KRRP Interview with Author, Maureen Johnson
Kids' Right to Read Project Interview with Author, Maureen Johnson
A Brief History of Music Censorship
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The Case of the Dangerous Font
Two weeks ago in a round-up of tales of student press censorship around the nation, we mentioned the case of PULP magazine, a publication produced by a journalism class at Orange High School. Just a recap of the highly sensitive items that raised red flags for the school’s, principal, SK Johnson: a Top Ten list that playfully advocates skinny-dipping and [...]
Skirting responsibility: Google CEO Eric Schmidt on internet censorship
On Monday, The Telegraph reported on Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s talk at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival. In it, he chastised censorious governments, saying completely effective internet censorship was unattainable and governments trying to do so were doomed to fail. Schmidt’s comments neatly skirt Google’s complicity with governments’ censorship by claiming that they warn governments that internet censorship can fail, [...]
Litchfield teacher resigns amid short story controversy
On June 18, the School Board of Campbell High School in Litchfield, New Hampshire decided to remove four short stories from the “Love/Gender/Family” unit of an English class. Early last week, Kathleen Reilly resigned from her position as English department head, citing a desire to teach elementary school in a different district. Reilly, who had taught at the high school [...]
A Brief History of Film Censorship
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Video games are ruining our children! A look at an amicus brief supporting CA violent video game law
Spilling a little red type. GamePolitics does quick work on an amicus brief filed by the Eagle Forum (“leading the pro-family movement since 1972”) supporting California’s video game law by highlighting the most problematic claims of the brief. As GamePolitics writes, “In the amicus brief, the Eagle Forum lays an array of societal problems at the feet of violent video [...]
Facebook Reveals the Corporate Face of the Associated Press
The media never looked more corporate. After reprimanding a reporter for posting a comment critical of the company’s investment decisions, the Associated Press has come out with a new policy governing the use of social networking sites. Among the AP’s requirements for all employees, not just reporters, is: Posting material about the AP’s internal operations is prohibited on employees’ personal [...]
Nude Sculpture Removed from Public View in Michigan
This week, “Walking Man,” a sculpture of a nude man, was removed from the public space in front of the Anton Art Center in mount Clemens, MI, because of individual complaints. That city officials should respond to the complaints of a few vocal community members by removing an art work from a public space is a disturbing violation of both [...]
Summer reading list controversies: removal of all LGBTQ books in DC, Sherman Alexie’s book challenged
It’s only the second day of summer, and controversial books are already disappearing from summer reading lists. A quiet act of censorship by Washington, D.C. Public Schools may have resulted in a reading list free of LGBTQ titles. According to a post on ALA’s LGBTQ listerve by Jeanne Lauber, librarian in the D.C. Public Libraries, the school district asked the [...]
Interview with Brent Hartinger, author of challenged book, Geography Club
Kids’ Right To Read’s Jaime Chosak interviewed Brent Hartinger, author of the young adult novel Geography Club. Parents recently asked for the removal of the book from shelves in the West Bend Public Library in Wisconsin. Kids Right to Read Project: What was your motivation for writing Geography Club? Brent Hartinger: You know, it’s partly because the story is semi-autobiographical [...]
Report Card: STUDENT PRESS
GRADE: B+ This extracurricular activity remains one of the most difficult offered at school these days – anyone who has ever worked on a student paper will vouch for the work that goes into investigating and getting the scoop, the late nights editing articles, and the ethical debates over striking the balance between objectivity and thoughtfulness for the school community. [...]
Controversy: Embrace it!
In the last two decades direct censorship of theater has waned. Arrests of actors and theater employees involved in allegedly “obscene” productions such as May West’s plays in the 1920s and Richard Schechner’s Dionysus in 69 or Kenneth Tynan’s Oh! Calcutta! in the 1960s and 70s are, for the most part, a distant memory. Yet, on the high school stage [...]
Hemingway, King, Sedaris kicked out of New Hampshire high school classes
A couple of recent censorship attempts at public libraries have been squashed, but yesterday a group of parents succeeded in banning four short stories from high school classrooms in Litchfield, New Hampshire. School Superintendent Elaine F. Cutler stated that stories by authors including Stephen King, David Sedaris, and Ernest Hemingway will be removed from the “Love/Gender/Family” unit of a [...]
Report Card: HEALTH
GRADE: B – The push to teach abstinence-only education landed Health Education (primarily sexual education) in an abysmal place. As we have explained on the NCAC website, government funding-based mandates to provide a narrow and limited curriculum on a topic, such as human sexuality, amounts to censorship. Essentially, the abstinence only curriculum left out essentially information about contraception and sexually [...]
Interview with Brent Hartinger
Interview with Brent Hartinger, author of Geography Club.
Report Card: THEATRE ARTS
Grade: C+ The show must go on? Back in December Rowlett High School canceled a production of the musical Rent after controversy was sparked by some particularly vocal parents in the community. The school’s theatre director said she made the decision to cancel the show in the interest of the students involved: “In light of everything that has happened, I [...]
The Tweet Heard Around the World: Thwarting Censorship in Iran, One Proxy-Server at a Time
The Iranian government, never a proponent of free expression, has ramped up its practice of filtering its citizens’ access to social networking websites following Friday’s election and the ensuing protests. For instance, the Iranian government has blocked access to Twitter from servers located in Iran. The Iranian government’s efforts, however, have been thwarted by a complicated network of non-Iranian proxy [...]
Louisiana bill SB 152 on sexually explicit materials passes; GamePolitics on its implications
From GamePolitics.com, a review of the Lousiana bill SB 152 By a 35-0 vote June 10, 2009, the Louisiana Senate passed SB 152, a bill which would make a pattern of distributing sexually explicit material to children a deceptive trade practice under state law. GamePolitics readers may recall that in its original form, SB 152 was drafted by disbarred Miami attorney Jack [...]
The Report Card: Free expression in schools in the 2008-2009 school year
This week we're running a little segment we're calling the NCAC Report Card. Our look into free expression in school and how it fared in the main subject areas. You can read our performance assessments here, but we'd also like to know how you think your school, school district, or college fared. If you're graphically-savvy, you can modify this report [...]
The Report Card: SCIENCE
GRADE: C The debate around the role of creationism in American high school science classrooms continues to evolve. Although the courts have rebuffed creationist attempts to re-brand their religious message as “intelligent design,” creationists continued their assault on science in the classroom with urges to “teach the controversy.” Texas, the nation’s second largest purchaser of high school textbooks and therefore [...]
The Report Card: MATH
GRADE: A- Math has been falling behind, and is overdue for some one-on-one attention. Wall Street, the state budget crises, the six-month-long-and-still-ongoing election recount in Minnesota, and investigations into the crane collapses in Manhattan, somewhere in each of these calamities is number theory, statistics, geometry or algebra. Our national report card in mathematics achievement seems deplorable. Last month, it was [...]
Interview with Maria Hanrahan, Founder of West Bend Parents for Free Speech
Kids’ Right to Read’s Jamie Chosak interviewed the Founder of West Bend Parents for Free Speech, Maria Hanrahan about the book challenges in West Bend. Here’s an excerpt: Kids’ Right to Read: What actions did you and the West Bend community take in response to the challenges? Maria Hanrahan: In late March, the Maziarkas started circulating a petition that asked, [...]
The Report Card: ENGLISH
GRADE: C+ Books - always a hot button issue in the censorship debate. This year, similar to previous years, some curriculum classics got challenged. Here's a few of the fights we saw over books being taught in middle- and high-school classes. In December, the Coeur d’Alene School Board voted unanimously to return 26 titles (among them Brave New World, Tom [...]
Interview with Maria Hanrahan, founder of West Bend Parents for Free Speech
Interview with Maria Hanrahan, founder of West Bend Parents for Free Speech
Gossip Girl controversy goes national on FOX News
FOX News ran a national broadcast today about the Leesburg, Florida controversy over the Gossip Girl series of books in a public library. The segment, Unfit to Print?, features Dixie Fechtel and Dianne Venetta, the two mothers who brought their complaints before the Library Board, had them rejected, and are now petitioning the City Commission to have the [...]
Tasers and Hate Speech Codes; Silencing is Not Speech
It started with an invitation and ended with pepper spray and Tasers. This past April, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill chapter of Youth for Western Civilization, a student group dedicated to the survival of Western civilization, invited former Colorado state congressman Tom Tancredo to come offer his opinions on tuition assistance for undocumented immigrant students. Tancredo, honorary chair of [...]
Sonia Sotomayor: Judicial Minimalism and the Court of Last Resort
Last week, we analyzed cases from the Second Circuit, in which Sonia Sotomayor had some part in deciding, addressing the right to free expression. Still the Supreme Court’s role, and Sotomayor’s judicial style make it difficult to make a broad statement about how she will decide on free expression issues in the years to come. […]
Tasers and Hate Speech Codes; Silencing is Not Speech
It started with an invitation and ended with pepper spray and Tasers. This past April, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill chapter of Youth for Western Civilization, a student group dedicated to the survival of Western civilization, invited former Colorado state congressman Tom Tancredo to come offer his opinions on tuition assistance for undocumented immigrant students.
Why should U.S. computer manufacturers care about censorship in China?
Beijing recently gave computer manufacturers six weeks’ notice that all new PCs sold in China must have Green Dam software installed on their hard drives. The name for the government-developed filtering program comes from references to a regulated Internet as “green.” Many people inside and outside China are saying that “green” doesn’t translate into pornography-free and safe for children, as [...]
Gossip Girl, Bermudez Triangle to remain in Young Adult section in Florida library
Yesterday, the Leesburg Library Advisory Board in Florida refused to move a couple of Young Adult books into the adult section of the library or give them advisory labels. Parents had drawn up a petition in April against the YA status of the books, Only in Your Dreams: A Gossip Girl Novel and The Bermudez Triangle. Mothers Dixie Fechtel and [...]
A Lively Launch: Free Speech Leadership Council
The occasion was the launch of the Free Speech Leadership Council, an advocacy arm of the National Coalition Against Censorship, a nonprofit founded in 1974, of which Friedman is chair. The main event was a conversation about censorship between Toni Morrison and Fran Lebowitz. And what a conversation!
Kirk’s ass, and censorship in the arts.
slurkflickr's commentary on cleaning up her own artwork: So as a general rule, my relationship with DC Comics when I worked on "Star Trek TOS" was pretty great. I had a fantastic editor, Margaret Clark, and I even got a decent inker once or twice- rare for a relatively new penciller. However, there was this one time when I was [...]
An interview with West Bend library board member on calls for book censorship
Kids’ Right to Read’s Jamie Chosak interviewed West Bend library board member Mary Reilly-Kliss about the book challenges in West Bend. Here’s an excerpt: Kids’ Right to Read Project: On June 2, 2009, West Bend’s library board voted to keep the books where they are. What was your experience of this meeting and how did you feel upon hearing this [...]
Art Censorship in the City of Chicago Bridgeport mural by Gabriel Villa
In May 2009, artist Gabriel Villa’s work on private property was painted over. The National Coalition Against Censorship wrote in response: The political message of Villa’s mural gives it the highest constitutional protection. Its destruction is, therefore, much more significant “mistake” than Mayor Daley would have it, it is a violation of one of our most deeply cherished rights – [...]
Censorship = Boring. Valedictorian in Florida ordered to rewrite speech
In efforts to liven up her graduation ceremony, Springstead High School Valedictorian Jem Lugo planned on giving a speech that would poke fun at traditional graduation messages while perhaps giving her fellow students some thoughts to remember: I’m not gonna get up here and start spouting these crazy incomprehensible seven syllable words I probably can’t even pronounce. Why would I [...]
Official Vandalism is not “Just a Mistake”
The censorship of Gabriel Villa's mural in Chicago. The political message of Villa’s mural gives it the highest constitutional protection. Its destruction is, therefore, much more significant “mistake” than Mayor Daley would have it, it is a violation of one of our most deeply cherished rights – the right to express an opinion without being silenced by a public official.
Interview with Mary Reilly-Kliss
Mary Reilly-Kliss is a retired reading/language arts teacher, having spent 33 years working with young adults in grades 7-12. She was on the West Bend library board for 3 years. For the past year she served as co-secretary on the board. Mary also works at Fireside Books and Gifts, once part of the Little Professor chain, Fireside is an independent bookstore proudly serving West Bend for over 25 years.
ALL ABOUT SOTOMAYOR Roundup
6/1/2009 On Sotomayor and censorship: First the bad news… 6/2/2009 Student speech under fire under Sotomayor? 6/3/2009 The Good News: Sotomayor’s decision in U.S. v. Quattrone, gagging gag orders 6/4/2009 What about Souter? A closer look at the Supreme Court’s outgoing Associate Justice 6/5/2009 Courts favor “Douchebags”; Doninger redux, and the problem of school censorship when it comes to off campus Internet expression 6/5/2009 Sotomayor [...]
Courts favor “Douchebags”; Doninger redux, and the problem of school censorship when it comes to off campus Internet expression
Sonia Sotormayor’s joining Judge Debra Ann Livingston’s decision in the matter of Doninger v. Niehoff doesn’t provide information about her views relating to free expression. The Doninger decision was made in the context of nuanced civil procedure, and law governing student free speech rights previously mangled and misconstrued by other courts. If anything, the Doninger decision says more about the [...]