Jan. 8 Blog Post

censoring for guardian virtue

The most debated topic in class today was whether we should give kids the uncensored version of the Iliad and Odyssey or take out the parts that are unappealing to us as a society and censor them to maintain a heroic virtue. Some of my peers in class had the idea that some people in society try to base themselves off of certain heroes, even to the point where they reflect their unappealing traits. I believe it is crucial to censor out these parts for children, especially the sexual parts of the odyssey, not because the children would try to become like that, but because the material presented is not appropriate for children around that age. In my curriculum growing up, we read Iliad in seventh grade and Odyssey in eighth grade, and at fourteen, I don’t think that the sexual topics benefitted me at all and only caused discomfort in the classroom among students at that time.