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Chapter 3: BOOKSStudy Focus

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AGENDA

We’ll cover some basics of Chapter 3: BOOKS and use the concept of censorship to jumpstart class discussion

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Early Colonists

Why were the early (1620 – the mid-1700s) colonists not a book-reading population?They tended to be poor, uneducated and

largely illiterateReading = a luxury they had little time forBooks were symbols of wealth and status

and were not important to people who considered themselves pioneers, servants of the Lord, or anti-English colonists

Lack of portability 3-3

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Stamp Act

What was the Stamp Act? Why did colonial printers object to it?The 1765 Stamp Act mandated that all printing

be done on paper stamped with the government seal. This would also control and limit expression in the increasingly restless Colonies.

Printers objected to this affront on their freedom and the steep cost of the tax – it would often double the price of a publication – so they used their printers to print anti-tax and anti-government accounts and literature, ironically fueling the fire that eventually resulted in the Revolutionary War. 3-4

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Print & the War of IndependenceBy the mid-1770s anti-British

sentiment had reached its climax Pamphlets motivated and coalesced

political dissent After the War of Independence, printing

became central to cultural life in major cities

Books were still expensive, often costing the equivalent of a working person’s weekly pay

Literacy still considered a luxury

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Important Cultural Resource

BOOKS ARE…Agents of social and cultural changeAn important cultural repository of

knowledgeWindows on the past/Mirrors of

CultureImportant sources of personal

developmentWonderful sources of entertainment,

escape and personal reflection3-6

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Censorship

What is censorship?the suppression of speech, mass

media, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions

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Censorship

Among the library and school books most targeted by modern censors in the United States are: To Kill a Mockingbird The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn The Harry Potter series Of Mice and Men The Color Purple The Lord of the Rings Frankenstein

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Censorship

Censorship threatens our citizens’ FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT of Freedom of Speech - the right to communicate one's opinions and ideas without fear of government retaliation or censorship.

What are the other FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS? The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United

States Constitution prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.

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Censorship & Books

Censoring Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer

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Books and Their Audiences (Teens Reading for Fun)

Source: Rideout, 2014. © Image Source/PictureQuest RF

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Aliteracy

What is “Aliteracy”?When people possess the ability to read, but are unwilling to do so

Leading challenge in education

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Aliteracy + Students

According to one survey, many college students chose not to read because they felt they didn't need to read to "get by". They were only interested in putting in the least amount of reading, and at the same time expected an "A" in the class. These students in the survey also claimed that their reading habits were learned from their parents, who also were not very interested in reading, or who did not wholly value the reading of books. These students did not correlate reading with advancement of knowledge.

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Aliteracy & Censorship

Aliteracy as Self-Censorship: Censors ban and burn books because books are repositories of ideas, ideas that can be read and considered with limited outside influence or official supervision.

But what kind of culture develops when, by our own refusal to read books, we figuratively save the censors the trouble of striking the match? Aliteracy, wherein people possess the ability to read but are unwilling to do so, amounts to doing the censors' work for them. 3-14

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TRENDING FUTURE OF BOOKS

PLATFORM AGNOSTICISM P-O-D = Publishing/Printing on Deman

d E-Publishing & E-Books = a major trend in

the mass media book industry E-PUBLISHING: The publication of books

initially or exclusively onlineE-BOOKS: books downloaded in electronic

form from the Internet to computers, dedicated readers, or mobile digital devices

What might a “book” be like in the future?

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FOCUS: CHAPTER THREE

Any questions or comments about Chapter Three material?

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