Re: School Has Started

[bbry@bu.edu (Bryony Bechtold)]

Greg R. Achenbach (gachenb@eis.calstate.edu) wrote:

: 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.

Extremely well said and articulated.  Joe has seen fit to send me personal 
mail littered with "make my day punk" sentiments, expressed in that precise 
manner.  All I can really say is:  I truly hope that your day to day 
existence is really NOT as pathetic as your response would seem to indicate.

I know of no children stupid enough to be "harmed" by the free expression of
any opinion on the net.  If you do, my condolences.