A Small Victory

After all the negative articles I've written about this class, I thought I'd choose one a little more positive.

http://thefire.org/article/13298.html

This one covers the decisions in two cases with the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, where the question of whether a school could discipline students for internet activity outside of school hours. Both students had posted.... unfavorable.... profiles mocking their principals. The court found that the school could not discipline for internet activity that occured outside of the school setting.

I have a couple of thoughts on this one. First of all, school rules should not govern a student's activities at home. If these students were using the internet in the privacy of their homes (or the relative privacy of the library), their activity shouldn't have a bearing on school. Should the students have made such a post? Probably not, but teens will be teens. We can't expect them to show the same judgement as an adult. Of course, adults have questionable judgement at times, too! :) My guess would be that the principal upset the students and they used this as a way to strike back... surely never expecting the consequences. I don't think that the question of whether the internet activity would cause a distraction in school is a fair measure for the response, either. A big concert over the weekend can disrupt everything... as can a couple breaking up or any number or things in the teenage world.

Had the incident happened at school, I'd have more questions before I could make my opinion. Does the school prohibit the use of MySpace? Certainly the school's policies (right or wrong) would have a bearing on the response.

I'm reminded about something that happened to a friend in college. She was overheard criticizing the teaching assistant for a class and ended up losing participation points in the class as a result. We were too young and clueless to know to fight it by going to the dean or anything. I wonder what would have happened if she had?

Sinclair College

I found this article today: Unconstitutional Ban on Distributing Literature.

A student passed out literature after class and was later told that she was in violation of school policies, which do not allow for any materials to be distributed in the classrooms... or on much of the campus for that matter.

She had waited until after class to distribute her literature. I don't see anything that indicates that she was being obnoxious in the way she approached the other students. But someone got offended by the topic and complained.

The fact is, during my undergrad days, a lot of what was handed out on campus offended me. And I'm sure that had I given out pamphlets stating my views, it wouldn't have been appreciated by some of my fellow students. Does that mean that it would have been wrong for either of us to distribute that material? No, of course not. Does it mean that I had to accept, read, or keep the material? No.

This school has taken a very unconstitutional approach, probably in an attempt to avoid conflict. I'm so thankful that I went to a school that supported my freedom of speech, instead of trying to suppress it!

I looked at some of the related links and found it humorous in a horrifying way that the school's initial response was to attempt to ban distribution of all literature on campus. Granted, that could cut down on a lot of confusion and reduce the annoyance of having papers thrust at you while trying to walk across campus, but it's not worth it at the expense of the students' rights.

This one hits close to home...

I live about 25 minutes from Gary, so this article caught my eye. It's not super recent, but happened this school year.

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/slj/newslettersnewsletterbucketextrahelping2/889405-477/indiana_district_removes_tyrell_from.html.csp

First of all, in defense of the mother, I have to question why a school would put a book that is reviewed at a high school level into an elementary school. I'd like to know what sort of collection policies they follow in the school system. I can understand her outrage.

I don't agree with her method, though. She should have talked to the school librarian... or someone at the school. There was no reason to go straight to a lawyer. And there was no reason for the lawyer to go straight to the press. That lawyer should have done his homework to discover the school's policies and procedures for challenging a book.

In all honesty, this is a situation that should never have been discussed in a blog, because it never should have made its way to the press. The school dealt with the situation of a book clearly being misplaced. Are the mother and her lawyer out of line for asking that the rest of the collection be re-evaluated? Maybe. It's not really her place to decide what other children can or should read. The situation has all the potential of becoming a witch hunt. But I can see where the school corporation may need to revisit their policies and consider some changes to their selection and placement procedures.

Book Burnings in Utah

I stumbled across this story and had to use it for my post this week.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705370864/Piles-of-books-burned-in-FLDS-border-town-would-be-president-cited-in-separate-incident.html

To quickly sum up the story, there was a bonfire outside the building which is intended to be used as a new library, with fragments of burned books. Apparently the town has not had a library in years, since the old one had supposedly been ordered closed by the Fundamentalist LDS church president and the books disappeared. The townspeople had started a book drive and had gotten a very generous donation from Barnes and Noble. At the time of this article, it looked as though all that work was wasted.

My first reaction was shock. Here’s a community that is trying to improve itself and provide better for its citizens and someone burns the books? I felt so terrible for the man who owns the building who couldn’t even check to see if there was anything left. The windows had been covered and his key no longer worked.

Then I became very confused and a bit angry when I followed the story to this article: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705371046/Boxes-of-books-feared-burned-in-FLDS-town-recovered-in-Cedar-City.html

Many of the books believed destroyed were found being stored in a nearby town.

Some members of this community were so fearful of outside influences that they were willing to destroy what others had worked so hard for. That’s what made me angry. I wonder if any of the people involved in the burning/hiding were also involved in the efforts to collect the books?

Perhaps even more important... how can these people persuaded that that books are not an evil and that having a town library will only be beneficial?

What is Scholastic Selling?

The story behind this topic has been running rampant on Pubyac lately:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/education/12coal.html

Basically, Scholastic teamed up with the American Coal Foundation to produce and distribute a curriculum for 4th graders on the coal industry. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be part of a series or if it's a stand alone product. The criticism is that it presents a biased view of the coal industry as it does not mention any of the negatives. It has been called inaccurate. After the backlash, it appears that Scholastic has pulled back from the curriculum.

At first I was thought it was highly irresponsible of Scholastic to be involved in this if it truly is inaccurate and biased. Then someone chimed into the Pubyac discussion and pointed out that the criticisms to the curriculum were also criticizing her town's way of life and called the calls to pull it censorship.

I haven't seen the curriculum. I know next to nothing about coal mining. I don't know if the curriculum is presenting false information or simply not presenting a full picture. If it is presenting truly false information, then Scholastic should consider their integrity and reputation and pull the publication. If this is the case, then schools should not purchase the curriculum. And the outcry would be justified.

However, if the presentation is merely biased toward the coal industry and the information presented is accurate, it gets trickier. Certainly other biased information gets presented in schools. If we were to take out everything that only presents one side of an argument, other education materials would be eliminated. It becomes the school's responsibility to provide materials to present other viewpoints, if it chooses to spend limited resources on this curriculum.

I'm sure this isn't a popular stance, but as librarians we are supposed to provide access to information regardles of bias, right?