Survey: many American kids favor government censorship
I cannot begin to describe how truly frightening this is. Never mind, for just a second, what this says about the brain-dead politics The Future of America® is buying into. What about the abject failure of the education system that’s producing this new generation of Hitlerjungen?
Nicked from today’s Benton Communications-related Headlines:
US STUDENTS SAY PRESS FREEDOMS GO TOO FAR
One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey to be released today by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The survey “confirms what a lot of people who are interested in this area have known for a long time,” he says: Kids aren’t learning enough about the First Amendment in history, civics or English classes. It also tracks closely with recent findings of adults’ attitudes. [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Greg Toppo]
lullaby pit 
Honestly, I’m not surprised. Our education system favors memorization and regurgitation in the name of ‘standards.’ Any departure from the curriculum into the land of critical thinking and analysis *gasp* could mean that not enough time is spent preparing students for the tests they need to graduate.
Besides, American government is, and has always been, wonderful. Just ask a history textbook. Why wouldn’t we want them keeping that nasty liberal media in check?
*head-desk*
Conspiracy? Perhaps….
I find it quite interesting that, with NCLB, reading, writing, math, and science are all vitally important to the future of the country’s youth, but social studies isn’t. My wife’s school is cutting social studies teachers specifically because they’re not important in the NCLB Big Scheme of Things(TM). I have to admit that I’ve wondered if this is a vast right-wing conspiracy to create an Orwellian future where the right-wing nut jobs rule like nobility and everyone else is a serf or worse, a slave.
And the more I see BS like this, the less my own inner skeptic poo-poos the idea….
Scary, but not new
Did a survey when I was student teaching in 1986 (gasp!) and found that over half of my HS seniors approved of censoring the arts and communications, including MAIL. Of course the numbers dropped a bit when asked if it’s okay to censor their mail as an individual vs. giving the government the right in general to censor OTHER people’s mail. . . .
Re: Scary, but not new
This is scary. I expect this from my wife’s 7th grade students, who are as self-absorbed and immature as you would expect of any 12 and 13-year old, but HS seniors should (theoretically) know better. At least some of your students changed their tune when they realized that the government could censor their mail and not just other people’s mail.