In the opinion piece "Why 'sensitivity readers' are bad for free speech, art, and culture," Angel Eduardo argues that the practice of editing literature to remove potentially offensive language.
Faglig kvalitetssikret av lærere og toppstudenter · Følger læreplanen (LK20) · Sist oppdatert 2026-10-03
Below, you will find excerpts from an opinion piece. Read the text and write your response to the task. Remember to read the entire text. You may have to scroll.
In the winter of 2023, the publisher of Roald Dahl’s works of children’s literature hired so-called sensitivity readers to remove language that might seem offensive to readers. This led to protests both in the UK and abroad. Comment on what the message of the text is and give examples of how this message is communicated.
You probably know Augustus Gloop from Roald Dahl’s classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He’s the “nine-year-old boy who was so enormously fat he looked as though he had been blown up with a powerful pump,” whose “great flabby folds of fat bulged out from every part of his body.”
What you may not know is that depending on what version of the book you read, Augustus and his folds aren’t “fat” or “flabby” anymore. Now he’s just “enormous,” and his folds are only “great.” But Augustus hasn’t hit the gym recently, and his folds haven’t achieved anything noteworthy. The words “fat” and “flabby” were just deemed offensive and removed by Dahl’s publisher and estate.
This is what “sensitivity reading” does. From Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming to R. L. Stine and Agatha Christie, this trend of editing and rewriting authors’ books — especially without their consent — should alarm us all. While the idea is to prevent offense and promote inclusivity, the reality is that sensitivity reading and the publishers who commission it foster a chilling effect on free speech, a sanitization of art, and a corrosion of our larger cultural discourse.
Unlike, say, medical or scientific consultants, who tend to be scholars in their field and possess a breadth of academic knowledge, sensitivity readers either claim or are assumed to have expertise on what words, ideas, or language cause offense — which is hardly an academic pursuit.
This raises a number of questions: How can any given reader know what you or I might find offensive? Whose “sensitivities” are really being considered, and how are they determined? What if the preferences of two different groups, or of various people within a group, are in conflict? Who determines whose offense takes priority? What about those who are offended by the edits themselves?
Perhaps most importantly, when the standard for rewriting or revising books is the potential for outrage over the book’s content, nearly every remotely interesting or engaging story we know of will meet it. This is great for the job security of sensitivity readers, but it’s very bad news for art, culture, and free expression. Given the incentives and constantly changing norms of those inclined to take offense, changing the content of books to avoid upsetting people is not only futile, but will also result in works so sanitized that they are unrecognizable to authors and likely uninteresting to readers. Much of sensitivity reading these days happens before books are released, but there is also a troubling practice of publishers retroactively revising and rewriting existing works — sometimes beloved classics.
We should teach children that you can learn something new about people who lived in the past each time you read an older book. Sanitizing books like Roald Dahl’s classics to meet “modern sensibilities” is not the answer.
If we constantly revise and rewrite our histories, we cheat ourselves out of an often enriching and educational exploration into them. When the past is erased or revised to meet our fluctuating present-day sensibilities, we may not know it exists at all. […] Attempting to create art that upsets no one will only create art that engages, entertains, and inspires no one. If we wish to promote and preserve free expression, interesting and provocative art, and the ability to change culture — and to recognize that cultural change has occurred — we will have to turn our current trend toward censorship and sensitivity reading in the other direction.
In the opinion piece "Why 'sensitivity readers' are bad for free speech, art, and culture," Angel Eduardo argues that the practice of editing literature to remove potentially offensive language, as seen in the case of Roald Dahl’s works, undermines free speech and the integrity of art. The main message of the text is that, while sensitivity readers aim to make books more inclusive and less offensive, their actions result in sanitized versions of literature that fail to reflect the complexity of culture and history.
Eduardo highlights the example of Augustus Gloop from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, whose description was altered to remove terms like "fat" and "flabby," which were deemed offensive. This revision exemplifies the broader issue that sensitivity reading leads to censorship, stripping works of their authenticity. The text suggests that by continually adjusting books to fit modern sensibilities, we lose the opportunity to engage with the past and its lessons. Eduardo emphasizes that every reader’s sensibilities are different, and this raises questions about who gets to decide what is offensive and how such decisions affect the integrity of the work.
The author argues that instead of sanitizing books, we should teach children to understand and appreciate the context of older literature, as it provides valuable insights into history and culture. Ultimately, Eduardo warns that attempting to create art that offends no one will result in art that fails to provoke thought or inspire change, and calls for a shift away from censorship to protect free expression and preserve the richness of cultural discourse.