that tests what we
read. The school assigns the list of critical reading books and we
should read all of them critically while we are in this school. The
objectives of critical reading, I believe, is to improve our reading
skills and to make us read not just by reading every word in a book, but
to think about the real meaning of the every word and the intention of the
author by using that word. Moreover, the critical reading test makes us
read many books so that we can cover the literature classes which we
will take in the freshman year of college.

Among those objectives, I believe that the most significant objective
of the critical reading program is to give students an
opportunity to read books about a variety of topics, not just limited to
classics, so that students will able to see the world through somewhat diverse
perspectives. We need this ability because we live in a world in
which the technology of communication and transportation is highly
developed and the amount of contact is amazingly increased, so that we
cannot live without interacting with different people all around the world. It
will be all right if we understood each other and respected each
other's own values. That means, we should know other culture and try to
respect them. So, we should read many books which are concern with various
topics and other's opinions.

If we cannot follow the trend of the present world, we may fall
behind. The obvious example of my belief is our school's critical reading test
which falls behind; the banning those four books: Siddhartha(Hess, H),
Shakyamuni Buddha(Niwano), The Meaning of Koran(Pickhall, M) and
Islamic Peril(Karim, Karim). I think the school banned those books because
those were concerned with particular religions, the first two with
Buddhism, the other two with Islam.

As I mentioned, education must be neutral. Following these words
strictly, schools must ban all the religious textbooks because teaching
particular religions conflicts with the neutrality of education. I agree with
most parts of the school's opinion that education must not be biased,
because forcing students to read books that are concerned with
religion may make students believe in particular religions. But I do not agree
with banning those four books; according to constitutional law,
schools can open a course about the introduction of some particular religions,
but the course must not be opened having the purpose of proselytization.

'Siddhartha' and 'Shakyamuni Buddha' help us understand the basic
concepts of Buddhism, but do not try to make us believe Buddhism. If we
read those two books, we can share the feelings of Buddha with others who
believe in Buddhism, and we can communicate with them more
proficiently. 'The Meaning of Koran' and 'Islamic Peril' are the same. The
purpose in reading those books are to face diverse concepts of many religions
and to understand those people who believe in different
religions from us. Those four books have no purpose of proselytization.

As a result of the lack of understanding and respect for other
religions, there is a war-on-terror and ethnic/religious conflict between
western countries and Middle East countries. For example, American soldiers
took off the pictures of war-heroes in Iraq from the walls of
houses. The Iraqi people fight for their freedom like the Korean people did
when we were Japan's colony. People who believe in Islam think the
Iraqi war is a 'Jihad', a holy war waged on behalf of muslims as a religious
duty; a bitter strife or crusade undertaken in the spirit of a
holy war, and the fighters are equivalent of heroes. So, taking off
those pictures was an act of profanity not only to iraqi people, but also
to their religion and culture. Surprisingly, soldiers did not know
why they took off those pictures. If they had known what those
pictures had meant, they would not have taken them off.

Because of those misunderstandings, the war-on-terror causes much
blood to be shed. If the American government thought once more and decided to
negotiate, there would be no need for further blood. Even today, 35
people died and over 130 were wounded because of a suicide bomber in Iraq. I
question why there should be casualties. For those who are at mercy to
the conflicts in the Middle East, they must be ceased; however, there
are some prerequisites to cease conflicts. We have to understand and
respect others and try to negotiate about inflammatory matters. After that,
there will be less conflict than we have today, and the conflict in
the Middle East will be ameliorated.

To have a better understanding of the Arab people, we have to know
their culture; the core of their culture is their religion. Their
religion determines their way of life, and the values that they hold. But if
we do not know their religion, we cannot avoid from misunderstanding
them. So, knowing their religion is important and reading
books that are about religion is the only way to understand their
religion. However, our school banned four books that are about
religion. Banning those books means that we will not know and read materials about religion.

The current trend of society now is to adapt diverse perspectives.
But the current critical reading program does not follow that trend.
When we see the list of books on critical reading program, almost all of the books are classics.
Although reading classics can be the best way to understand the cultures,
lifestyles, and values of the past, and to learn about writings of great writers of that time,
classics are concerned with matters of the past, not the present.
The world changes, so values of past cannot be applied to today.

As a result, the critical reading program must be focused on not only
on literary classics but also on diverse works of literature. The
examples I mentioned above were books on various religions. The leaders of
today should be open-minded. Also, the prerequisite of leaders is to
read books that handle many different current topics and issues. In
consideration of the purposes and objectives of the critical reading
program, the four books Siddhartha, Shakyamuni Buddha, The Meaning of
Koran and Islamic Peril must not be banned at KMLA.

1. The Peace Encyclopedia: Jihad 2004. 17. Jun. 2004

2. Sammer, N. Yacoub. Car Bomb Blast Kills 35 People in Iraq. 2004. 17. Jun. 2004

3. Mbachu, Dulue, and McKenzie, Glenn. "Nigeria Leader Declares State of Emergency."
The Associated Press. 18 May. 2004: page 12.

4. Ahn, Kyung Sook. "Turned Back of Readers." Moon Hwa Il Bo. 27 May. 2004: page 27.
5. Chomsky, Noam. Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians.
Cambridge, Massachusetts. South End Press, 1999.

6. Kim, Young Gwan. The Constitutional Law. Seoul, Go-si Youn-gu Won. 10 May, 2004.

Links to other sites on the Web

HOME