Re: School Has Started

[gachenb@eis.calstate.edu (Greg R. Achenbach)]

OK, I've been following this silly thread for a while now, and am
finally upset enough to post my comments.  First let me tell you a
bit about myself.  I am a fairly conservative person (well....maybe a
moderate.  I don't know.  I hate labels).  However, I am not offended
by any words I have ever heard, nor have I been damaged by them.  In
fact, I even occasionally use certain choice words for effect in my
own communication.  I am also an educator and know a thing or two
about the viewpoints of my fellow educators and the political
realities of the public education setting.
 
Almost everyone who has responded to Joe's original post has
completely missed the point, even those that agreed with him!  This
is NOT an issue of the appropriateness or inappropriateness of
certain words.  I think we all know that nothing a student reads here
will be either new or damaging to them.  This is an issue of ACCESS.
Whether you or your peers consider something acceptable is
immaterial.  What it comes down to is whether the teacher of those
kids (or more likely the parents) thinks it is appropriate on not.
It's not the kids we are worried about, it's the teachers. If they
think it is inappropriate, or are told it is inappropriate by parents
or supervisors, they may very well limit or eliminate access to the
'net for their students.  Whether you like this or not, it is
reality.  Come on!  Is your use of profanity so important to you that
you are willing to compromise the educational value of the net?  This
is not about censorship!  This is about how we can best acheive the
goals that most of us share relative to moving our society more fully
into the world of telecommunications (and using Apple II's to do it).
 
Several people have brought up the First Amendment.  I believe very
strongly in the First Amendment guarantee of free speech.  But, there
are legal and acceptable limits to that right.  Basically, the First
Amendment to the US Constitution says that your speech cannot be
supressed based upon the CONTENT of that speech.  There are, however,
limitations on what speech is appropriate where and when.  If a
teacher was fired for using profanity in class, an appeal to his Free
Speech rights would probably not get him his job back.  If the FCC
pulls the license of a radio or TV station that uses profanity, cries
of censorship aren't going to get it back.  If you are talking loudly
in a theater, you will probably be asked to leave.  If you begin
talking aloud from the gallery during court proceedings, even if you
are reading the Constitution itself, the bailiff will promptly remove
you from the courtroom.  It never ceases to amaze me how quickly
people bring up their free speech right whenever they get called on
the carpet for saying something inappropriate.  Yes, the First
Amendment does protect your right to be a verbal degenerate.  But go
do it somewhere else.  This is not the place for it.
 
An analogy was made in this thread between the 'net and a bar.  Oh,
great!  That will really help our students get proficient with
telecommunications.  "Uh, excuse me Mister District Superintendant,
we think your student would benefit greatly by having a bar in every
one of your classrooms."  Get real, Tero.  A classroom is not a bar!
If you want UseNet newsgroups to have only such speech restrictions
as would be appropriate in a bar, you are basically saying that
UseNet newsgroups don't belong in the classroom.  I have been
impressed with the quality of your informative posts to this group in
the past, but you are way out to lunch with this analogy.
 
Let me repeat, the issue is NOT the appropriateness or legality of
certain language.  The issue IS access to this group, and to the net
at large, by students.
 
Please excuse me while I go put on my asbestos suit.

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Greg Achenbach             gachenb@eis.calstate.edu (soon to be ctp.org)
Los Angeles County Outdoor Science School

"Society is like a stew.  If you don't keep it stirred up, you get a lot of
scum on top."  Edward Abbey