You may have read about how business are blocking blogs from workplaces. Well this is even worse. A Catholic school in Sparta, New Jersey called Pope John XXIII Regional High School has told their students that they may no longer have personal blogs. This was made clear to the students and their parents at a recent assembly.
The reverend’s excuse for doing this was that he was protecting students from sexual predators. The obvious question is how is it any of his business what the students do in their personal lives? Another reason why the school decided to create this rule is because some students had posted derogatory comments about the school. What the school is saying here seems to be very clear, “there is no such thing as free speech”.
And now the most anti-American quote from a reverend this year:
“I don’t see this as censorship, I believe we are teaching common civility, courtesy and respect.”
I’ve got no problem with schools blocking sites like LiveJournal or Blogger from being accessed from school computers or preventing students from blogging while on campus, but this is just bogus. It’s none of their business and they’ve really got no way of knowing who is blogging anyways.
I disagree with any restriction upon freedom of speech. But, to some extend, I agree with cliche.
Catholics are followers of ideals, their opinions count very little for the religion. The only time when you see a drop of freedom of speech is when a priest is speaking about common issues.
Therefore I don’t think it is that surprising that the reverend would restrict that.
Perhaps it doesn’t even have anything to do with religion but just a way of concealing things he might not want told to the whole world at a press of a button.
Blogging has nothing to do with being Catholic, it’s not like the Pope said, “No more blogs!” this is an isolated incident where the reverend took it too far, blogs are just a form of communicating information, now what they put on those blogs is a different topic. But I don’t think that pointing out problems with the school is taboo.
Speaking of free speech…I just found out the BlogExplosion censors it’s members. I found out the hard way – I got kicked out!
Stories like your post and what I just went through really make me feel, now more than ever, we will have to fight to keep our free speech as bloggers!
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