Choice, Reason, And Censorship

By Francis E. Kazemek

"Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men [and women] is but knowledge in the making." Thus wrote the great English poet John Milton in his Areopagitica, a defense of unlicensed printing. Recent local events and others of a national scope have caused me to dust off my graduate-school volume of Milton and reread this passionate work. I find it as relevant today as when it was first published in 1644.

As an educator, I naturally read Milton's argument against censorship from the perspective of one who has spent the last 25 years working with children, teenagers, and adults in schools and universities. I know that debates about censorship ultimately are debates about education, citizenship, and the kind of society we envision.

Milton contended that good and evil are not easily recognizable. The world is not black and white; rather, "the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned." The ultimate goal of all education is a moral one: How do we help individuals learn to explore and wrestle with these intertwinings and then make reasoned,...