AASL designates Wednesday, September 28, 2011, as Banned Websites Awareness Day

For Immediate Release
Tue, 08/09/2011 - 15:21

CHICAGO – In an extension of the observance of Banned Books Week, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) will highlight censorship awareness by designating Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2011, as Banned Websites Awareness Day. By doing so, it is AASL’s hope to bring attention to the overly aggressive filtering of educational and social websites used by students and educators. For more information, visit www.ala.org/aasl/bwad.

“Many schools filter far beyond the requirements of the Children’s Internet Protection Act, because they wish to protect students,” explains Carl Harvey, AASL president. “Students must develop skills to evaluate information from all types of sources in multiple formats, including the Internet. Relying solely on filters does not teach young citizens how to be savvy searchers or how to evaluate the accuracy of information.”

According to a recent study undertaken by a team of researchers from the University of Southern California and the University of California, Berkeley, and funded by the MacArthur Foundation, today’s learners are using online media not just as social tools, but are engaging in peer-based, self-directed learning. Through digital media, youths are discovering a degree of freedom and self-paced learning that they may not be finding in a traditional classroom setting.

“School librarians understand that learning is enhanced by opportunities to share and learn with others. The use of social media in education, then, is an ideal way to engage students,” adds Harvey. “In order to make school more relevant to students and enhance their learning experiences, we need to incorporate those same social interactions that are successful outside of school into authentic assignments in the school setting.”

Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted banning of books across the United States. News, events and materials for BBW 2011 can be found at bannedbooksweek.org.

The American Association of School Librarians, www.aasl.org, a division of the American Library Association (ALA), promotes the improvement and extension of library services in elementary and secondary schools as a means of strengthening the total education program. Its mission is to advocate excellence, facilitate change and develop leaders in the school library field.

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Banned Websites Awareness Day

AASL is to be commended for taking the lead on this intellectual freedom issue. It is becoming increasingly evident that access to participatory media is essential to teaching the frameworks set forth by the Partnership for 21st Century Learning, and more specifically for librarians, AASL’s Learning for Life (L4L) standards. Yet, these resources – those that create opportunities for students to contribute and publish online – are often blocked in schools.

Internet censorship is most often fueled by fear. Costly litigation, online predators, network security, privacy breeches are commonly cited as justification for aggressive filtering practices. While these concerns are legitimate, denying teachers and students a chance to experience online participatory learning together is professionally irresponsible. When schools, which presumably exist to prepare students for 21st century citizenship, fail to teach students how to learn and publish on the World Wide Web, they deny students fundamental instruction that is necessary for success in today’s world, and even more so in tomorrow’s.

Unbanning sites is critical

To some, banning websites is a way to keep students on topic. To others, it is a very real, constant and present reminder that students, especially primary and secondary students, are second-class citizens and primary and secondary students who belong to minorities are even further down on the list.

As we’ve seen across the nation in the last year, marginalization of transgender, bisexual, lesbian and gay students can lead very directly to self-loathing, depression and suicide. Not many people - even librarians and paraprofessionals - are aware that among the sites most commonly blocked are LGBT advocacy sites. While some sites are blocked in libraries for valid reasons, others are blocked for frivolous ones, and still others solely because the information on them makes litigious moral guardians uncomfortable, even though that information may save lives. It is in my opinion highly irresponsible to simply promote the wholesale, blanket banning of websites on school library computers.

Banning websites about GLBT topics may be a good way to avoid lawsuits, but it is also a very good (i.e. horrible and irresponsible) way to teach GLBT students that they are unwanted and unwelcome.

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 08/10/2011 - 14:00.

What a Joke! Even AL Did Not Predict This!

What a joke! Even the Annoyed Librarian did not anticipate the ALA would be this silly! See “Celebrate Banned Sites Day!,” by Annoyed Librarian, Library Journal, 4 August 2011.

And bannedbooksweek.org? It highlights a low quality, plagiarized so-called “censorship” map that the ALA itself plagiarized in a disgraceful move that only gets worse the more the plagiarism is promoted year after year.

Is there no power within the ALA that will stop and reverse the plagiarism? It’s was bad enough when it first happened. Now that it gets repeated year after year, it’s a disgrace.

Hey, I’m just the messenger. The problem is the plagiarism and its perpetuation, both by the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, not my proving the proof of the plagiarism (on my blog that the OIF reads).

No one has the intellectual freedom to plagiarize, not even the OIF. I hereby challenged the OIF to withdraw the plagiarized map, and if it will not, I challenge the ALA as a whole to respond accordingly.

-Dan Kleinman of SafeLibraries

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 08/09/2011 - 18:39.