Santa Fe High School students didn’t spend part of their class time on Friday reading the newspaper as they usually do. That’s because school administrators decided some stories in the paper could create an unsafe school environment.
An administration representative said this has “nothing to do with censorship but to curb rumors and accusations.”
This stems from two articles: one about a gangbanger shooting that put two teens in the hospital and another at a middle school about a soda bottle dry ice bomb.
Consuelo Valdez didn’t agree with that logic. Valdez, who teaches English and has been on the school faculty for 18 years, said the school wasn’t supporting literacy by denying access to the newspapers.
“It upset me that they basically took information away from the kids,” she said. “The newspaper is there, for English classes, as one of the tools in literacy. We try and get the kids to read everything … and the kids like to read the paper,” she said.
The New Mexican regularly distributes newspapers to the school as part of its Newspapers in Education program.
So, the kids got to rely on good old-fashioned gossip and 3rd-hand info – until and unless they returned home to find the newspaper at hand. Meanwhile, the first chance to discuss the issues, how critical events are reported by journalists, how young Americans might learn to react to stupidities like vandalism and gang violence – all were avoided.
Why do bureaucrats decide that information and knowledge are opposites of security and safety?
What they did meets the dictionary definition of censorship. In this case, the school has the right to censor the paper, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is censorship.
The school has the right to do what they did. Just as the students have the right to leave campus at 3:30 and go buy a newspaper.
#2, Just because you have a “right” to do something doesn’t mean what you did was right. When my neighbor’s dog escapes I can either call the dog catcher or just return him myself.
Instead of the school discussing the issue and looking for answers and understanding from the students, they have now fostered more distrust of school authorities and aims. It only takes a small problem like this to break down all the trust others have spent a long time and a lot of effort building up.
no one ever has the right to censor news, rights belong to people not bureaucrats. way too many freedoms being taken away in the name of “we know what’s good for you”.
“Why do bureaucrats decide that information and knowledge are opposites of security and safety? ”
Because dumb, uninformed people are easier to manipulate.
One more reason to dislike newspapers… Now, if that teacher had been *thinking*, she could have marched the kids up to the library & and done some research the old fashioned way – using the internet
#2 – just out of curiosity, does the school really have this right? It’s an academic institution, the search for and spreading of information is their “core business”. Of course they can choose to offer newspapers for classes or not, but in this case, it seems the policy was to use them. In a world as messed up as ours, it really should come as no surprise that some, if not most stories will be of tragedies in one way or the other. Face it, the kids hear about cars blowing up on a daily basis in Iraq – that does not make them go do the same.
It’s getting real scary if the kids first need to pass the metal detector, then being searched for “unsafe” newspapers… jeeze!
Heads should roll for this.
Actually, this is a good thing.
Consider the take-away the kidz get from this totalitarian nanny/police-state “for your own good” censorship episode. They – or at least the brighter ones – are receiving a first-hand object lesson in the need to question what ‘the authorities’ tell them, and why – and so the incident will help teach them to resist becoming compliant sheeple.