In 1947 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. argued “Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.” Modern day censorship of books, which predominantly targets African-Americans, undermines both intelligence and education. They remove not only the knowledge of history and accomplishment but also the lived experiences of others, which prevents the development of empathy and moral awareness.
When I researched book bans for my AP Seminar research report, I discovered a troubling pattern. Nearly 80% of all book challenges and censorship requests are directed at school classrooms and libraries. The American Library Association recorded over 5,000 instances of banned or challenged materials. A large portion target books written by or about people of color, particularly African-Americans.
This pattern reveals something critical about what students are losing. Education scholar Michael Apple explains that “decisions about texts are decisions about whose knowledge is legitimate.” When schools remove books about Black history and African-American experiences, they are not simply editing curriculum. Instead, they are deciding whose stories and perspectives deserve to be learned.
This causes students to lose access to the historical struggles and accomplishments of African-Americans which leaves them without the knowledge needed to understand both the past and present realities of American society. This directly undermines the “intelligence” side of King’s vision.
The loss of knowledge is only half the problem. When students are not exposed to real African-American lived experiences through literature, they cannot develop empathy and moral awareness. They miss the opportunity to understand struggles different from their own. This gap in exposure creates consequences for character development. As a result, students may develop unintentional biases or remain unaware of racism in society.
Without encountering diverse perspectives, they cannot build the values and attitudes needed to recognize injustice when they see it, which affects how they treat other people and shapes what they believe about different communities. Consequently, it influences what they might later tell their own children or friends. Book bans do not just limit what students know, they limit who students become. This is the erosion of “character” that King warned about.
This is where his warning becomes reality because someone can succeed academically, graduate from college and build a successful career without ever developing empathy or awareness about racism and injustice. They can have intelligence but lack character. King called this “the greatest menace to society.”
The danger multiplies when these individuals gain positions of power such as teachers, school board members, politicians and policymakers who lack moral awareness and make decisions that harm others. These people become the ones who ban books in the first place. Scholar Emily Knox argues that “efforts to remove books are attempts to control cultural narratives and deny students perspectives.”
These decision-makers use their intelligence to maintain systems that suppress diverse voices and perpetuate the cycle to ensure the next generation grows up without exposure to the experiences that build character. Intelligence without character is not just an individual failing, it becomes a tool of oppression.
Dr. King understood in 1947 what we are still learning today. Education that fails to develop character creates danger for society, and book bans prove his point. When schools remove diverse voices, they produce students who may be academically prepared but morally unprepared to navigate a diverse world.
King’s vision offers a solution because he believed education should develop both intelligence and character together, not one at the expense of the other. In my research, I concluded that schools should not shield students from complex topics. Instead, they should empower students to engage with diverse perspectives and think critically about them.
This is what King meant by true education. We cannot achieve his goal of “intelligence plus character” by limiting what students read. We achieve it by expanding their exposure to the full range of human experience. Only then can education fulfill its purpose.
