Violence and The Hunger Games in the classroom

After our in-class discussion of Susan Collins' The Hunger Games, and our ongoing discussion about classroom censorship and banned content and books, I found myself considering reasons why books similar to The Hunger Games are often banned for classroom use. As a education major with a specialization in language arts, I am also taking a communications class on mass media this semester as an option for one of my language arts credits. In my communications class, we recently touched on the topic of child exposure to violent media content, and I found it very applicable to our conversations in TE348. According to my class, violence in the media can have interesting effects on children. Because children are believed to be more malleable than adults, they are shielded from various potential causes of harm or anxiety. Contrary to popular belief, there are actually some potential benefits to exposing children to violence in the media. Some exposure to violent media may help some children reduce their fears of violence. Although The Hunger Games contains some violence and dark content, I would argue that this type of literature can be used in upper elementary or middle school settings to talk about various subject matter ranging from literary elements to social or economic structure.