Dear Editor,
Here we go again; somebody believes a change is necessary because it doesn’t “fit” into today’s world. I’m talking about the article “Library resisting the forces of censorship” Western Wheel Feb. 16 about the censored version of a Mark Twain book because of some “volatile vocabulary”.
I’m all for change if it’s a step forward but not if it’s two or more steps backwards like it is in this case. So what’s next; somebody will want to censor World War II documentation and pretend it never happened the way it did?
How do we “step forward” then? You got it, by learning from the past. But if we change the past, i.e. censoring books telling us about it, then we will derate the speed at which we learn and by golly we need to learn faster, not slower. Not only that, we need to learn smarter and omitting things from the past because it isn’t correct for the present is not the answer. It’s not really fair to the black people either, trying to hide the history of what they went through, now is it? Which is basically what the publisher is doing in this case.
It’s not about what we read but how we interpret it. People get upset about what they hear or read simply because they don’t look at all the circumstances, they don’t try to give it the 180 degree evaluation. Who are the words bad for anyway? Our kids? Right, so we try to hide things from them and when they get older they find out anyway, what does that teach them about the past? I believe everybody is responsible for their own knowledge and if some things are censored out of the past, they are censored out of the future too.
And to Mark Twain: Don’t worry, we know what you meant when you wrote those great stories, which is all they are; stories of those times with human aspects that are still relevant today. We thank you!
Torben Eskesen
Okotoks
