Friday, December 08, 2006

SUN: Don't Shield Society from Books

In Monday's Sun, Literature Professor Lim Chee Seng, was asked to comment on the restricted books issue. He said:
Instead of shielding society from books and ideas deemed offensive or pernicious by banning them, there should be more effort to train society to have the critical skills to deal with such information ... In a democracy, you should be training people to be able to deal with these books - that is if they are pernicious - to argue, to resist error and to stand up, and not try to keep the books away as if they (society) are children.
And he quotes a line from British literary critic and theorist on literature and education I.R. Richards:
A book is a machine to think with.
Malaysia Today picked up the article and there are some interesting comments.

1 comment:

A said...

Yeah! I agree wholly. Its like, the truth is out there. Just by reading contreversial stuff doesn't make you believe everything right?

One needs to proccess the info into their brain and distinguish right from wrong; opinion from fact. So yeah.