Scholastic Award
Silver Key 2026
Synopsis: Set in a contemporary school board meeting, this short story imagines Plato and Aristotle resurrected to debate the modern issue of banning books in public schools. Plato urges strict supervision of literature to protect young minds and preserve virtue, while Aristotle argues that moral judgment can only develop through experience, debate, and exposure to difficult ideas. Blending humor, classical philosophy, and present-day tensions, the story reframes censorship as a deeper question about education itself: whether virtue is best cultivated through protection and control, or through guided freedom and critical engagement.
Motion: To Ban or Not to Ban
[Recording Begins | District 8 School Board Meeting | 6:03 PM]
Chairperson: Good evening, everyone. Tonight’s agenda concerns the proposed removal of certain titles from our high school libraries—books containing sexual, offensive language, or violence.1 Books that some parents claim are “unsuitable” for students. We’ve invited two… distinguished guest speakers to offer philosophical context. Mr. Plato of Athens and his former student, Mr. Aristotle of Stagira.
(Murmurs. A parent whispers something about “ancient consultants.”)
Chairperson: I would like to thank you both, in turn, for setting your differences and age aside to speak to us today. Our community is very appreciative.
Chairperson: To keep this brief, I would like to open the floor to Mr. Plato. Please, sir, the floor is yours.
Plato: I thank you. I have heard your citizens’ worry about the minds of the young, and I find them right. You must supervise the storytellers; if they make up a good story, we must accept it; if not, we must reject it.2
Plato: When the city–(coughs)–school, allows any story to enter the hearts of children, it leaves the guardians asleep at their posts. Some call it “freedom of reading.” I call it unguarded gates.
Chairperson: So, you’re saying the board should remove these books?
Plato: We will not allow teachers to use stories that corrupt the character of the young—our young must remain as god-fearing and virtuous as humans can be.3
Chairperson: Mr. Aristotle, if you wish to intrude…
Aristotle: I understand your concern for virtue, but even order must serve a purpose. Every craft and every method of inquiry seems to seek some good.4 But to seek the good, one must also deliberate—and deliberation is born of experience.
Aristotle: If we hide every troubling idea from the young, we deny the very training by which they learn to judge: experience.
Plato: Judgment, Pôlos5, requires a firm foundation. Would you hand a sword to one who had not yet learned its edge?
Aristotle: And yet a sword, unused, grows dull. The mind is the same. A human being is more of a political animal than a bee or any other gregarious animal.6 We are made to speak, to weigh, to dispute.
(Parents look at each other, eyes wide, mouths parted slightly. Confusion shrouds their faces.)
Chairperson: (clears his throat, almost nervously) Just to clarify: one of you says the young must be shielded from error, and the other says they must encounter it in order to grow.
Aristotle: Precisely. It is characteristic of a well-educated person to look for the degree of exactness that the nature of the subject itself allows. Education is not about purity–it is about trial and error.
Plato: Experience alone is not enough. Without guidance, the young mistake illusion for truth.
Aristotle: Yet imitation is how we learn! A child mimics speech before understanding its meaning. Likewise, stories can show both the good and the bad, and from contrast judgment arises. Virtue is the mean between excess and defect.7 Even in literature, the same rule applies.
Plato: You risk disorder for the hope of moderation. Aristotle, do not be so dull, I would hope I had taught you better than to think like a sophist—
Aristotle: —And you would freeze the soul for the fear of motion.
(Laughter ripples through the audience; a few parents groan. Everyone leans forward, engaged.)
Chairperson: I understand you did not leave off on the best of terms, but please let us stay focused. The issue is these books—some say they depict reality as it is, others say they erode moral character.
Plato: Reality must be shown through what is worthy. The young cannot yet distinguish appearance from truth. That is why us guardians must supervise stories.
Aristotle: But even the most difficult stories teach us reason. A well-educated person examines what the subject allows, with the exactness that they permit.8 Is this not a place of education? To shelter the young from all difficulties is to stunt their growth.
Plato: Perhaps. But a soul exposed too soon to vice becomes hardened by error. Justice is doing one’s own work and not meddling with what is not one’s own.9 The city’s—(cough, cough)–school’s work is to raise just citize…(pause) students; it cannot delegate that to chance or as Machiavelli would call it, fortuna.
(The audience gasps–a long collective“oooh” the kind students make when a classmate is called to the principal’s office: “oooh they’reee in troubleeee…”)
Aristotle: Do not speak that name here, broad-shouldered Aristocles10, I understand you try to get a raise out of me—
(The chairperson coughs, interrupting the bicker.)
Chairperson: Gentle-philosophers, please.
Aristotle: And I say: do that work well, but trust your students to wrestle with imperfection. A human being is naturally political6; we speak, deliberate, and aid the just and unjust. Virtue grows not from silence, but from experience!
Plato: Then we disagree. You let the young confront the chaos of life unguarded.
Aristotle: I guide them to confront it wisely. Since it is agreed that what is moderate and in a means is best, it is evident that possessing a middle amount of the goods of luck is also best.11 The right path lies in moderation; in between total censorship and total freedom.
(A long pause, the room pin-drop silent.)
Chairperson: Final remarks?
Plato: Guardianship is not tyranny. It is care. Supervise the storytellers, approve what uplifts, and blame what drags the soul toward disorder. Only then will virtue flourish in the city’s children.
Aristotle: And let them learn to choose rightly. Teach them to deliberate, to confront challenges, to exercise judgment. Knowledge is not born from silence. We must trust our citizens, our children enough to wrestle with imperfection, for that is how virtue grows from potential into act.
Chairperson: Thank you, gentlemen.
(Plato rises first and walks to the door. After a short pause, Aristotle follows.)
Chairperson: What we’ve heard tonight, though dressed in ancient words, speaks sharply to our modern dispute. Plato reminds us that stories shape the soul–that what we let into young minds becomes the measure of their virtue. His call to “supervise the storytellers” is not mere censorship, but a warning about negligence: that a community without standards abandons its moral education.
(The chairperson pauses, glancing toward the audience.)
Chairperson: And yet Aristotle answers that virtue cannot be imposed from above. It grows through practice, through wrestling with uncertainty. To shield students from every troubling page is to rob them of the very experience that allows judgment to mature. He would say that reason ripens only through engagement with imperfection.
Chairperson: So perhaps what divides them–and us–is not whether virtue matters but how it is learned. Plato guards the gates to protect goodness; Aristotle opens them to let understanding be tested. Both see education as the root of justice, and both warn what happens when they forget that.
(The chairperson closes their folder slowly.)
Chairperson: Maybe the question before this board is not which books to ban, but how much faith we have in our own students—faith that they can read bravely, think critically, and find the meaning between ignorance and indulgence. The ancients do not give us an answer. But they show us where to look: in the balance between guidance and freedom, between protection and trust.
(Recorder clicks. Silence. The board members exchange glances.)
[Recording Ends | 6:48 PM]
Board notes: Discussion tabled. Decision postponed.
–
1First Amendment Museum. “How Do Books Get Banned? – First Amendment Museum,” February 4, 2022. Accessed November 6, 2025.
2Plato. The Republic, 377c, 375BCE.
“So our first task, it seems, is to supervise the storytellers: if they make up a good story, we must accept it; if not, we must reject it.”
3Plato. The Republic, 383c, 375BCE.
“Whenever anyone says such things about a god, we will be angry with him, refuse him a chorus, and not allow teachers to use what he says for the education of the young-not if our guardians are going to be as god-fearing and godlike as human beings can be.”
4Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics 1094a1. 350BCE.
“Every craft and every method of inquiry and likewise every action and deliberate choice seems to seek some good”
5Sententiaeantiquae, “Plato Nicknames Aristotle; Aristotle Starts His Own School (Aelian, 4.9).” SENTENTIAE ANTIQUAE, April 7, 2015.
6Aristotle. Politics 1253a. 350BCE.
“A human being is more of a political animal than a bee or any other gregarious animal. Nature makes nothing pointlessly,18 as we say, and no animal has speech except a human being.”
7Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics 1106b. 350BCE.
“In everything continuous and divisible, then, it is possible to take more, less, and equal, and these either in relation to the thing itself or in relation to us—where equal is some sort of mean between excess and deficiency.”
8Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics 1095a. 350BCE.
“For it is characteristic of a well-educated person to look for the degree of exactness in each kind of investigation that the nature of the subject itself allows.”
9Plato. The Republic 433a. 375BCE.
“Justice is doing one’s own work and not meddling with what is not one’s own.”
10University of St. Andrews. “Plato.” MacTutor, 1999. https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Plato/.
11Aristotle. Politics 1295b. 350BCE.
“So, since it is agreed that what is moderate and in a mean is best, it is evident that possessing a middle amount of the goods of luck is also best.”
Other Sources
PEN America. “The Normalization of Book Banning – PEN America,” October 2, 2025. https://pen.org/report/the-normalization-of-book-banning/.
“Guide to Effective Board Meetings | Ohio School Boards Association,” November 25, 2001. https://www.ohioschoolboards.org/guide-effective-board-meetings.
American Library Association. “Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2024,” n.d. https://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10.
“Congressional Digest » Pros and Cons of Banning Books,” n.d. https://congressionaldigest.com/pros-and-cons-of-banning-books/.
The Center for Fiction. “Tips for Writing Dialogue | the Center for Fiction,” n.d. https://centerforfiction.org/writing-tools/tips-for-writing-dialogue/.
“Socratic Dialogue | Center for Deployment Psychology,” n.d. https://deploymentpsych.org/content/socratic-dialogue.