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Adrian Birds
Mrs. Thomas
UWRT 1103-63
22, February, 2015

It took me a while to develop an inquiry question that I actually wanted to write about. I
had to sit without any distractions and think for a while before I came up with the question I
wanted to talk about. Once I finally got through the confusion of the assignment and developed
my question I began to brainstorm things that I wanted to talk about in the proposal, this was
actually one of the challenges for me. My plan for this question is to evaluate all available
resources, books, essays, articles, and even documentaries to formulate an effective paper. I am,
however, still concerned about what to and what not to include in this paper.

Censoring America!

Children today are exposed to a multitude of various things through things like internet,
books, and video games. How much of what children are exposed to are beneficial? How much
censorship is considered too much? This leads me to consider whether or not censorship is
beneficial for children today. I am driven to explore this inquiry question because as a child most
things were not censored for me, I played violent video games and watched violent movies
growing up it has always interested me how different someone might be who has been censored
from these things.

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I found this inquiry question to be highly researchable through the differences in views
every culture has on the idea. Censorship has been around for decades and centuries, leading all
the way back to 400 B.C. when the Athenians tried Socrates for corrupting the youth through
teaching them to constantly question things, things like democracy or government. Annoyed by
the new ideas Socrates was exposing the children of Athens to they tried him and sentenced him
to drink poison. Plato, another Greek philosopher, is said to have advocated for censorship in his
essay The Republic. There are various types of information some say should be censored. One of
the more common types is Moral censorship, removing info that could be seen as morally
obscene. Other types consist of Military censorship, political censorship, religious and corporate
censorship. Prior to my research I already knew The United Sates for instance does not place as
high of a value on censorship, this can been seen through things like Freedom of Speech, China
however, is a country that believes in protecting its children and citizens from harmful things
through censoring them. National security and economics are a couple of the factors taken into
consideration when countries decide whether or not to censor something. For example the release
of the website WikiLeaks, a lot of people have argued that when previously withheld or censored
information such as military documents are made public it is a huge threat to national security. In
a study done by Iowa State Professor Craig A. Anderson it was concluded that violent video
games tend to increase aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, and aggressive behaviors. Those that
are against or have criticized censorship throughout history argue that it is simply unfair and
actively hinders progress or growth. Social commentator Michael Landier said in a 1997 essay
that censorship is counterproductive and prevents censored information or topics from being
discussed.

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The next steps for my inquiry would be to do extensive searching into the varying
cultural views on censorship as well as examining the multiple studies done on censorship. There
are plenty of different opinions out there about censorship and I hope to assess most of them
through my research. I will look at different time periods and how views have changed
throughout time. One major era in time that I would look at is the Holocaust period where Hitler
banned and censored many types of information from German citizens, examples of this are seen
through the book burning celebrations Nazis took place in. Through my inquiry I hope to present
my research in a way that is understandable to the readers as well as exposing the readers to all
aspects of censorship, its benefits and weaknesses.

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