The poor and the affluent are not communicating because they do not have the same words. When we talk of the millions who are culturally deprived, we refer not to those who do not have access to good libraries and bookstores, or to museums and centers for the performing arts, but those deprived of the words with which everything else is built, the words that opens doors. Children without words are licked before they start. The legion of the young wordless in urban and rural slums, eight to ten years old, do not know the meaning of hundreds of words which most middle-class people assume to be familiar to much younger children. Most of them have never seen their parents read a book or a magazine, or heard words used in other than rudimentary ways related to physical needs and functions. Thus is cultural fallout caused, the vicious circle of ignorance and poverty reinforced and perpetuated. Children deprived of words become school dropouts; dropouts deprived of hope behave delinquently. Amateur censors blame delinquency on reading immoral books and magazines, when in fact, the inability to read anything is the basic trouble.
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If only it were God's will that printed and written materials have as much influence on the people as the princes and their censors fear! Cons...
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I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them. Censors only read a book with great difficulty, moving their lips as they puzzle out each syllable, when someone tells them that the book is unfit to read.
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James 3:1:
Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers and sisters, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.
(NIV)
NOT MANY [of you] should become teachers (self-constituted censors and reprovers of others), my brethren, for you know that we [teachers] will be judged by a higher standard and with greater severity [than other people; thus we assume the greater accountability and the more condemnation].
(AMP)
My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation.
(KJV)
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Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion.
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No government ought to be without censors & where the press is free, no one ever will.
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No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.
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