Religious Intolerence- Educational ban on knowledge?

[Demoness_tsunami]

I am a grade 12 student who goes to a school in Nova Scotia, Canada. I am currently in a Comparitive religions class and we are working on independant projects about religion. We were given a list of religious that we will not be discussing in the class that we can write a paper, or do a presentation on. I am Wiccan, and since the course is about learning, I wasn't planning on doing the project on Wicca, but as I was sifting through websites thinking I may do my project on ancient goddess cults or baltic paganism, I started to notice a tendancy. Many of the sites I was trying to access were banned. This led me to wonder, how much of this is banned for a reason and how much of it is rediculously uncalled for. So I began to type in some of the URLs for credible resources that I have used on a day to day basis that are informative and fairly tame educational sites about paganism, wicca and "Old Way" religions, finding that more than half of these sites were banned by the school, The message flashed up site after site.

ACCESS DENIED:OCCULT

Finally in an act of desperation I said to my self " They can't have banned Wikipedia" And as I typed the word into the search bar on wiki and hit enter the last of my hope died. Access Denied, OCCULT. I could search for Neo-Nazi-ism, Facism, Satanism.....but not Wicca, one of the more peaceful religions out there.

This discovery left me feeling drained, demoralized and insulted, that noone on a school computer can look up Wicca without being bombarded with the one thing that Wiccans have tried hardest to dispell, the belief that Wicca is an occult dark art of devil worship. I could understand the reasoning behind banning these sites if I went to a private christian school, but in the public school system I find it to be appauling and a denial of human rights. I feel as though the school board and administrators are telling me that what I believe in and the basis on which I form my actions and beliefs is wrong, is evil, and is too dangerous to learn about.

Most people don't even know that occult simply means 'hidden' and occult practices are knowledge or rituals that are done in secret, most people have come to think occult synonymous with evil, or 'dark arts' or 'devil worship'.

What is your opinion on this, do you think it is counter intuitive in an educational setting?

Do you agree that it is a denial of the human right to freedom of religion?

Do you disagree with me and think it is a good thing to ban these sites?


Sites that were banned:

Wikipedia: Wicca

Wicca.com

The Inner Sanctum of Wicca and Witchcraft

The Wiccan Church of Canada

In Defence of Wicca

Wicca on the Go. com  

[Choboxer]

neutral Its the same in my school now, its not to ban the access to the religion, its to avoid Contraversy
dont blame the man for it, blaim the bible thumper who complains about everything else and evently cause everything to be PC and blocked.
Hell im not even alloud to get onto vampirefreaks.com becuse of the Alternative communty might be too "diffrent"  

[zz1000zz]

In high school this is usually the least of the problems. Teachers are often blatantly biased against "goths" and other people outside the "norm." Often times, teachers or schools break the law in their discrimination, but in modern times there is little chance of it changing.

People are idiots, and nothing can change it.  

[teddysreallylol]

i dont know you should just move out of canada then... america that is illegal to ban those sites for it is an act of hate because of the all religion acceptance law...  

[Kitsoru]

scul

i dont know you should just move out of canada then... america that is illegal to ban those sites for it is an act of hate because of the all religion acceptance law...

not true- schools are exceptions to many laws, including freedom of speech in some ways, to prevent 'disruptions to the learning enviroment'
bull but true confused
my school has banned myspace and facebook, among other things- not that I entirely disagree w/ that, but...  

[.+Melanthios+.]

I did a litle research on this...I was searching through some of those sites at my school and they got blocked also

I asked my computer lab teacher why and she said that the blocked websites aren't picked by the school but rather most blockers pick out certain terms from the site and images and if the path is considered bad than it blocks it

Though it is a bit odd that it didn't block satanism or facism.....  

[Lady Austina]

I am a Wiccan as well. And I have noticed at my school that they banned all sites with any Religion, but Christian ones. Even Budda, Jewish, Islamic, ect.

Also thay banned Xanga, myspace(I don't use), and Gaia!

Also you can't look up any pictures unless on Corbis.com or altavista.com

So ya school sucks. Thats why I look up everything I want at home.  

[Macabre_Cogitation]

Okay, look
I'll explain it for you.

There reason some sites are blocked and not is based on the proxy being used at your school.
Certain words are entered into the blocked list, and if those are listed in metatags listed by certain sites they are blocked.

Others are blocked by the SCHOOL BOARD ITSELF.
I asked my school's HEAD TECH LADY. She told me that.

there are ways around the proxies though.
Use https:/www.proxify.com
That one is nice, but only if you pay for a subscritption.
It's like 20 bucks for 3 months...I suggest it.
It gets around most.

Another way is installing an OS onto a disc.
it's nice to do that, gets you around eveyrthing, but then you do not have access to the school files, unless you have passwords to get them, usually the tech admin ones.
BUt you have complete internet access.
I personally just say, do what you will

The reason that facism is because of history classes.
Wikipedia is being blocked by my school because of a lawsuit against it or something like that.

I personally just wait til I'm out of school to do research
But if you don't have the acces...well.
Find you own ways around things, they are always there....  

[Rayna-chan.]

(see post above this one. I attend same school)
Its publik education. What do you expect?  

[Macabre_Cogitation]

See post above.
That's true.
Very true.
On both accounts.  

[Machinari]

My school's pretty small, so thay don't bother to ban anything. In my old one, I failed Language Arts, not because I didn't do well, because the teacher didn't like people who weren't 'normal' by her standards. Everyone who looked vaugely abnormal got horrible grades. No matter how good the paper was, I never got anything above a C-, and all the 'preppy' students did wonderfully. It sucked. I'm sure its been said on other topics, but people fear what they do not understand. That leads people to get angry at nothing, sue the school, get good sites banned. That's just what happens.  

[Dr_lecter1988]

My highschool was the same way

"this website is blocked, Reason: Occult/ New Age."

But the 700 club website among may other christian websites was not, buddhism was, judaism wasn't blocked though. it's because th school is in a christian based society, and the veiw anything remotely related to paganism as the work of hte devil and will corrup their children, technicaly they're trying to protect the kids, i respect that, but it shouldn't be done in such a way.  

[Soriana Leo]

I understand where your coming from, I'm not wiccan but I did study it to understand my friends better and where they were coming from. Its ludacrise to ban something such as a Wiccan site, something as simple as Wikipedia, what a joke. They need to stop being tight asses and face the fact that many people are Wiccan, it might be a different religion but its a religion thats dosen't hurt anyone, so says the Wiccan creed about hurting another and getting back five to ten times the hurt they gave.

Sorry ranting ^_^  

[Leith]

Speeking as one who's gone through that and come out the otherside, I'll tell you that public school has nothing to do with legality. A few biased parents can detract from everyone's education. And there's not a whole lot that you as students, can do about it. The school board won't listen to you, the teacher might, but they have to answer to the board.

Keep in mind that public school is not about learning. It's about programming. There was a socialogical study a few years ago that published 'the 7 things that school really teaches'. I can't remember all of it, but it included:

The authority figure knows best.
Dependancy on others for emotional stability (Grades)
Competition (Grades)
Obediance to authority (Asking to go to the bathroom?? You're teenagers for gods' sake!!)

It also teahes confomity. Notice who gets the recognition, the awards, the elected positions. It's the popular, mainstream kids.

My advice to to realize that it's all bullshit, try not to let it getto you, because once you hit college, the rules completely change.