Censorship+in+Schools

What is the Right Thing to Do?

In today’s average Canadian schools, students access the internet on a daily basis. With this access comes the issue of what they should be seeing and reading on the internet. Censorship is become an extremely popular topic. Schools all over the world have started to ban certain websites from their schools, such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and even Wikipedia. All of this censorship is to protect the students. But what if this protection comes at a cost, the cost of their education? Censoring websites in school is not a bad idea but it is one that requires a lot of thought and planning to ensure that the students are still receiving a first rate education.

According to the second section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the rights of expression and access to ideas are our right as Canadians. This is where schools are beginning to run into problems with censorship. To provide a quality learning environment, it is necessary to have some restrictions. We just have to be careful how we go about putting them into place.

Mitch Wagner is one man who speaks out about censorship and its liberal application in schools. He believes that with the amount of [|censorship happening in schools], students are unable to reach some legitimate sites for research.

“Web filtering software should be configured so that, when a student stumbles across a site that's blocked, the teacher or librarian can make a judgment whether the content is appropriate for study, and if it is, the teacher or librarian can let the site through.” (Mitch Wagner, 2010) This would be a great [|fix for censoring in schools]. Why is it so hard for someone to come up with a program that would work like this?

Censorship is one of those practices that are great in theory but in practice there are a few kinks that really need to be addressed. If it comes down to either censorship or no censorship in schools, how do we as a society, teachers, parents, school administration, etc. make the right decision for the students? What is the right thing to do to ensure the safety of the students and make sure that they are still receiving a top notch education? I believe that in the coming years the answers will unfold rather rapidly, so we best be prepared for either extreme and hope for a compromise.