Why do we censor in Schools?

The topic of what to censor in school came up today, in Engish class. It wasn`t until ater that I asked myself; Why do we censor curse words, nudity, and so called 'questional content'?
Where did we get the idea that our children should be shielded from some material that we don't ike?

The topic of what to censor in school came up today, in Engish class. It wasn`t until ater that I asked myself; Why do we censor curse words, nudity, and so called 'questional content'?
Where did we get the idea that our children should be shielded from some material that we don't ike?

Because angry soccer moms.

The point of this is to preserve public decency. Imagine what would happen if these things were allowed:

1) If cuss words weren't censored, people would run around calling each other gay bastards (lol this happens anyways but the censor cuts down on it).

2) If nudity weren't banned, people would show up naked to school (and you know that's going to distract you if particularly good looking girls do that, everyone's going to be staring). And if ugly people show up at school naked (omg) that's going to be kinda disturbing. Sorry if this part offends anyone.

3) If sex were allowed, then that increases the rate of rape occurrences.

I learned about censorship too, but I disagree with it. In my view, it's just the school being hypocritical saying that censorship is a bad thing but doing the opposite of what's preached. If they want to teach about censorship, at least teach it right...

I do agree that some of the things are ridiculous though. People banning erotic material (things meant to make you sexually excited) is preserving public decency. People banning whole books because of one small rape passage is wrong.

Censorship is bad when you are censoring intellectual information such as Chinese Military beating Tibet Monks because you are denying the people the right to know what they are REALLY paying taxes for, and denying the a choice of accusing their country of wrong doing with evidence (evidence being erased).

Censorship is good when you are denying potential rapists access to child pornography.

Censorship is funny when you replace a versatile negative and lewd word with a generally tasty fruit.

Censorship is funny when you replace a versatile negative and lewd word with a generally tasty fruit.

Indeed.

Oh, I was just reminded of how ironic the title of this comic is, in the context of SP. http://xkcd.com/388/

Edit: Meh this is Rubik's Cube isn't it.

On the topic of swearing, I think that censorship of inappropriate words only feeds their negative connotation. If pomegranate was never considered an offensive term, it wouldn't carry that connotation and would simply be analogous to 'feces'. Then again, people are always going to figure out ways to let out steam (read: curse), so simply refusing to acknowledge any such words wouldn't change anything either.

Censorship is good when you are denying potential rapists access to child pornography.

Has some study been done that linked watching porn to raping people? Cause I don't remember anything like that, you'd think it would have been news.

I'm personally in favour of eliminating censorship entirely, and relying on the trustworthiness of sources to determine whether to believe what they say or not. If someone's consistently lying/misinforming, it is not hard to find out, when you have free access to information. Defamation should be taken care of at the discretion of the victim, not some sort of vague ban on speech.

I don't really see the reason to stop cursing though. By cencoring it, you literally tell your kids that these words are bad, and that mommy and daddy will get angry if you use them. And that's the reason you use them. heh.

Cuss words are censored because they think that it will thus lower its use overall. In fact, it may actually increase it, because most thing you tell people not to do, they will do more than they would if they were allowed to. Thus allowing swearing (to a degree, cant have people running around yelling "plum!!!!!!!" all day), then we could actually see a lower use of cuss words in the future.

Nudity, in the sense on naked pictures, is only allowed, and barely, in biology. Outside of that, it may seem like an odd thing to have naked day, where everyone come to school naked. So it is more of a common decency teaching than anything.

For questionable content, its basically outside forces on this one. Churchs would LOVE!! to have everyone taught about how god supposedly made everybody and everything. And at the same time, government is still the main factor as to what is taught (dam you No Child Left Behind Act!) so if it is thought of as being off on the general ideals of the government, then it will be removed from being taught.

This is what is great about college. If you are lucky and get a sensible teacher in college, they will let you swear, bring up challenging yet controversial topics, and if the situation calls for it, bring yer pr0n collection in. In speech class is the best place to get a good teacher, because you can knock out to of those with one stone.

Has some study been done that linked watching porn to raping people? Cause I don't remember anything like that, you'd think it would have been news.

I'm personally in favour of eliminating censorship entirely, and relying on the trustworthiness of sources to determine whether to believe what they say or not. If someone's consistently lying/misinforming, it is not hard to find out, when you have free access to information. Defamation should be taken care of at the discretion of the victim, not some sort of vague ban on speech.

Im not saying general porn, I was saying child porn, which often shows sexual abuse on children which is why you censor such to prevent sex offenders from sexually harassing such children.

Again, is there any link between what people see and what they do? Maybe we should censor every movie that displays illegal behaviour, in case people watch the behaviour and decide to imitate it...

How many people do you think went and blew up a hospital because they saw The Dark Knight? Of the millions of people, how many?

If a crime is commited, blame the person who commited it, not the pictures or movies they saw. Or blame the society who ostracizes them to the point that if they want to satisfy their urges, they don't know any better way. Admitting even to a psychiatrist who is supposed to keep your sessions confidential is pretty much shooting yourself in the foot, and you can't expect everybody to figure out the correct behaviour on their own.

Again, is there any link between what people see and what they do? Maybe we should censor every movie that displays illegal behaviour, in case people watch the behaviour and decide to imitate it...

How many people do you think went and blew up a hospital because they saw The Dark Knight? Of the millions of people, how many?

If a crime is commited, blame the person who commited it, not the pictures or movies they saw. Or blame the society who ostracizes them to the point that if they want to satisfy their urges, they don't know any better way. Admitting even to a psychiatrist who is supposed to keep your sessions confidential is pretty much shooting yourself in the foot, and you can't expect everybody to figure out the correct behaviour on their own.

Bleh the problem is people get entertained by watching illegal activities and manage to pay somehow for it, thus providing moneys to people who commit such, who in turn keep on doing such illegal activity (Child porn). If we censor the illegal activity and prevent criminals from making a profit on their crimes there might be less activity.

Also you have to know that censorship is different for different things, for instance here in southperry censorship is humurous and is used to make violent and vulgar ideas of hate lighter. Curse words are used to emphisize hate and degrade some action or someone; regardless of whether its justified.

On another note, its a sad thing that people get entertained by mass destruction, I miss the days when people thought the moon landing was cool.

If you censor it and make it so only criminals have it, you just increase their profitability. As it is, because it's illegal, people buy stolen/fake IDs to pay for it (since they buy from criminals theres no trace to the end customer), use anonymous payment services (who aren't able to identify where the money went) and go through layers of encryption to ensure their content is secure (VPNs, trucrypt, etc.)



I don't know if censorship prevents hate; it either redirects it to new words (code to prevent outsiders from knowing it's offensive) or gives people reason to believe that they're actually hurting someone with what they say, which is what they wanted in the first place. If it wasn't offensive it wouldn't need to be censored.

In High School, we had to read many books with profane words, sex, rape and all that stuff.

I guess the content might be a little intense, but it sparks a good debate/conversation in class.

Censorship is religion's ascendancy. The only reason swear words are considered profane is because the Church of the O-So-Mighty God decided them to be. Not their God himself, but the religious leaders.

I can understand taking something out of a school's Library if it's not suitable, if I was a parent I wouldn't want my child reading about sex and violence until he was old enough to understand. Censorship however, I consider to be ascendancy; they want to control what we can and cannot read, limiting what we can learn about life, history, or society, and many other topics.

The way i see it, its just people lieing to themselves claiming censorship is needed so they can take action and feel better. let me try and illustarte you how it works (excuse my mspaint skills):

 Spoiler

The way i see it, its just people lieing to themselves claiming censorship is needed so they can take action and feel better. let me try and illustarte you how it works (excuse my mspaint skills):

That's not how it works. Censorship occurs because overprotective parents are far too aware of a type of learning called observational learning, in other words, learning through imitation. Overprotective parents feel that if children are exposed to erotic material, they're more likely to go out and perform sexual activities with other children. They feel that if children are exposed to profanity and violence, children are more likely to cuss in a public context, or resort to a weapon as soon as argument arises.

That's true to some extent, but censorship overall is harmful. Children will inevitably be exposed to these erotic materials, profanities, or violence one way or another, whether it randomly pops up on the internet, whether peers talk about it, whether they see it in the movies, or whether they see it in TV, ect. What censorship does is that it fails to inform the child which decisions to make.

The only way, thus, is to teach all of these repressed material to it's full extent, rather than censor it in discussions. Unfortunately, this is where I think the schools fail at.

Relating back to the original topic, about the TS starting to learn about censorship, this is WRONG. I believe that schools should teach all sides of the situations, the social contexts that would drive people towards such behaviors, and why one should avoid them, all at a younger age, rather than what schools generally teach it in, which is completely biased towards, "don't say it, don't do it, it's morally wrong."

Maybe your school might be better at teaching it, but I know my school sucked at it. I wish they had did a better job at teaching it.

The only way, thus, is to teach all of these repressed material to it's full extent, rather than censor it in discussions. Unfortunately, this is where I think the schools fail at.

I hope you misused your words. Because I wouldn't want to watch a person take a horse from its behind, and that's what "full extent" could potentially cover. You're proposing not only removing restriction on access, but actually *teaching* it? >.> I know the example may be a bit extreme, but that is what "full extent" includes.

I hope you misused your words. Because I wouldn't want to watch a person take a horse from its behind, and that's what "full extent" could potentially cover. You're proposing not only removing restriction on access, but actually *teaching* it? >.> I know the example may be a bit extreme, but that is what "full extent" includes.

Ok, maybe I didn't mean full extent. Full extent as in as much as is needed to fully understand what the material is about. You only need to talk about horse sex to visualize it and that'd be sufficient. By full extent I didn't mean live demonstration or traumatizing videos.

(On a side note, in Biology, you don't have to dissect brains to learn about the nervous system. Likewise, you don't have to watch Horse Sex to learn about it.)

Overprotective parents feel that if children are exposed to erotic material, they're more likely to go out and perform sexual activities with other children. They feel that if children are exposed to profanity and violence, children are more likely to cuss in a public context, or resort to a weapon as soon as argument arises.

why would they feel like that? they were also kids once, they were also exposed to the same things. censorship is not protecting (and was not made to protect) the kids, its protecting their parents. all the general idea of censorship was never made for educational purposes. but its like the story about the poor guy who became rich, and forgot how he felt before and acted like an pimento. most of the kids will grow up feeling they fell a victim to censorship, and will then abuse censorship on their kids the same way their parents did, because they dont care about the past and just want to avoid embarassing situations.

they were also kids once, they were also exposed to the same things. censorship is not protecting (and was not made to protect) the kids, its protecting their parents.

As people grow older, their ideas change. Right now, it's easy for us to see the logic against censorship, but maybe forty years later, you and I too will forget about the dangers of having censorship and it may seem like the logical idea, as it's the easiest to do. Censoring is simply less time consuming, an immediate fix to a situations that may arise from not censoring. Instead of actually sitting down to explain why the behavior is "bad" and why the consequence is appropriate, simply just deny it's existence.

It may be obvious to us now why censoring is damaging in the long run, but as we grow older, like your beggar scenario, we tend to forget about these things, much like how we forget about childhood experiences.

As our logic changes, our memories fade. Without the link of logic, memories cannot be recalled, and even if we go back and look at a video of ourselves in infancy, we may still not be able to remember fully because we are unable to remember what thoughts exactly occurred in our minds. (For example, we can't recall why Peek-a-Boo was so fun.) Our minds would have blocked the memory.

It's unfortunate but it happens. It's not necessarily that parents have so much pride that they're willing to go out of their way to protect their reputations among their own children. (Heck, that sounds like such strange logic.) I'm pretty sure all (nonabusive) parents want what's best for their children.