What are we feeding our brains?

Book lovers may often find themselves searching for a good book to settle down with, whether it's realism, fantasy, science fiction, or wherever their curiosity takes them. But rather than being enveloped in a great plot, they find themselves face-to-face with explicit material.

For a while now, UWC Dover has had explicit books within its library, just waiting for a student to pick one up and be taken aback by what they came across. For many reasons, not enforcing rules against the middle schooler’s access to high school material containing more mature material negatively impacts a student’s judgment and decision-making. Before you jump to conclusions, let me explain.

Explicit material is most recognised to be either sexually explicit material or violent and gory content. Substance abuse, offensive or disturbing language as well as psychological and emotional abuse are also considered explicit material as well. Oftentimes, these scenes are presented in a manner that middle schoolers are unprepared to process. This is a problem because reading topics like this at a younger age can impact the reader’s perceptions of these topics, such as desensitisation, false expectations, and more. In my opinion, our school and its librarians currently do not enforce the system of preventing middle schoolers in an effective manner, and should take necessary steps to put the system into place.

Explicit material also gives skewed ideas about relationships as well as general false expectations. Exposure to sexually explicit content without context beforehand can give students misconceptions about aspects of relationships, such as consent, and behaviour, and influence what the reader may believe to be a “healthy” relationship. When taking these ideas into real situations, the student may put themselves or others in a position where they hurt themselves or others. In addition, it can also create false expectations of aspects in relationships, and maybe even adult life, depending on which type of book they read.

Outside of that, when repeatedly reading offensive and harmful language such as profanity or slurs, students are more likely to incorporate those words into their vocabulary and use them in real-life situations. They may not completely understand the impact and harm of those words, and may slowly adopt speech patterns containing those words or believe that those words have no meaning and are acceptable to use. 

During my year as a seventh grader, I accidentally stumbled upon two separate books that contained rape. As a middle schooler who didn’t know much better, I instead shared the material with my peers. When I do reflect on those experiences, I do believe that it made me somewhat less sensitive towards topics like sexual assault, which is not the best kind of mindset to have. I remember vividly during the same year when I came across a murder case involving sexual assault, I shared it with my friends and made a joke out of it, which was quite disrespectful towards the victim and their family. I originally didn’t think much of it, but now I realise that such thinking is extremely insensitive. Ultimately, because of the pervasiveness of explicit material in our community, I’ve continued hearing many crude jokes objectifying girl’s bodies and normalising sexual assault. This just goes to show that students are still in the process where they are developing their worldview, and if exposed to inappropriate content like this too early, they may struggle to develop a balanced and healthy perspective, translating to a cycle of harmful rhetoric at UWCSEA. 

But although when you really think about it, there has to be a reason why explicit material is written into books. Authors cannot simply add explicit material for no reason, meaning that explicit material in books is a key part to convey underlying messages and themes. For example, the vivid imagery from a piece of literature containing sexual assault could show further depth the  into the character’s transition to a journey of healing— where they come to terms with themselves, their body and their safety and security. 

Therefore, I do believe it is okay to portray certain topics that fall under explicit material “healthily”. What I mean by a healthy manner is when content is toned down with limited graphic content which can avoid sensationalising or glorifying those actions. Providing context and encouraging critical reflection also emphasises the consequences and allows the topic to be seen more seriously.

This means that books should rather focus on their respective plot lines and themes instead of the details of the explicit encounter. For example, books that fall under the horror genre typically include some form of violence or threat of violence to create more fear and tension, but the violence portrayed in the story does not necessarily need to be the main focus and just add to the plot line. This way, students can still enjoy certain story themes while avoiding harmful impacts on their judgment and decision-making.

UWC Dover and its librarians may want to focus on enforcing the system in place to prevent middle schoolers from accidentally picking up high school material as they may not be necessarily ready to approach the explicit content with the right mindset.

Such systems could be better defined boundaries for the high school and middle school materials (eg. separated into different parts of the library, labels etc), which could possibly prevent middle schoolers from accidentally picking up books with explicit material. Although I do believe that middle schoolers can still get some access to books with explicit material as long as the explicit material is diluted and instead highlights subtle themes and messages in the book that will contribute to a more broad perspective and critical thinking.

Our school should help students navigate more complex and more mature topics responsibly while still allowing them to enjoy a diverse range of literature.

By: Anonymous author