School officials at Menifee Union School District temporarily removed copies of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary Tenth Edition for containing graphic terms like “oral sex" after a parent complained. (But as it turns out, the dictionary did not even contain this term...) Nonetheless, NCAC executive director Joan Bertin explains, Removing a book should be based solely on its educational value, not on [...]
Athey Creek Middle School in West Linn, Oregon has taught its eighth grade students a First Amendment curriculum for ten years, addressing the controversies surrounding commonly-banned books and reading the books in class. The unit drew no major criticism until early last month, when librarian and teacher Michael Diltz faced ire from several parents. He had written two common “obscenities” [...]
When I learn of book awards like NCTE’s Orbis Pictus Award and ALA’s Newbery and Caldecott Medals, immediately my list of books-to-read grows—as if that pile by my bed could get bigger without toppling over and burying me. I begin to anticipate ...
In an impassioned speech at the Newseum in Washington on January 21, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attacked countries who limit the free circulation of peaceful dissent and religious ideas on the Internet and those who use the Internet for the "darker purposes" of promoting violence and making sexual advances on minors. She also spoke about the increasing concern over [...]
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." Anatole France Even for true believers of the First Amendment, the decision in the latest campaign finance case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, raises difficult issues. (For a press report on [...]
It is, literally, an old story. In the legend of the boy and the snake, a venomous snake asks a boy for help, and promises not to bite him. When the snake bites the boy despite his help, and the boy asks why, the snake says, “because I am a snake.” The boy in the story learns an important lesson: [...]
When, a few years ago, Google agreed to China’s restrictions on the circulation of information and started google.cn, it claimed that “increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed [Google’s] discomfort in agreeing to censor some results.” Now, suddenly, Google is threatening to reverse its policy and close google.cn. This change of mind came [...]
When students sit down to take a test, how do they think about themselves? It may seem like a silly question, but the answer probably matters more than you think. Attitude Matters “The Truth about Grit,” published last fall in The Boston Globe ex...
Avatar has incited controversy over Sigourney Weaver's character's smoking in the film, even though the character is decidedly not, as director James Cameron describes, "an aspirational role model" for teenagers. Anti-smoking advocates fear that children will mimic the vices they see onscreen -- another theory in a long line of efforts to attribute social ills to media or other cultural [...]
While the display of Janet Jackson’s naked breast and nipple during a 2005 CBS broadcast of the Superbowl may have been fleeting, the legal ramifications stemming from the incident are anything but. Last time we covered this case (here and here) the Supreme Court had vacated the Third Circuit Court of Appeals’ 2007 decision in the matter of FCC v. [...]
Earlier this week the Supreme Court denied petition to review a high school student’s challenge to his school’s dress code. In denying review, the Supreme Court has chosen to leave the lower court’s holding intact — a holding that serves as a dangerous curtailment of students’ rights of freedom of expression. Paul “Pete” Palmer was found to be in violation [...]
As teachers of writing, we are acutely aware of how important the presence of an authentic audience can be for students' motivation to write. Though my state’s standards call for students to “write for real or potentially real situations” [empha...
T-shirts printed by the Freshman Class Council for football games against Harvard have traditionally featured taunts and put downs of the rival institution, and vice-versa, but this year the featured text - “I think of all Harvard men as sissies,” - proved too provocative for the increasingly sensitive Yale palate. After the LGBT co-op criticized the text (as it happens, [...]
Schools that dish out draconian punishments to students who are mean to each other online (aka cyberbullying) risk running afoul of the First Amendment. Beverly Vista School, a K-8 school in the Beverly Hills Unified School District, learned this lesson via a November 2009 court ruling, where the federal district court for the Central District of California found that administrators [...]
The First Amendment provides American-based websites with the freedom to report on newsworthy events, including those that happen in other countries to citizens of other countries. Yet, the global nature of the Internet opens it up to legal challenges from countries with more restrictive speech regimes. Last fall, for instance, lawyers for the convicted murderers of German actor Walter Sedlmayr [...]
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the famous Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines when the court ruled in favor of students who had been suspended for protesting the Vietnam War. The Tinker case stated that students "do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." But 40 years later, students [...]
The 2009 YFEN Film Contest "Free Speech in Schools (Does it Exist?)" This year marks the 40th anniversary of the famous Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines when the court ruled in favor of students who had been suspended for protesting the Vietnam War. The Tinker case stated that students "do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of [...]
Happy New Year, everyone! It seems 2009 was a tough year for sexting, Amazon, and West Bend, WI – but great for Blogging Censorship and infographics! To reminisce a little on NCAC's first full year of blogging, here is a list of our top 5 most popular posts of 2009: Teens Sending Nude Photos of Themselves Sexting Roundup: The Anxiety [...]