A Separate Peace Should Not Be Banned Essay

Decent Essays
Due to our own human nature, people learn the best through their experiences, both positive and negative. It is important for teenagers to understand the process of maturing, especially through how their actions can affect other people.
A Separate Peace should not be banned and should be used in high school curriculums because it is a relatable story of young adults maturing through experiences. Often times parents will challenge a book for its language and the violence present in the book, because they want to keep their child innocent and protected from the wrongs of the world. While it is a understandable concern, it is ridiculous considering what the average high schooler sees and hears in the halls of their school on a daily basis. Parents like this wanted to ban A
…show more content…
Timothy jay, professor of psychology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, performed a study on the science of swearing, and he talked about the age children learn to swear. In the article, Professor Jay wrote, “swearing emerges by age two and becomes adult-like by ages 11 or 12. By the time children enter school, they have a working vocabulary of 30-40 offensive words,”. This shows that parents don’t need to worry about protecting their teenage child from profanity, because odds are the child already has heard this type of language countless times, so reading it in a book will not affect them a lot. Professor Jay also mentions that most young adults claimed their swearing vocabulary was learned from listening to their parents, peers, and siblings. This brings up the idea that maybe parents should focus more on cleaning up their own language rather than the things their child reads, sees, or hears.profane language should not keep a child from reading a quality novel. Yes, sometimes the language is not needed, but it produces a much more relatable and realistic

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The book a Separate Peace by John Knowles is a historical fiction book. In this book it shows how the relationship between two characters Gene and Finny. How one another impacted their friendship through broken bones, to having to change your dreams to carry on one another, to being the Valedictorian.…

    • 563 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Why Is G8r Banned

    • 492 Words
    • 2 Pages

    A large number of people think this books should be banned due to religious reasons and adult content, along with bad behavior by the teenagers. My personal opinion is that this book should be banned for many reasons that I will list. One reason I think this book should be banned is it has a lot of profanity by the teenagers. This is very bad for young children to read in books. It is bad because sometimes after they read these words they will mimic them and start to…

    • 492 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “The Separate Peace” Essay and Analysis During the fall break I read the book called “The Separate Peace”, and in this essay I want to focus on the theme friendship. This thee is really important to me, because you need friendship in life cause when you are down they can pick you right back up. Then when you’re thinking to highly of yourself they can make you stop getting so cocky, and they are like a brother or sister to us. This book focuses on a friendship between two sixteen-year-old boys, and there friendship has a combination of admiration, respect, jealousy, and resentment.…

    • 1021 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In today’s society, many people argue that teenagers can’t be mature because of how young they are. However, being mature isn’t really about being a particular age, but rather going through experiences and learning from them. For instance, in the book “The Glass Castle”, the author Jeannette Walls was forced to take cake of her brother and sister’s because of her unstable mother and father. Weeks passed before her siblings had food, water, or even a home.…

    • 204 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    There are a few quotes from “A Separate Peace” that meant something to me. The first one of these quotes is “Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth”(Knowles 48). This quotes means something to me because I am a truthful person, and I understand what this feeling this quote is trying to illustrate. This quote is in the part of the book that reminds me of my friends and I when we went to the beach, and that is significant to me because I cherish those fun memories of my friends. Another…

    • 365 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It also proves that with the explicit language was name calling, which could affect the minds reading this book if they are not mature enough. This is according to “Research demonstrates how the use of bad language can alter our behavior” by Louise Tickle, which states that “young children may note their parents’ reactions…” This quote shows that children don’t know what the words…

    • 1235 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    A separate peace; one’s place to escape the tragedies and realities of daily life. John Knowles’ book, A Separate Peace explores Devon High during WWII in the lives of students. Despite an ongoing war and the upcoming draft, characters such as Gene, Phineas, and Leper find the place where they can escape and find their peace and happiness. Gene, only a young man who is looking for an escape from the ongoing world surrounding him. Devon High provided him and his classmates an excuse from the draft, yet, there was a lingering impedance which kept Gene on edge.…

    • 214 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Title and Author: A Separate Peace, by John Knowles Setting and Historical Context: 1942-1943, World War II; Devon School, New Hampshire, Vermont (Leper’s home) Major Characters and Descriptions (external, internal, motivation) [3-5 characters]: Gene Forrester: narrator, protagonist of the novel, thoughtful, intelligent, competitive, has a love-hate relationship with his best friend Phineas (“Finny”), adores and envies Finny, insecure, uncomfortable with his own self Phineas (“Finny”): Gene’s best friend and classmate, friendly, honest, handsome, confident with himself, charming, very likable, best athlete in school, “seems perfect in every way” according to Gene, engages others with his spontaneity, frequently gets into trouble, has the ability to talk himself out of trouble, doesn’t see anyone as an enemy, assumes everyone is like him. Brinker Hadley: charismatic, class politician,…

    • 846 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Meaning of A Separate Peace A Separate Peace by John Knowles has a significant meaning in the title. In the book two main characters Gene and Phineas (Finny) struggle to find peace while living at Devon; a prep school and in the time of World War Two. Gene and Finny struggle through many conflicts and find ways to overcome them. A Separate Peace is used as the title because of the way the characters find peace in their own lives, deal with conflicts, and to become comfortable with themselves.…

    • 771 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Banning Catcher In The Rye

    • 1088 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Catcher In The Rye: Why Ban Such A Great Book? Bad words, explicit content, a kid who is being viewed as a bad influence. These things all correlate to the concern surrounding the book The Catcher In The Rye. According to the About Banned and Challenged Books Article, “A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials.”…

    • 1088 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The aspects being challenged deal with the profanity, racial references, and conflict being based around rape. The book is still banned in many classrooms and school libraries. There is an extensive list of reasons why people wanted this book to be banned. The majority of the complaints come from school districts across the nation of all grade levels. However, there does seem to be more school districts in the Southern states that banned this book than the Northern states.…

    • 1170 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Where this book was banned was in North Carolina high schools. Why, parents were the one who made it possible for the book to get banned.(articles) They wrote letters stating that they could find the literature value in the book. They sent these letters to the school board in 1980-1982.(BizzareLetters) Other letters were sent to school boards, one was a 12 page complaint saying the book was inappropriate for its lack of innocence because it’s language and sexual content.…

    • 642 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Fortunately, for every group pushing for bans on literature, there are organizations that fight for this freedom. One such organization is the American Civil Liberties Union. In the year 2000, when discussing the topic of book banning, the organization stated that, “Permitting restraints on literature sets the stage for attacks on all expression that is artistically or politically controversial or that portrays unpleasant realities of life” (American Civil Liberties Union). Although some books may contain graphic violence or sexual content, and therefore of course should be kept out of the hands of children, I’d like to think that these widespread en masse bans of such literature are a poor way to go about it. It’s not as if middle or high school students are incapable of understanding and comprehending dark or more adult subject matter.…

    • 1307 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Books are the things that we use to see a better perception of life. Books are the key for each student to gain knowledge.the book the bluest eye has detailed and very explicit content. But what is it in a book that includes real life situations and what might happen to someone. As a student I believe that we should read the book and have an open perspective of these types of books. I want this book not to get banned because there's much to learn about this book.…

    • 916 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Effects Of Guns On Youth

    • 932 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Values as a topic cannot be overemphasised, especially in the world today were we find that things have taken a downward turn as compared to 50 years ago. I had taken this topic during facilitation in a secondary school in the early part of February, which was so great asides the fact that I hadn’t gotten much sleep before hand. Values are a huge topic and should be passed across to our teens of today. Nowadays, most of the teenage youths have probably gotten off on a wrong start about life where things like achievement, self discipline, responsibility, commitment, compassion, respect, true friendship, fairness, family relationship, personal growth and trust (which are just a few) are just words seen on the internet or dictionary once in a…

    • 932 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays