Religious Intolerence- Educational ban on knowledge?

[CeciliaPhoenix]

I've never really encountered any problems with blocked web sites.........but that's just because when I was I high school, I went to a hippie alternative school where over half the student body was Wicca and the teachers encouraged all of us to be honest to our true selves. In other words, even though they kind of got into trouble with the school district, they put the constitutional rights of the students over what the district thought was right.......

Now I'm at a community college, so I don't have to really worry about blocked sites when I'm on the computers at school.  

[lola_siannodel]

I think that is horrible. I mean, if they can allow you to go to any other religiouse site, why not one on wicca? You should complain to the school board, or something like that. I'm wiccan, too.  

[Shadow Chyld]

I did research on Wicca when I was fourteen through the school computer, but the librarians got a "tip" that it might be something dirty that I was downloading rolleyes They went so far as to get the guidance counselor to call me in to talk about it. Set my religious exploration back a couple of years, for sure crying Stupid school system.  

[Jasop_Buttement]

The whole concept of censorship for students is ill-conceived and brainless. It just goes further along the lines that high schools are not educational facilities but day cares for the older children (who may be functional adults but we'll just call them children). Anyone knows you don't spend half your time learning at a school to begin with. . .  

[XGambit]

i go to catholic school...not much tolerance. damn nazi training school if u ask me.  

[zz1000zz]

Jasop_Buttement

The whole concept of censorship for students is ill-conceived and brainless. It just goes further along the lines that high schools are not educational facilities but day cares for the older children (who may be functional adults but we'll just call them children). Anyone knows you don't spend half your time learning at a school to begin with. . .

So we should let students watch pornography, learn how to make bombs and learn ritual sacrifices?

It may be poorly implemented, but the reason for blocking access to some information is quite logical.  

[Hunter of the Dammed]

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

yeah that happens, just get on late at night if you do it in secrecy like me, or get on at the libary they usuallly dont block it. I also know a way to bypass most proxies  

[Hunter of the Dammed]

zz1000zz

Jasop_Buttement

The whole concept of censorship for students is ill-conceived and brainless. It just goes further along the lines that high schools are not educational facilities but day cares for the older children (who may be functional adults but we'll just call them children). Anyone knows you don't spend half your time learning at a school to begin with. . .

So we should let students watch pornography, learn how to make bombs and learn ritual sacrifices?

It may be poorly implemented, but the reason for blocking access to some information is quite logical.

but why dont we just block all those preciouse little christian sites while were at it.  

[DreamerSpirit]

Earlier in this thread some people mentioned that sites such as vampirefreaks, myspace, xanga, and such were being banned in schools.

Though I do not agree with censorship, banning such sites likely makes sense to the higher-ups in the school district, as they may distract students from doing actual research moerso than other sites.


However, the banning of religious websites is extremely stupid. In the past I've had to do reports on world religions and thier affects on society, as well as comparing and contrasting religions. It's complete idocy to ban websites which may prove valuable in researching religions. It is, in essence, censoring knowledge.


Listening to all of you, it amazes me. Were my school to ban certain websites based on thier 'religious content' then the entire student body, as well as many of the teachers, would be enraged by it. But then again, my city is pretty cosmopolitan... people of all faiths and nationalities coexist in relative peace.

Also, I would hate it if my teachers were to deny me of a decent grade based upon the way I dress. Thankfully, none of my teachers are that judgemental. I get the grades which I deserve for the amount of work and effort I put into a class. I see it as immensly unjust to deny a hard-working student a decent grade due to the external appereance of that suudent.

For anyone who has a problem with teachers depriving you of the grade to which you are entitiled to due to unjust bias, tell your parents! There is nothing that the school fears more than angry parents... I know this from past experience pretaining to issues that I've had with the school. Never underestimate how much weight a parents word can carry. 3nodding  

[Kristoya]

My school does that too. I live in Florida. I recently did a project on religious intolerance in my English class (we were supposed to research something that we felt really strongly about, and someone was already doing abortion and gay marriage). It wouldn't even let my on ReligiousTolerance.Org because it had pages on Wicca and Satanism. And then I tried to look up Buddhism and it blocked that too. But all the Christian sites were open.

I referenced that in my paper. My teacher put a frowny face by it, but said it was a good example.  

[Rainbow Shrapnel]

You can look up Satanism but not Wicca??? Are you kidding me?  

[GilAskan]

School system blocks are annoying. In my high-school, ALL religious sites of ANY kind were blocked. All sites for videos, pictures, games, politics, "general interest", and blogs were blocked. Not to mention about another 200 sites individually banned, including Google.

Oddly enough, you could get access to a lot porn sites, which were classified as "News" or "Art".  

[DR490N]

my problem isn't so much that theres sites banned, there isnt any of that at my school, but when religion is discussed, the topic of paganism never comes up. if i sate "yeah i'm a celtic pagan", people look at me like "what the ******** is that?"

this is simply something that isnt discussed, and yet we're supposed to be taught about christianity, islam, and judaism?

hell, in my computers class we did a project where we had to load up a hard drive for a dual boot, and i grabbed a cernunnos wallpaper off of somebody's deviantart account. it was great because people would walk up to me when i had the hard drive booted up and go "what is that?" and i would get to explain about my favorite buddy/god.

the problem? when i mentioned i was a pagan and practising witch, i got made fun of.  

[gothkid82]

Quite a lot of people simply do not understand the religion and fear it for no good reason. If this was me, I would actually approach the school staff and have an educational discussion with them... but that's just me.