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Let me be clear: I agree with the philosophy behind CIPA legislation in the United States and am glad schools and libraries receiving E-rate funding are required to have and enforce local policies for content filtering. There certainly ARE websites “out there” which should be blocked from access at school. Pornographic sites are a clear case in point.

The problem is, however, the technology tools which permit network administrators and school administrators to block access to pornography also permit them to block access to a much wider range of websites.

Why should my access to Twitter be blocked from school? Why should my access to ALL PBwiki websites be blocked? In some cases, the answer to this question is that school administrators are attempting to keep students ON TASK, rather than just away from inappropriate content. The ironic thing (which I have noted before) is that CIPA does not require school districts to block access to a specific blacklist of websites. No one tells the school district to block virtually all blog and many wiki websites. The local administration, or the organization paid to maintain the school’s content filter, makes that decision. In addition, there are inherent problems with parents and others pointing fingers of blame at school officials when their children intentionally try to access objectionable / offensive / inappropriate websites. School networks and discipline systems should support cultures of individual accountability, rather than cultures which attempt to prevent all potential “bad choices” by users of the network. That is “big brother” personified, and certainly not an environment supportive of the development of responsible, ethical, and self-reliant people.

If our schools look and feel like prisons (and certainly I’m not the first person to make this observation) that should serve as a wake-up call. I don’t really want to visit a prison, and I certainly don’t want to stay in one for long periods of time. Yet if we are forcing our students to remain in our schools for 13 years of compulsory, “free” education, but we are restricting them by cutting off their virtual arms and legs, is it any wonder dropout rates are so high and reported rates of boredom in schools are as well?

I know I’m idealistic, and I won’t make excuses for that. I continue to believe that school should be a place where students and teachers LOVE to be, rather than DREAD and FEAR. We are so far away from this ideal in many public schools today, not only because of network content filtering but more importantly because of punitive, high-stakes testing, it really saddens me to my core.

To what degree are the leaders in your school acting more like prison guards than they are acting like educators– in the sense Seymour Papert means when he writes of “true teachers?” I’ve seen a fair number of prison guards working in schools but masquerading as teachers and administrators, supervising students who seem to be there just to “do their time” and take their required tests. This situation is part of the reason I’m starting to think we should change mandatory school attendance laws in our nation and make public schooling optional. If kids didn’t have to be in school, but could choose to come, maybe more legislators, school board members, school administrators, teachers and parents would get serious about supporting creative, innovative learning environments rather than authoritarian, fear-ridden ones where the “inmates” are much more excited to leave rather than remain in the learning environment.