To the editor,

The recent surge in actions to ban books in school and public libraries reminds me of my seventh-grade social studies teacher. We were doing a unit on Russia, at the height of the cold war. He told us that one of the weaknesses of autocracy was the banning of books, and the ideas they contain.  Autocrats were fearful of citizens encountering ideas that challenge their rule. In the USA, he told us, we did not ban books. We trusted our citizens to be able to evaluate critically a range of ideas. To emphasize this, he brought to class a book of Marxist writings, including the Manifesto of the Communist Party. He let us borrow it to read if we wished. I did. The Manifesto wasn't very long, nor that hard to read, although I'm sure my teen-aged self missed a lot. I did not become a Communist. Nor were there groups of Bolsheviks organizing the Proletariat in the school cafeteria.

What did happen was that I was energized by the trust placed in me by adults that I was free to go anywhere in the world of ideas, free to evaluate complex and controversial concepts on my own. It brought home forcefully the value of living in a free society. Why do we want to rob our youths of this today? Fearfulness of ideas is anathema to growth and shows our lack of trust in our own children.

Bill Cordua

River Falls