It's called Intellectual Freedom
Wednesday, October 3, 2007 at 08:04PM 
An open letter to technology directors who block YouTube, blogs, e-mail sites, and any other web resource not expressly required to be blocked by CIPA (which is pictoral pornography - period).
Dear Sirs:
There is long held belief in libraryland that one one selects a resource on the basis of it having some things of value rather than censor a resource based on it having some parts without value or which might possibly cause offense. In choosing to block YouTube, you are a censor. You violate your staff's and students' intellectual freedom, their rights to view. By arbitratily blocking other sites, you are violating your staff's and students' right to read. You are denying them their rights accorded by the First Amendment.
Let's take your policy to its logical conclusion. Were I, as a tech director, teacher, taxpayer or parent in your district, to ask you to block Wikipedia, Encyclopedia or World Book since each suggests evolution may be a reputable scientific theory, shouldn't you block those sources, despite them also having content of value to students? Should I disagree with the view of the NAACP website, ought you not block that as well? As a good Democrat, I really think most neocon values are pornographic and children shouldn't be exposed to them. Let's only allow students access to sites that espouse the "just say no" theory of birth control and STD prevention.
Or perhaps your district does block at this level.
Blocking Internet sights simply shows professional disrespect - your values are good, other educators are not.
Smart people like you should know better. It's better to allow and have a resource challenged, than to block it "just in case."
Do yourself and your students a favor and read up a little on Intellectual Freedom. A good place to start is at ALA's Intellectual Freedom Q&A site. Quite honestly, I don't see how anyone should be able to graduate from college without understanding the First Amendment. But's never too late to get that education one ought to have received back when. (Did you ever think that school is wasted on the young?)
All the best,
Doug
From the Amercian Library Association Office of Intellectual Freedom website:
What Is Intellectual Freedom?
Intellectual freedom is the right of every individual to both seek and receive information from all points of view without restriction. It provides for free access to all expressions of ideas through which any and all sides of a question, cause or movement may be explored.
Why Is Intellectual Freedom Important?
Intellectual freedom is the basis for our democratic system. We expect our people to be self-governors. But to do so responsibly, our citizenry must be well-informed. Libraries provide the ideas and information, in a variety of formats, to allow people to inform themselves.
Intellectual freedom encompasses the freedom to hold, receive and disseminate ideas.
Who Attempts Censorship?
In most instances, a censor is a sincerely concerned individual who believes that censorship can improve society, protect children, and restore what the censor sees as lost moral values. But under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, each of us has the right to read, view, listen to, and disseminate constitutionally protected ideas, even if a censor finds those ideas offensive.
Rants 
