Letter: Views on Book Ban (Newsday)

“Board bans 2 books from reading list” [News, Dec. 5] reveals a troubling rationale for the removal of two “objectionable” books from the ninth-grade student-selected reading list. The school board’s “personal parent test” – that if a school board member wouldn’t want his or her children to read the book then it must go – must be placed under scrutiny.

The slippery slope that the Westhampton School Board finds itself in having to act as if it is the parents of the entire district.

Anytime you ban something because you believe it is objectionable, it deprives other parents of the ability to determine for themselves.

The better course of valor is not to ban books, not censor thought and let individual students and parents determine their own test.

Seth Muraskin
Suffolk County Chapter Director of the NYCLU