Censorship In Cyberspace 3/6

[rarachel@photon.poly.edu (Arsen Ray Arachelian)]

          MODERATOR:  What about the children?  Our new technolo-
gies expose children to information and ideas from all over the
world.  Some of it is information.  Some of it is misinformation. 
Should we take steps to restrict this access?  Ellen Lafontaine
will explore this area with examples of educational alternatives to
censorship.
          LAFONTAINE:  Thank you, Joan.  I have a little cold, so
I hope that you can hear me.  I hope I won't cough halfway through.
          As we all know, cyberspace or the InterNet is a very
popular subject today.  When one adds the issue of censorship it
becomes even more compelling and controversial.  Today you will be
presented with the legal, political and technical viewpoints of the
censorship debate.  However, I contend that while these perspec-
tives are illuminating there is the danger of missing the far more
important issue of the right to free speech for students in its
application to this medium of technology.  
          This issue of censorship is not solely one of a technical
nature, for instance how to block access to pornographic material
and banned books.  A cursory glance at the variety of news groups
and conferences on the InterNet may seem, depending upon your point
of view, as either provocative or offensive.  For example, it is
possible to obtain an erotic article from the news group
ALT.REC.SEX.WITH.OTHERS, or a few passages from Huck Finn, a banned
book in some school districts.  Indeed many educators and parents
spend a lot of time worrying over whether Susan or Jimmy will
accidentally read material that's not appropriate for their age.
          However, restricting access to news groups and
conferences dealing with objectionable content matter is simply a
subtractive strategy, subtractive in the sense of a withdrawal. 
The real issue instead involves the much great social challenge of
placing in our schools this technological medium that has the
potential to encourage student dialogue on any number of controver-
sial issues.  
          Increasingly our schools have greater access to the
InterNet.  We can expect that some educators and parents will
perceive its introduction as dangerous as rolling a Trojan Horse
into the classroom.  Therefore a different and far more interesting
approach to the issue of censorship is to focus upon the students
themselves and their right to free expression in the classroom.  To
us this is an additive strategy, allowing our students to confront
difficult realities both on a local level and a global scale and to
successfully engage in the necessary conflicts that will inevitably
result.
          The questions that we need to ask are:  Can we tolerate
and actively promote the desanitizing of the curriculum by allowing
this new form of communication and inquiry into the classroom?  Can
we encourage our students to pursue the right to free expression
and not turn their backs on controversy when it ensues?  And
lastly, can we create a critical literacy among students so that
they are not only better prepared to confront the issues of
tomorrow but also can be instrumental in changing or improving
today's world for the better?
          To illustrate my point I would like to tell a story drawn
from a paper that I coauthored with Professor Dennis Sayers of New
York University.  The research was originally compiled for his
forthcoming book, Brave New Schools.  The story concerns the use of 
a global learning network in an English class at a high school in
Long Island.  The network, supported by the Copland Family Fund, is
called IERN, which stands for International Educational and
Resource Network.  The IERN network allows students to use telecom-
munications to carry out projects with students from other parts of
the world.  The students at Cold Spring Harbor use the network to
collect articles written by students from many different countries
for a magazine called The Contemporary.  Although produced at the
high school, The Contemporary is so much a part of the IERN network
that it is considered an official publication of that network.  As
its editors write, "The Contemporary is a student news magazine,
international in scope, that aims to provide teenagers with a way
to learn about issues of national and global importance as the
first step toward understanding how youth can have an impact on the
direction taken by our world."  And one point I'd like to make. 
These are 14 to 17-year-olds that write, so I think you're all
going to be very impressed by the level of their writing.
          Even though at times these issues of national and global
importance were controversial in nature, this didn't stop the
student editors from writing about them.  However they were soon to
find out that encouraging a debate on one of these controversial
issues would lead to not one but two conflicts and near losses of
their right to free expression, and surprisingly from two entirely
different directions.  
          It all began with the Middle East section of the January
1994 issue, which contained writings from Palestinian and Israeli
teachers and students.  Kristin Lucas, the 11th grade editor of the
special sections, recounts her original motivations for collecting
the writings.  "At the start of my project my goal was to inform
students around the world about recent developments in the long
lived Middle East crisis.  I set out with the belief that students
from Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories needed to
realize the similarities in their hopes and fears in order to pave
the way for a more peaceful future."  
          Using electronic mail and video send (ph), Kristin and
the other students editors were able to collect several pieces of
writing from both Palestinian and Israeli students and teachers. 
It was their intention to pair these writings next to one another
in the Middle Eastern section for maximum impact.  However, as they
were going to press one of the Palestinian teachers, upon learning
of Kristin's decision to intersperse the Israeli and Palestinian
writings, and also objecting to some of the content in Kristin's
introductory article, threatened to pull every one of the
Palestinian writings.  Kristin and her fellow editors were
astounded.  She spent seven periods of two school days trying to
reach a compromise that wouldn't breach her right to free expres-
sion.  At the end they published all of the letters, but in
separate sections of the magazine.  
          This was a disappointing compromise for Kristin and her
co-editors.  In their opinion the initial attempt to foster a
student dialogue on a controversial topic had failed.  So they
decided to exploit the technology to an even greater extent. 
Instead of relying upon letters and articles sent through elec-
tronic mail, they opened a conference area on the network hoping
this time for a more extensive, true back and forth student
dialogue.  Little were they to know that world events would sadly
offer them one more Middle Eastern controversy.  As we can all
recall, on February 23, 1994 Baruch Goldstein murdered 50 Arabs and
wounded many others at a mosque in Hebron (ph).  This massacre
triggered many Palestinian demonstrations on the streets of the
occupied territories, which led to beatings and killings by Israeli
authorities and reprisal murders by members of extremist groups on
both sides.  As a result extensive curfews were enforced and
schooling for the Palestinians was suspended.  
          Thus the resulting turmoil provoked a flurry of letters
back and forth on many topics, one of which was the Western media
coverage of the events.  As one 12-year-old writes, Ranin Kiryan
(ph), "The Western media is always at the scene when both Israelis
and Arabs are killed, and the coverage is much more in favor of the
Palestinian side in the opinion of Israel's.  My opinion in general
is that the Palestinians deserve a country."  A Palestinian student
disagreed with Ranin Kiryan.  "I believe the Western media is not
always at the scene when both Arabs and Jews are killed, and the
coverage is in favor of the Israelis.  But it's not important that
the media covers this or that.  What is important is that the
killings stop.  I respect your opinion that the Palestinians
deserve a State."
          These two excerpts out of a handful of many demonstrate
the enormous power of telecommunications to foster student partici-
pation in an open and free dialogue.  These students are learning
tolerance by respecting each other's opinions on a very controver-
sial topic.  They are communicating in a real fashion about issues
of social justice.  
          One Israeli student who wished to remain anonymous,
likely because his or her opinion would have sparked debate among
his or her Israeli classmates, disputed the frequent press descrip-
tions of Baruch Goldstein as an insane killer who acted alone.  He
or she says, "I believe that the massacre was not the action of a
lone lunatic but one taken by a gunman acting under the influence
of a radical minority group.  This group deserves to be condemned,
but the entire Israeli population should not be blamed.  Similarly,
the extremists among the Palestinians should be condemned but not
all the Palestinian people."  Truthfully, how many adults can
master that concept, the few do not represent the many, as our
anonymous contributor obviously has?  Moreover, how many could
acquire this understanding on such a controversial issue so close
to home?  
          Clearly these excerpts from the students' writings
demonstrate the success of Kristin's original goals, to promote
dialogue on a hotly contested issue in the Middle East with the
hopes of illuminating common ground for peaceful coexistence.  The
Contemporary included these and many other letters in the May 1994
issue.  There were also letters from students in other countries
sharing their opinions and applying lessons from what they were
reading to their own reality at home.  Phoebe McDunna, a student
from Australia, writes:  "In my country we have many people from
different backgrounds and we have grown to communicate and to
accept everyone.  This all sounds like Australia is a very loving
and understanding country, but the sad truth is our native
Australians, the Aborigines, are the last ones to become accepted
and to be treated equally."  
          Thus the debate that Kristin had sparked on the political
turmoil in the Middle East led to students in faraway countries
extrapolating lessons about the expansionist policies at the roots
of their own countries' origins.  So in going to press with this
final issue of the school year, Kristin and her fellow students
were pleased that they had achieved the goal of using telecommu-
nications for opening and sustaining an extensive dialogue on a
controversial issue.  Kristin writes, "I've had the opportunity to
accomplish what many other students may never have a chance to
attempt.  Even though I don't have the influence to reverse the
sometimes harsh sentiments of these people, I would like to come
away thinking that at least I did something to help the peace
process along."  
          Unfortunately Kristin had no idea of the new conflict for
the May issue, this time much closer to home.  Peter Copland (ph)
is the head of the Copland Family Foundation that has supported the
IERN network since its inception.  His vision was to explore the
potential of telecommunications to give youth a voice in shaping
and improving their world.  To this end he established IERN,
providing funding from the Copland Family Foundation to underwrite
the network during its formative years until it established a clear
identity and had become self sufficient.  This support took many
forms, ranging from assisting in covering the cost of telecom-
munications for some schools in North America and in other
countries to assure cultural diversity in the networking projects
and to contributing to special projects such as the Holocaust
Genocide Project, with a range of funding demands including
publications and study trips to Poland and Israel.  
          So when Peter Copland asked to meet with the editorial
staff and the faculty adviser at Cold Spring High to voice objec-
tions to their coverage in the Middle East sections they were all
very surprised.  In his view, however, the coverage was biased
toward the Palestinian point of view.  He also felt that the
writings from the adult contributors was a major departure from the
original mission of the student magazine.  Although he insisted
that he didn't want to limit their editorial freedom he felt that
The Contemporary's designation as an official annual IERN project
should be reconsidered, and the controversial nature of the topics
it covered might generate disagreements within IERN and jeopardize
the willingness of some schools, for example in Israel and the
U.S., to continue participating in the network. 
          So the student editors met and drafted a response to
Copland's concerns, and I'll quote a few passages.  It was a very
long letter, but I think this is very important:  

     We sought to give all interested parties a chance to
     state their views and respond to each other.  Did the
     contributors hear one another?  Well, most seemed to
     listen but a few seemed to hear very well.  Did we try to
     make the Middle East section a safe place to conduct such
     a discussion?  Yes, but we realize that when feelings run
     as hot as they do in the Middle East there may be no such
     thing as a safe place to discuss any subject.  Does this
     mean that we did not make a contribution to the resolu-
     tion of the problems discussed?  No.  We feel progress in
     this instance ought to be measured simply by the fact
     that the contending parties at least talked to each other
     and read what each other was feeling and thinking. 
     Finally, dialogue, no matter how contentious it may seem,
     is the first step toward resolving any problem.
          These responses demonstrate the remarkably high level of
critical thinking generated by engaging in such projects on a
global learning network over the InterNet.  The students developed
a working knowledge of how to confront the possible loss of their
right to free speech.  Once again they negotiated a compromise by
relinquishing the annual IERN project status for The Contemporary
and incorporating a disclaimer for each issue.  The final result
was a conceptual awareness of the relationship of free expression
and of the media of telecommunication that went far beyond the
issue of keeping objectionable material out of young peoples'
hands.
          In closing I will quote one student's real understanding
of the individual right to free expression:  "I think free and open
communication is a wonderful thing.  Perhaps with this experience
some students will prize dialogue more dearly in the future.  Hope-
fully if we try to understand each other more we might be more
willing to talk things out instead of going to war over them."
          Thank you.

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