Not In Front of the Children: "Indecency," Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth [Paperback]

Marjorie Heins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 10, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0809073994 | ISBN-13: 978-0809073993 | Edition: 1st

The first comprehensive history of the debate about censorship designed to protect children and winner of the ALA's 2002 Eli Oboler Award for best-published work in the area of intellectual freedom

From Huckleberry Finn to Harry Potter, Internet filters to the V-chip, censorship is often based on the assumption that children and adolescents must be protected from "indecent" information that might harm their development -- whether in art, in literature, or on a Web site. But where does this assumption come from, and is it true? In Not in Front of the Children, a pathbreaking history of "indecency" laws and other restrictions aimed at protecting youth, Marjorie Heins suggests that the "harm-to-minors" argument rests on shaky foundations.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Wouldn't Edward Lear have been startled to learn that in 1998 his poem "The Owl and the Pussycat" wasn't available on many school library computers because obscenity-sensitive Web searches had targeted the word "pussy"? Heins (Sex, Sin and Blasphemy: A Guide to America's Censorship Wars) argues potently that the age-old idea of protecting children from "corrupting" influences which can be traced at least as far back as Plato's Republic has reached dangerous proportions in the U.S. Constructing a history of child protection movements and legal precedents (from the Supreme Court Butler and Roth decisions in the 1950s to lawsuits brought by the ACLU and the American Library Association to remove state mandated Internet filters from public libraries in the 1990s), Heins charts evolving concepts of childhood, based on such diverse sources as Philippe Ari?s's Centuries of Childhood and SIECUS reports. She points to a new wave of social and sexual puritanism engendered by the political and Christian right, which takes a variety of forms, including Wendy Shalit's 1999 A Return to Modesty and groups such as MOMS (Mothers Organized for Moral Stability). In tackling the issue of the possibly deleterious effect of sexual or violent materials on children, she refers to everyone from Piaget, Rousseau and Freud to Todd Gitlin and Carol Gilligan, and touches on events like New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's offensive against the Sensation art show. Heins's historical argument makes an important contribution to the literature of civil liberties and child psychology. Agent, Anne Depue. (May) Forecast: Drawing on the foundation laid by Edward de Grazia's landmark historical critique of American censorship, Girls Lean Back Everywhere, Heins's provocative work should attract review attention in sophisticated publications as well as fans of the social criticism of Alan Dershowitz and Wendy Kaminer.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

At a time when censorship cases have reached record numbers, this work by the director of the National Coalition Against Censorship's Free Expression Policy Project provides a scholarly discussion of numerous issues related to censorship, especially as it applies to youth. The book begins by examining the history of "indecency laws," from the time of Plato to the present. Based on extensive research, the 10 chapters provide the intellectual information necessary to argue serious threats to free expression not only in the United States, but also worldwide. Some of the important and timely topics included are: the "harmful to minors" argument, the Communications Decency Act, the Child Online Protection Act, the Motion Picture Association of America's movie ratings, school dress codes, book censorship, and student publications. Heins supports these discussions by citing specific court cases. Intended for anyone interested in free expression, this well-indexed book is the long-awaited tool needed in the academic environment to help shape personal and professional philosophies related to censorship issues. The amazing part is that Heins has managed to present these discussions in a completely objective voice.

Pat Scales, South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities, Greenville

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Hill and Wang; 1st edition (February 10, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809073994
• ISBN-13: 978-0809073993
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,934,439 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Protectionism is Harmful to Minors, December 22, 2002

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Not in Front of the Children: "Indecency", Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth (Hardcover)

Though the scholarly discussions of legal cases were trying (pardon the pun) to get through, they were worth the effort. They helped to dramatize the incredible amounts of time, energy, and emotion misplaced in the "harm to minors" protectionism racket. Due to her civil libertarian background, I was surprised to see her frequent attempts to present (or at least understand) both sides.

She points out that censorship itself may have "modeling effects, teaching authoritarianism, intolerance for unpopular opions, erotophobia, and sexual guilt." In her conclusion, she comes utterly to the point: "Censorship is an avoidance technique that addresses adult anxieties and satisfies symbolic concerns, but ultimately does nothing to resolve social problems or affirmatively help adolescents and children cope with their environments and impulses."

She revisits the virtues (for all of us, including children) of ambiguity, catharsis, and irony and says that the humorless overliteralism of so much censorship directed at youth "reduces the difficult, complicated, joyous, and sometimes tortured experience of growing up to a sanitized combination of adult moralizing and intellectual closed doors."

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A far overdue response to the hysteria, October 3, 2001

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Not in Front of the Children: "Indecency", Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth (Hardcover)

Bravo to this book. It's time that someone injected facts and logic into debates that primarily have been based on myths, fears, guesses, hopes, assumptions, and hysteria.

A previous reviewer wants to know why we don't have more data on how, say, pornography affects teenagers. One reason is that a controlled experiment would be nearly impossible: finding teenagers who haven't been exposed to any pornography is difficult enough, but for a scientist or social scientist to get approval from human review boards for the other half of the experiment (the teenagers that you're going to make sure have been exposed to plenty of pornography, to study its supposed effects) would be nearly impossible. But as the previous reviewer points out, we have a vast profusion of anecdotal evidence: pornography is widely available in Europe, which seems to have fewer of the supposedly pornography-related problems than does the United States. Second, since almost all teenagers voluntarily expose themselves to pornography, it's safe to observe that the vast majority of them suffer from no effects. Who are we protecting with laws prohibiting minors from obtaining pornography? Parents who cannot and will not deal with the fact that their 12-year-old son is always horny and quite probably already is sexually (if not emotionally or intellectually) an adult?

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Author Brought up Good Issues, June 25, 2002

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Stella (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Not in Front of the Children: "Indecency", Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth (Hardcover)

My reading group chose this book, because we felt that there weren't many books out there that focused on the topic of censorship and the protection of children and innocence. But while she brings up many issues that shows censorship as troublesome, she addresses them in such a dry manner that it became harder to read as the book became more or a summary of all the court cases there have been regarding the issues. It would be a great book for a communication or law class, but for recreational reading, it was very difficult for us as readers to get to the end of the book.