CULTURE WARS
BLOCKING FAITH, FAMILY AND FREEDOM WEBSITES
Exclusive: Chuck Norris sounds off on school censorship of conservative viewpoints
As most kids are screaming “School’s out for summer,” 18-year-old high-school student Andrew Lampart is still trying to figure out why his school’s Internet service blocked him from gathering conservative facts for his side of the argument on his school debate team.
Andrew told Fox News, “I knew it was important to get facts for both sides of the case.” But when he tried to do an Internet search of conservative views, he was prevented at every turn.
After being blocked from websites supporting Americans’ constitutional right to bear arms as stated in the Second Amendment, Andrew soon learned his school’s computers prohibited him from viewing any websites or information that weren’t liberal in nature.
National Rifle Association website – blocked. The Republican Party website – blocked. National Right to Life website – blocked. Pro-traditional marriage websites – blocked. Vatican website – blocked.
But here’s what wasn’t blocked in his continued Internet search: pro-gun control websites, the Democratic Party website, Planned Parenthood website, Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender website and an Islamic website.
Andrew took his grievance up the chain of command at his Connecticut high school: first to the principal, then the superintendent, then the school board.
Nearly two months after the incident, Andrew’s only official response has come through the superintendent, who wrote a letter about the issue to parents and citizens in their community because news of the liberal bent was spreading like wildfire. She blamed Andrew’s conservative education prohibition on the school’s Internet filtering, which she said is intended to “protect minors from potentially harmful or inappropriate content” like “violence/hate/racism, cults/occult, to name a few.”
She was puzzled, however, that: “Many of the liberal sites accessible to the student fell into the ‘not rated’ category, which was unblocked while many of the conservative sites were in the ‘political/advocacy group’ which is accessible to teachers but not to students.”
Mrs. Superintendent, there’s no surprise or mystery here. The problem isn’t the software but those programming it. As long as you have liberal-minded architects across the spectrum who only want to steer kids in their own particular secular progressive bias, you can change Internet filters all day long and it’s not going to change the educational outcome and students being prohibited from conservative education. Internet website accessibility is no different than choosing textbooks or instructors in classes; if liberals are in control, liberalism is the education.
A high school prohibiting conservative views isn’t shocking to any of us who for decades have watched the dilapidating state of public education. It’s just one more sign that public schools are little more than secular progressive indoctrination camps.
Andrew was exactly right when he said about his Internet education experience or lack thereof: “This is really borderline indoctrination. Schools are supposed to be fair and balanced toward all ways of thinking. It’s supposed to encourage students to formulate their own opinions. Students aren’t able to do that here at the school because they are only being fed one side of the issue.”
Out of the mouths of babes.
Truth and true education don’t fear alternative views or even falsehoods, though they should be couched in age-appropriateness and a debatable venue where options are presented with evidence. At least, this was the educational belief of our founders and those who followed them for a few generations.
With Independence Day fast approaching, consider alone the words of one of the greatest American minds and educators and one of the pillars of our republic, Thomas Jefferson, who vehemently fought for the broad education of common Americans. As he founded his University of Virginia, he wrote this about his philosophy and goal of education on Dec. 26, 1820: “This institution of my native state, the hobby of my old age, will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind, to explore and to expose every subject susceptible of its contemplation.”
The very next day, he further elaborated about what “illimitable freedom of the human mind” encompassed: “This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”
Thomas Jefferson was exactly right, too. Despite whether or not our views define truth and reality, openness and education is about presenting every side of the coin regardless of how ignorant or idiotic we believe another’s views are or might appear to be – which is why subjects like Intelligent Design and religion should be an integral part of every curricula.
Roughly 30 years ago, Dr. Allan Bloom wrote these words of warning about a country and education system that was mimicking more fascism than freedom in his now classic volume, “The Closing of the American Mind”: “True openness is the accompaniment of the desire to know, hence of the awareness of ignorance. To deny the possibility of knowing good and bad is to suppress true openness.”
There is also no doubt about this: When we fear alternative views to the measure that we eliminate them from curricula, we have reduced education to nothing more than tyranny and indoctrination.
Again, Dr. Bloom gave this almost prophetic word about what could have been the current affairs of the American public education system: “Freedom of the mind requires not only, or not even specially, the absence of legal constraints but the presence of alternative thoughts. The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities.”
(If you haven’t seen it yet, go see the movie, “God’s NOT Dead,” which addresses the very heart of this academic issue. If you can’t find it in a local theater, check out churches in your area, which are now buying inexpensive licenses to show it.)
My comments: The Secular Humanists know best, don't they?: They have demonstrated that they will go to virtually any extreme to inculcate their godlessness upon America's children. No Christian should send their children to the Public School System because of this.
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