The Center adds that over the past two years there has been a drastic increase in the number of student papers being stolen once published or put out for consumption. This occurs at both high school and collegiate levels.
Likewise, Sommer Ingram Dean, staff attorney at the Student Press Law Center, states "There's been a growing hostility between student publications and the administration and the community they're seeking to cover."
Finally, the "Free Speech Tracker was launched in 2017 at Georgetown University to monitor threats to political, social and intellectual expression in education, civil society and government. Eight of the 33 entries under "press" involved a student-run newspaper or media group the majority on high school campuses. More than half of the 200 entries, regardless of category, occurred in an academic environment, according to the database."
SELF-CENSORSHIP IN OUR SOCIETY
Whether it be the censoring of sex-education by well meaning parents or the eclipse in teaching evolution or creationism in schools demonstrate that censorship of any kind affects students and educators in many ways.
One of the worst form of censorship is banned books. In 2017, a major attempt to ban any of the works of Howard Zinn in classes in Arkansas took place just a few years after Indiana attempted to do the same.
Much of the most overt censorship in schools seems to come from conservatives. However, conservative teachers do have a good case that some of the more liberal forms of education impinge on their right to express themselves and what they think good character or good educational practices are. For example, any criticism of overt sex education is poo-pooed in states, like California, that are less conservative than Kansas, where I have lived till recently.
EDUCATING OUR STUDENTS
Project Censored has created a wonderful short curriculum on investigating censorship for our students across the nation. The students are first asked to turn outward and investigate their own local media for signs of censorship or self-censorship.
The curriculum desires note; " Most of our media sources are ultimately owned by a very small number of very large media corporations." Students are asked to make a list of all the media they consume in a "typical" day print media, television, video games, music, etc.
Then, the students are told to research and chart who ultimately owns each media example. [2] Instructors and students use http://www.cjr.org/resources/index.php and http://fair.org/interlocking-directorates to help discuss censorship focused on questions of ownership, parent companies, etc. Later, students are asked to "read and critique a daily newspaper or weekly news magazine, preferably one they have never read before. Apply ACME's "Questioning Media" principles, available for FREE download at ACME's web site. "
Meanwhile educators and their unions must take strong stand against filtering tools that adversely censor topics in their schools. Steven Brown has written a scathing attack on Rhode Islands' school practices and focused on the internet censorship that makes education worse for allboth teacher and students.
According to Brown,"censorship takes place invisibly, through the use of internet filtering programs that block certain categories of websites or even websites that mention specific words when students use school computers to access the internet. Although primarily designed to prevent access to pornography, the deeply flawed software, and school districts' widespread embrace of it, has a significant impact on classroom teaching. " Brown indicates that websites and videos on school bullying, gun control, on terrorism, and the Middle East were made off limits by these filters.
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