Ban One - Ban Them All

A week or so ago an interesting point was brought up by my fellow classmate, Katie, when we were talking about banned books - Harry Potter to be specific. She said that if you're going to ban book, why don't you just ban them all because all books have questioning content in them. It was a point that I agreed with, on my stance banning books conflicts with the first amendment (by US standards of course because that's what I know). It also teaches kids that they can only say so much, that there are things that they can't talk about because it might make one person question everything. I never grew up in a home where that was the case - my parents encouraged reading, I've been reading high school level books since third or fourth grade if my memory serves me right. They wanted me to have a voice and reading told me it was okay to think differently than the people around me - it made me feel like a main character in my own story rather than a supporting one.
But as far as banning books go there should be some rules put to it. If someone is going to ban a book for a particular reason then I would suggest putting a rating to it. That's not banning it, but it's telling kids that maybe they're not old enough to completely understand the meaning behind the book. It's like a movie rating - some movies are rated R just so that the audience is mature enough to understand the purpose of it, writers and directors willingly through in that second F-bomb just so that MPAA will force theaters to only allow viewers who are over 17 (or minors with permission from a parent). The message still gets out there but in a different way. It would make more sense to do that rather than to tell a child that they can't read a book because it contains contents like homosexuality/multisexuality, magic, guns, etc. The people who should ultimately ban a book from a child should be the parents and not the school administrative board.