“Sometimes there are folks on college campuses who are liberal, and maybe even agree with me on a bunch of issues, who sometimes aren’t listening to the other side, and that’s a problem too,” Obama said. “I’ve heard some college campuses where they don’t want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative or they don’t want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African Americans or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women.
“And you know, I’ve got to tell you, I don’t agree with that either. I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view. You know, I think you should be able to—anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with them. But you shouldn’t silence them by saying, ‘You can’t come because I’m too sensitive to hear what you have to say.’ That’s not the way we learn either.”
-President Obama
To me, it really depends on the educational value. There are a lot of novels with questionable content like Huck Finn, Peter Pan or I Know why the Caged Bird Sings but they can also be important to learning about literature, history or culture. I think in the wrong hands, the Twilight series can be very dangerous but I'm not going to ban them. One of my biggest fears with home schooling or charter schools is how they can shelter their students in the existence of a false world rather than the one that the rest of us live in. With that in mind, I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't encourage those not sheltered to learn about the extreme religious cults and beliefs.
Freedom of Speech is hard though. When a college invites a speaker, that's now considered an honor and a way of recognition for that speaker but maybe...maybe it shouldn't be any of this, maybe it just needs to be an acknowledgement of fellow human being with ideas that can provoke discussion and learning.
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