Literacy 01 23 2026

Literacy 01 23 2026

What good is it for a person to learn how to read if they are never going to be able to tell truth from fiction or right from wrong?

I believe that there are a lot of people who learned to read but are never going to be able to tell truth from fiction or right from wrong.

What about book banning?

Books are labeled as to what category they fall into, novels, biographies, etc.

A Novel is a work of fiction.  If I don't like what that novelist wrote, the story that they wrote, I don't have to read it.  But I also know that there is intent in the novelist writing it, either good or bad.

Ugh, I remember our female eithg grade teacher had us read a book whereby it mentions that in NY someone would take a pliers to your groin in the stairwell of an apartment?  I didn't really like reading that.  But is it true?  I would say that there are probably a lot of sick people like that in NY.  The stories that we hear from people being victimized by organized crime are consistent with that.  And women and likely men to are beaten into prostitution?  So that is a little off topic.  We also had to read a book whereby a young girl gets brain cancer.  I hated that one too.  But then later on in life I was involved in a writing for publication class.  And the woman who taught the class told how she was an "evil, evil, evil little girl."  That woman who taught the class went on to get brain cancer!  So this paragraph was off topic.

So who decides what books should be banned?  Is it consensus based?  On what grounds?  Now think about that, consensus based thinking?  Doesn't it really mean that the individual doesn't know for sure if they like or dislike something, whether it is fact or fiction, whether it is right or wrong?

Are there books that attempt to normalized homosexuality and draw children into it?  Like those two other books above that I didn't like, I would not like that one.  But guess what?  I would not read it in the same manner or comprehension that someone else might read it.  I would read it in these terms, what manipulative skills is that character in the book using?  How can I recognize that personality trait in people I might meet so that I don't have anything to do with them?  So if you ban a book like that you let what I would call villains go among us with little awareness to what they are?  And there might not be any noticeable character traits to draw a conclusion from. But perhaps that is the best advice?  Keep your guard up?  To keep your guard up to authority figures who seem normal but want to be around children as their job?

But someone who doesn't know fact from fiction or right from wrong isn't going to want to think in those terms and really can't read with human comprehension.  So the knee jerk reaction comes to ban such a book.

But here is the bad kick.  Let's say someone like me starts reading that book because they are required to read it.  And it is physically making us sick.  Our comprehension tells us it is all bad and we wouldn't read another page of it.  I couldn't read more than 10 pages of the "Nobody's Girl" book.  What happened to her in those first ten pages.  The way her life was manipulated by evil wealthy people.  It made me sick.

So I don't believe that you should require people to read some books in school?  The excuse being, "This book made me sick at page 10"  

Perhaps if I read quicker or in a different environment, I might get through that book easily past page 10.  But that is neither here nor there.

You can teach someone how to read, but can that person be taught fact from fiction or right from wrong?  Apparently not always.

© 2026 Thomas Paul Murphy