Shona' s new understanding of the "right to information"

 

After a week at internship, we sailed off into the countryside to the Human Rights weekend. And while it was not what I expected, I found something related to human rights that I am now thinking about much more, and that is the right to information. When Rav started working at Right 2 Know, I did not understand what not having a right to information meant. I knew what it literally meant maybe, that there was a lack of access to basic resources of knowledge, but it only hit me this weekend what that really means and what that means for students especially. 

A 12th grade student came into the library today and was looking for a good horror or thriller novel. Treading into my own reading experiences and read books, I gave a long list of authors and titles. And almost all of them were not available. And naturally at first I thought, well the school doesn't have much funding so it only makes sense that not every book I read was there. But then the librarian told me about all of the strict parameters that books have to follow to be put out on the shelves, and some of them baffled me. Understanding I was confused, she said that the kind of students they have there are varied and come from different homes. Even something as docile as (and one of my favorite books as a child) Roald Dahl's George's Marvelous Medicine, where he created a potion to "kill" his grandma, though of course it simply makes her body do silly things like grow very tall. But the librarian said they can't put that book out because children will kill their grandparents. My jaw dropped at this, I couldn't believe it and said so. She said, "Of course Miss, there are some nasty grandparents in this world. These kids would kill their grandparents." And then I realized how much literature I have been privileged to read and not take quite so literally because of my life circumstances. That I was able to read books with heavy subject matter starting at age 11 or 12. I was also best friends with my librarian, so she probably let me read books that I was not supposed to read, but even still. Books and literature have been the greatest teachers in my life, and I can't imagine not even having the option to reach for those books and learn those lessons. 

So that was really eye opening for me. That some content will never be shared with students, even though in my own experience they should be able to read that content at 18, as I was so much younger when I found it. It was like finding out that some books that I read throughout high school were banned in other schools in the country. How can you go through life being denied literature? Being denied something as precious as a book? It's something new I have to think about.