editorial: censorship & education: a brief introduction

From the Latin, meaning to evaluate or judge, censorship denotes the disapproval, suppression or prohibition of (some aspects of) literature, art, or media that is considered offensive or obscene to local sensibilities, politically unacceptable to a ruling authority, inappropriate for a particular audience, or even is perceived as a threat to national security (Berkowitz, 2022). In most cases censorship involves deleting or erasing a single word, reference or scene, and most likely everyone has consumed censored material unawares. Censorship is sometimes confusingly conflated with banning, which is a harsher type of control prohibiting the sale or availability of an item. Material may be partially or locally censored but not banned; conversely, material may be banned in one setting (e.g., a local municipality or school), but not another, or else is widely available for purchase despite the local ban. Both occur around the world in a wide variety of settings.

Recent examples of censorship include the Chinese government censoring what its citizens are able to read about the Covid-19 pandemic; Myanmar’s military leaders restricting what its citizens are able to learn about the governmental response to a recent earthquake; the European Union’s efforts to censor social media in order to “protect democracy” from foreign interference, or its efforts – most recently in France and Romania – to ban several populist political parties from participating in democratic elections; Vietnam’s banning of The Hunger Games for its glorification of violence, or the Disney film, Lightyear, being banned across the Muslim world because of a brief kiss between two animated characters; in Scotland, a law was passed (and then subsequently repealed) that had censored citizens from saying things that the governing elite deemed ‘hateful’; in Latin America—from Mexico to El Salvador to Venezuela—journalists self-censor for fear of imprisonment and even murder by their own governments for daring to report corruption or collusion with drug cartels; like China, Russia has long had a censorship infrastructure in place that blocks access to information the Kremlin finds problematic; on many Western university campuses, attempts are made to censor hate speech; across Germany stringent measures are enforced banning most pro-Palestinian demonstrations; and in more than a dozen countries either blasphemy or Holocaust denial (and sometimes both) are illegal.

The arts have always been susceptible to censorship. Literally thousands of musical compositions¹, films² and works of art—from Michelangelo to Mapplethorpe—have been either censored or banned. Book censorship in particular has a very long history,³ including a number of philosophical texts, such as Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, Russell’s Marriage and Morals, Machiavelli’s The Prince, Rousseau’s The Social Contract and Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary. Children’s books, too, have not been spared from the censors, and not always for the reasons that people think.⁴ Indeed, in the mid-twentieth century anarchist social critic Paul Goodman noted that “eccentric classical children’s literature is discouraged by librarians because it does not fit educator’s word-lists and is probably unhygienic. The approved books are concocted according to the official world-view” (Goodman, 1962, p. 66).

But censorship arguably excites the most outrage when it occurs in the educational domain, and for good reason when children are compelled by state authority to attend school, where they are subject to a mandated (and often contested) curriculum (Delfattore, 1992; Noll, 1994; Patterson, 2010; Petress, 2005; Ravitch, 2003). Accordingly, debates concerning what it is appropriate for the state to require children to learn in school is a perennial affair. For instance, removing prayer from the public school was a crusade fought for many decades by atheists, but also Catholics and Jews, in the United States. More recently, and equally motivated to protect the interests of young people, both conservative Florida Governor DeSantis and liberal educators in Toronto’s Peel Region—containing 257 schools—sought to restrict school library holdings deemed inappropriate or ‘harmful’ to young people (Wells, 2025). In many schools, teachers continuously censor themselves during classroom instruction as it concerns sensitive or controversial material (Merry, in press).

But of course, censorship in education has a very long history. Plato famously defended censorship of many stories, poems and music as necessary for the harmony of the Good City and the virtue of its citizens. Rousseau’s educational philosophy was also one involving restricted exposure to books, or indeed to any corrupting ideas emanating from society. All state systems of education in the modern era continue to engage in censorship in one form or another, whether it is in the form of (historical and civic) narratives favorable to both majorities and the ruling elite, or else by way of omission, for example dissident and minority perspectives that challenge the favored narrative. Indeed, around the world state systems of education mandate a curriculum that censors certain artists, authors, and perspectives.

Much of the time, the concerns raised by parents and school board members are not with the material per se, but rather with whether or not it is deemed age appropriate—a notoriously elusive standard—and on this point there inevitably will be disagreement. At the same time, however, few will disagree with the need to censor some kinds of social media in order to protect the mental health of young people; nor are they likely to disagree that parents should have the right to set controls on home computers concerning what their own children should be permitted to view. Moreover, and irrespective of one’s political leanings, virtually no one wishes for the school library to carry book titles that contain graphically violent or sexually explicit material.⁵

It is also worth noting, however, that censorship rarely works for very long. For example, many banned books have become best sellers, as banning is a guaranteed formula for inciting widespread interest. Indeed, a large number of once banned books are now mandatory reading in Western high schools⁶, and in scores of bookstores across the United States—both in large cities and small towns—one will find a section proudly featuring banned books.

Thus while recent instances of outrage about censorship in education tend to focus on specific illiberal forms of censorship (e.g., concerning the teaching of evolution or sex education), an historical look across cultures invites a wider and more nuanced perspective, including that censorship (a) is both an ancient and modern phenomenon; (b) is weaponized by both the Right and the Left (Loury, 2026; Lukianoff, 2025; Steinfeld, 2025); and (c) within educational institutions is likely unavoidable, if not also justifiable.

These and other observations allow us to define a broader range of questions and topics, among them: when and why is censorship harmful? When and why is censorship perhaps necessary? By what authority ought materials to be censored? Does censorship have a legitimate place in education? Or finally, given the contested nature of democratic decision-making and curricular selection, is censorship simply inevitable?

In this issue of On_Education, a number of scholars will grapple with these topics and questions, and provide a diversity of opinions and perspectives on censorship in education in all its forms. With these essays, the editors hope to foster a lively discussion, while also encouraging a number of counter-intuitive perspectives that challenge dominant narratives about censorship in education.

References

Berkowitz, E. (2022). Dangerous ideas: A brief history of censorship in the West. Saqi Books.

Delfattore, J. (1992). What Johnny shouldn’t read: Textbook censorship in America. Yale University Press.

Goodman, P. (1962). Compulsory mis-education. Vintage.

Loury, G. (2026). Self-censorship, social information, and the conditions of public reason. The Kenneth J. Arrow Lecture, Stanford University.
https://glennloury.substack.com/p/self-censorship-social-information

Lukianoff, G. (2025, September 23). Everyone’s a free speech hypocrite. New York Times.

Merry, M. S. (in press). On the improbability of teaching controversial issues in school. In J. Drerup, D. Gronostay, & D. Yacek (Eds.), Teaching controversy: The politics and ethics of classroom conflict. Oxford University Press.

Noll, E. (1994). The ripple effect of censorship: Silencing in the classroom. English Journal, 83(8) (Literature, Queen of the Curriculum), 59–64.
https://doi.org/10.58680/ej19947499

Patterson, N. (2010). What’s stopping you? Classroom censorship for better or worse. Social Education, 74 (6), 326–331.

Petress, K. (2005). The role of censorship in school. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 32(3), 248–253.

Ravitch, D. (2003). The language police: How pressure groups restrict what students learn. Vintage.

Steinfeld, J. (2025, August 19). The National Library of Scotland: When curation becomes censorship. Index on Censorship.
https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/08/the-national-library-of-scotland-when-curation-becomes-censorship/

Wells, I. (2025). On book banning, or, how the new censorship consensus trivializes art and undermines democracy. Biblioasis.

 

Recommended Citation

Editorial Team (2026). Censorship & education: A brief introduction. On Education. Journal for Research and Debate, 9(23).
https://doi.org/10.17899/on_ed.2026.23.0

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