From the times of the Civil War to now, the United States has faced the censorship of banned curriculum within schools and states. Banned curriculum is when states changed their school or state laws to ban certain topics that challenged traditional values. These topics could consist of slavery, racism, sexism, LGBTQ, certain religions, and sex education. This is relevant because it affects the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment was created so every citizen has the right to free speech, religion, and expressing themselves but without hurting others. In civics, it is important to recognize those banned curriculums because of its repercussions to the Bill of Rights, more specifically, the First Amendment (Library Guides).

Banned curriculum is the removal of topics in educational systems because those topics challenge traditional values. For example: slavery, racism, sexism, LGBTQ, certain religions, and sex education, and evolution topics have been cut from being talked about in specific states. This happens because every state has a different government system and has control of their own educational systems. Certain books and topics will be banned in some states, but not in all. Banned curriculum happens by book banning, state ban laws, and uncovered topic material in schools. This issue not only affects human rights, but further isolates marginalized populations and affects its country by not letting all citizens be informed on information. America is known for having a diverse melting pot of many different cultures and people. Statistically speaking, there are  60.1% White people, 18.5% Hispanic people, 12.2% Black people, 5.6% Asian people, 2.8% multiple races, and 0.9% Native Hawaiian/Native American people (World Economic Forum). Gender differences and sexism has had their issues of inequality and it shows in their income and their daily lives. These are just two occurring examples, but banning education to inform these minorities discriminates against them because it provides them with little to no knowledge about their cultures or issues . If banning information from people continues, there could become a bigger ban of topics and people may become even more ignorant to those issues surrounding them. 

Banned curriculum is important because it is just as relevant as any other topic in school, and if anything it is more important because the topic has been censored for a reason. Individuals should learn more about banned curriculum because they will be able to grow and increase their civic engagement participation by learning more about other cultures, how other people may think, things about themselves, etc. They will be able to make more informed worldly decisions from learning these topics. While it's good banned curriculum exists because that means states have control of what they want, this also creates issues within discrimination and ignorance. What do you think, should there still be a banned curriculum?