Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Banning Books

Censorship is a very controversial issue. There are many people who believe that some books and movies have a negative effect on society and therefore should be banned. Other people disagree with this, saying that we can't necessarily trust one group of people to decide what is right and what is wrong for people to read. In level 402, we wrote about this issue. Here are some students' opinions on the matter.

Banning Books
By Wafa Hassan

One day I was watching TV, I saw a programme about books. They were talking about the effects of books on people. They talked about a book its name is How to Be a Good Murderer. It shows a lot of bad things, and I thought they had to ban it. So I think banning books is a good thing, because some of them have bad ideas and wrong thoughts. Also, some of them encourage bad behaviors.

There are some books that have bad ideas. I don’t know why those people write these books. Maybe to sell their books with good profits. For example, I think we should ban the book How to Be a Good Murderer because it shows a lot of bad ideas like ways to kill someone and how to dispose of the body. Also it shows how to use different kinds of guns. If we don’t ban it, it will help to increase the number of crimes and criminals.

There are a lot of books about religion, but not all of them are good. There is a book about Islam. It has a wrong vision and it has wrong thoughts. It says that Islam is very hard and difficult, whereas it is very easy and simple. This is dangerous because people will be afraid of it and they will avoid it.

Some people write books to encourage others to do things that they want, because they have the power of persuasion. For example, there are some books that talk about drugs and how to use them. They also tell you that drugs make you feel good great and very active. Books like this will effect young people very easily and they will use drugs a lot although they are very dangerous and harmful. So for that we have to ban it.

Finally, I can say that banning books is a very good and useful way to protect people from such books. We can trust that it’s a good way to protect people because they are banned by experts who know what is right and what is wrong and they know what they are doing.
Banning Books
Bushra Khaled Own
All people know that the books have been very important in their lives. In all places in the world there are many people addicted to reading. Therefore, they must be careful when they choose their books. I believe that there are many books that have bad and wrong ideas. These ideas will effect upon people’s lives and make them bad. In this case I agree with banning books because it gives people keeping, protection and gives people information about books so that they can choose the best.
Banning books is really good. It can keep the behaviors in the good way. It makes our life more quiet and without harm because some books have some ideas about racism. Some books can teach children violent behaviors, so banning books saves children from that.
Banning books is protective. Some books have wrong ideas about our religion. So banning books protects our religion from that. It makes the parents more conveniently about what their children read because the immoral books were banned. That also makes the teenagers can read any books without feeling ashamed.

Banning books makes people more careful. We can see that when they will choose the books that they want to read because they have information about bad books. In that case people can know which books are non-original books. Some books are magical, so the people must be careful for them. People can fight the books that have dangerous traditional treatment because they become more carefully.

In the end, banning books is beneficial in general. It makes our life safer and convenient. I will be more careful when I go to choose which book I want to read. If we know which the wrong is or the correct we can ban the bad books by ourselves.

Banning Books is Wrong
By Waheeb Mohammed
I disagree with banning books. Anyone can ban them and he doesn't know the benefit of the book. And also he can ban the book to make people stupid and ignorant. And they can book about democracy.

They can ban books that have benefits that they don`t know about. People say that teenbooks have bad things, but sometimes they have good things. Also they say comics books are bad because they are unreal, however some say they are good ways to practice reading for children.

I think the government bans the book to make people stupid and ignorant. They can ban books about the new technology, inventions and books that have information about space. Also historical books that tell us about our grandfathers.

The books about democracy could be banned, too. For examble books that talk about waht the government has to do for people and their rights, so if they didn`t know about their rights, they wouldn`t ask for they. Also books that make people appreciate the sitution, to make people agree with the government.

Because of these reasons, I think there is no one who can ban any book. People read books can say if the book is good or bad and decide to read what they want and there is no one can punish them.
Banning Books
By Emad Salah
As a matter of fact I'm one of the supporters of the idea of banning books because it's a protection for our socity from the possible dangers that may come from some kinds of books. In my opinion, I think there are two main reasons that make banning books a very important step that we have made as we are in an Islamic country. So the first one is a religious reason and the second one is an ethical.

Many non-muslims writers try to deface Islam by writing wrong things about it and to effect on illiterate people so that they leave their religion.

The ethical danger comes directly after. Let's imagine that if we allowed all kinds of books and magazines- no matter whether it is good or bad - if we allowed them to enter our country, they would spread in the bookstores and who knows maybe someday you would find one of them in your younger brother and he reads such as trash things!!

In addition to the reasons that I've mentioned I think there are a lot others, but I think they are the most important. Finally, banning books is a great idea that we have to really appreciate it.

The News in Yemen

In level 402, we study about the news and we look at different sources of news. We thought it would be a fun and interesting activity to conduct surveys in Yemen to find out different things about people's habits and opinions regarding the news. Here are some results that we found:

Who Cares More about the News?
By Wafa Hassan

I did this survey to know the difference in the way of getting news between men and women. I want to know if there is a difference or if both of them care equally about the news. I predicted that men care about the news more than women. Also, I predicted that men and women use TV as a main source to get the news then the newspaper.

I asked a lot of people- nearly 68. Some of them were students in Amideast or in college and some of them were relatives and friends of different ages. Our questions were 3 simple questions: Where do you usually get the news? How often do you look at the news? Do you think the news is very impotent?

We asked 40 men and 28 women and I discovered that both of them care about the news; most of them said that it's very important. 25% of men get their news from the newspaper and 75% from TV. 46% of women get their news from the newspaper and 54% from TV. When I asked about time that they spent getting their news I discovered that there is a difference. 60% of men look at the news every day, 23% 3 days a week, 17% every weekend and 32% every day. For women, 68% look at the news every weekend and 32% every day.

I wasn’t surprised by the women. Maybe I didn’t think that they cared for the news that way, but as I predicted the men care more. However, I was surprised that a lot use the newspaper because I know few people in Yemen who like to read.
Who Cares More About the News?
By Bushra Kahlid Own
When I meet my friends we always talk about arts and fashion. However we don’t mention the news. My mother said that we are careless girls because we didn’t know that what happened in the world. At first I thought that all women didn’t care about news, but after my mother was talking with me I decided to make a survey to support my prediction. I also wanted to see if the main source to get news for men and women is the TV.
My survey consisted of four simple questions: What is your gender? Where do you usually get the news? How often do you look at news? Do you think news is very important for you? Each question had some different choices. I asked these questions in my neighborhood, at college and at Amideast. Our group asked 68 people total. I asked 28 people. Of our total, 40 of them were men and 28 were women.
I found these results from my survey. 25% of the men get their news from the newspaper. 75% gets their news from TV. 46% of women get their news from the newspaper and the rest get their news from TV. Most of men and women get their news every day. Both also said that news is very important in their life.
In conclusion, I was surprised from one part my prediction. I surprised that the women said that news is very important, so I was wrong. However I was correct when I thought that the main source to get news is the TV. I am happy because the women follow what happens in the world. I will try to get interested in watching news.