My+Feelings+on+Censorship

For many topics there is a right and a wrong, good and evil, black and white. Censorship is not so easy to categorize. There are those who would say that it is easy to pick a side for censorship but I feel that there are just multiple shades of grey.

Sure web filters and firewalls can be used to help protect children from undesired and inappropriate sites and content but if applied too liberally it could lead to misinformation or lack of information all together. When censorship is applied heavily, it can lead to huge gaps in the information that can be provided to students. This is the side of censorship is the part I am not a huge fan of.

However I do agree with the initial idea, that web filters and firewalls can be used to limit the amount of gaming and unwanted sites at school. Let’s face it, students are still just kids and kids will do things that they know they are not supposed to. It is their own miniature rebellion and it is impossible to keep eyes on 20-30 students at one time. Something should be done to help guide the students to what they can or cannot access.

We just need to find a compromise between the two extremes, a program that is still a filter but has an override so that if a teacher or librarian believes that a blocked website has valuable information, they can give access to that site to the student. If this kind of program could be produced I believe that censorship would not big the hot topic that it is today.

So to sum things up, I am one of the vast numbers of people who are on the fence. We believe that there are valid points for each side of the spectrum but to follow one or the other would not be a good idea. Compromise is the way to go.