Duel

      When I was watching "Duel"(we watched this one a long time ago. It's the animated film where the kids are on the conveyor belt and at the end of the belt they all drop off as identical businessmen), the things I thought of were censorship and education. Did you notice that the main character was reading a book by a famous author (I cannot remember which one. I'm thinking Jules Verne, but I don't think that's the one), and the book was taken away from him? The kid in "Duel" was so curious. He wanted to read and learn, but somebody else kept coming along and telling him what he could or couldn't read. Some people seem to think that education=knowing what most other people know. Well, if most everybody else knows it, why does another person need to know it? What's education for, anyway?
      Also, of course, this film brings up the topic of censorship. I don't remember how much we've discussed in class about censorship, and of course I can't see inside your brains to see how much you know about censorship, so forgive me for discussing it if you already know all this stuff:
      I think censorship has always existed, and a lot of times it's coming from parents who just want the best for the kids, so they don't allow the kids to be exposed to things they don't agree is good for the kids. But what if the parent is wrong....
       You know, so many people today talk about toleration. "You should tolerate other points of view and other lifestyles." But those same people are in favor of censorship. They won't tolerate people who are intolerant of their toleration. They say, "Think for yourself," and then they insist that kids think the way they do. They insist on censoring from the kids' minds the idea that the kids can have different opinions on toleration.
       When everyone is raised in this mold of "This is what education is and there is no other way to be educated" and the mold of censorship, it becomes a cycle of generation after generation thinking in the same way and never questioning that thinking. It's a hard cycle to break, and it takes a person like the kid in "Duel" to realize that the conveyor belt is not the way to go. However, the kid in "Duel" is generally the kid who gets censored. The battle is ongoing, as "Duel" showed at the end of the film, when the censorer came back. There will always be people who want to censor ideas, and so there always needs to be people who recognize censorship for what it is and the danger it poses.
 
Not the greatest book in the world, but it might challenge your opinions a little bit.