we should display the world as it is not how we want it
and we should do a better job teaching children how to correctly respond to this real world and teach them to recognise bullsh*t when they see it
Exactly, the average child is shielded from reality till someone outside their family shows it to them, and thus they find out the wrong way. Even in those cases where a child has learned something at an early age, because their parents aren't doing their job, they use it in an ignorant way. I remember a kid in my neighborhood that used harsh language as young as eight. He wasn't corrected, or at least not properly (my dad would have tanned my backside), so he just kept on with it...and I don't think he understood anything he was saying.
If you're curious enough to overcome censorship barriers, it means that you do have some mini-sense of maturity and thus won't be traumatized perhaps after what you've seen. However without censorship, people may get completely traumatized.
This is actually the best argument for censorship I've ever seen. I don't really have much of a reply for this...although I do have to say that in certain situations, the parents themselves need to be censored. There's many children who find out about all sorts of things simply because the parents are so immature as to actually have a heated argument. There's many children who are traumatized by this alone. Of course, that only comes from selfishness of the parents, they forgot that whatever they're doing isn't important and all that's important is the child.
There needs to be a point when children are exposed to things though. If a child is somehow magically shielded from everything that people think should be censored until they're eighteen. Suddenly they'll walk into a new world that they weren't prepared for. I know my brother was furious that *** was never explained to him. He found himself in certain situations that he had to blindly stumble through simply because our dad didn't have the cojones to have "the talk".
Oh, and keep in mind that society decides what should be censored, and that's based on peoples opinions which are highly flawed. From one point of veiw, certain words are considered profane. From the other point of veiw, "curse" words are just words and there's nothing special about them. Also, studies show that children and adults both have issues with using medical terms for certain body parts that are appropriate; instead they have to use a word that's not considered appropriate and by doing so it keeps them from embarrassment. However, if they taught that these things weren't "dirty" or "evil" and they were just normal, then people would grow up being more comfortable with it and wouldn't have to snicker every time a perfectly harmless term for one's privates is used.
