This morning NCAC woke up to a mailbox full of hundreds of complaints against AT&T’s blocking access to img.4chan.org. The mass outrage over AT&T’s action had by that time also reached the company and led to the rapid unblocking of the site. AT&T denied any attempt to censor based on content and issued the following statement justifying the block as [...]
Kids’ Right To Read’s Jamie Chosak interviewed Francesca Lia Block, author of many young adult novels, including Baby Be Bop, which the Milwaukee branch of the Christian Civil Liberties Union is currently calling for the right to publicly burn West Bend Public Library's copy. When asked about responding to challenges, FLB said: I keep writing. To me that is the [...]
In May, the Kids’ Right to Read Project reported on the censorship of Jayson Tirado’s poem, "Diary of an Abusive Stepfather", after Landis Intermediate School principal, Don Kohaut, literally ripped the poem out of the school's only copy of the nationally-acclaimed anthology, Paint Me Like I Am. One mother of a thirteen year-old student had raised concerns over the age-appropriateness [...]
The fight continues in Wisconsin where parents are calling to ban (and possibly burn) books from a public library. This time they face a library board friendlier to their cause, now that the four pro-First Amendment members weren’t reinstated. CNN reports that parents who object to a list of 82 books in the young adult section, including The Perks of [...]
The phrase “safe libraries” should always raise a red flag. Proponents for “safer libraries” argue that some information is inherently dangerous, but the First Amendment is designed to ward off the suppression of information. In the case of internet filters intended to block sexually explicit material, librarians and community members have to ask the questions, “Safe for whom?” and “Safe [...]
Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich is demanding that Los Angeles Opera overhaul the Ring Festival L.A. planned for next year, calling Richard Wagner a, “Nazi composer.” He is, of course, wrong. The Nazi's may have used Wagner, but Wagner was already long dead. Yet, the issue remains, Wagner held rather despicable anti-semitic views (along with the majority of his [...]
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Kids’ Right to Read Project Director Jamie Chosak interviewed author Chris Crutcher about his experience as one of the most challenged young adult authors of all time. Here’s an excerpt: Kids’ Right to Read Project: Challenges against your books have been raised over numerous “themes” and issues.” Some commentators have identified efforts to ban “pro-gay literature” as an increasing trend. [...]
The Kids' Right to Read Project Interviews Author, Chris Crutcher
A court Tuesday upheld the University of Colorado’s firing of professor Ward Churchill after controversy arose from his essay which referred to victims of the 9/11 attacks as “little Eichmanns.” Judge Larry Naves ruled that Churchill would neither get his job back nor receive financial compensation. According to the LA Times, in ruling, the Judge stated “I am bound by [...]
The Kids’ Right To Read Project sent a letter today to the Chair of the Litchfield District’s School Board opposing the removal of several titles from Campbell High School’s upper-class elective “Love/Gender/Family” unit. KRRP also interviewed Andy Towne, a member of the Class of 2007 at Campbell High School after he authored an op-ed for The Nashua Telegraph about the [...]
Campbell High School story flap selling its students short
By ANDY TOWNE
I recently had the chance to watch The Education of Shelby Knox, a documentary chronicling a high school student’s campaign to bring alternatives to abstinence-only education to her school in Lubbock, Texas. A lot happens in eight years. Shelby has since graduated from both high school and college; she is now 23 years old and living in New York City. [...]
The Kids' Right To Read Project sent a letter today to the Leesburg Public Library Advisory Board applauding their decision to keep two challenged books on the shelves in the Young Adult section without labeling or restricting them in any way. We also urged the Board to uphold its decision during an appeals process. Libraries serve every member of the [...]
The removal of "Walking Man" from the public space in front of the Anton Art Center because of individual complaints is a disturbing violation of both the artist's free speech and the rights of the public to have access to a wide variety of artistic expression ("Mount Clemens has gallery move nude statue indoors," June 23).
Kids’ Right to Read Project Director Jamie Chosak interviewed author Maureen Johnson about her experiences with censorship, including the recent challenge against her book, The Bermudez Triangle, in Leesburg, Florida. Here’s an excerpt: The Kids’ Right to Read Project: Challenges against The Bermudez Triangle have focused on ‘homosexual themes.’ Some commentators have identified this as an increasing trend. Would you [...]
Kids' Right to Read Project Interview with Author, Maureen Johnson
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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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
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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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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, author of Geography Club.
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 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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
