A new report looking at teenagers' attitudes towards censorship of their
reading habits and library use is now available at
http://www.ebase.uce.ac.uk/docs/censorship-teenage-focus-groups-report.pdf
Based on a series of focus groups involving 88 young people, this research
suggested the following:
· To help both teenagers and their parents, books for teenagers should
include
guidance on the cover about the incidence of sex, violence, drugs, swearing
etc
· Teenagers themselves should be involved in reviewing books and offering
guidance
on their suitability.
· Librarians and booksellers should ensure they offer teenagers guidance,
not
unexplained restrictions.
· Libraries for teenagers need to ensure that their stock contains a range
of titles
suitable for various combinations of emotional maturity and reading age.
· More opportunities to read books dealing with controversial issues within
the
curriculum should be explored.
· Efforts need to be made to involve parents in their teenager’s reading,
making them
more aware of the content of books and better able to offer informed advice
to their
child.
· Internet filtering in schools needs to be re-examined. It is currently
extremely
unhelpful and unsophisticated.
· Rather than focusing on restricting access, it is imperative that
teenagers are taught
how to make informed choices about the information they gather from the
Internet
and the books they chose to read.
Other research and resources related to this topic are avaialble at
http://www.ebase.uce.ac.uk/projects/censorship_resources.htm
_________________________________________________________________
Think you're a film buff? Play the Movie Mogul quiz and win fantastic
prizes! http://www.msnmoviemogul.com
|