Today's school tests and surveys collect a wide variety of personality and opinion data on student proclivities, social attitudes, and parent-inculcated world views. Personality testing poses a threat to family privacy and students' future employability. Nearly anyone can access personal and sensitive student information and use it to target…

Considers options for school libraries addressing the dilemma of protecting both children and intellectual freedom when searching the Internet. Discusses censorware, filtering, monitoring, and blocking; reviews 11 filtering or monitoring software packages currently available; and concludes that adult supervision is still the most effective method…

Explains libraries' roles in protecting intellectual freedom. Outlines these faulty impressions: librarians endorse the content of their collections; "everyone" agrees on controversial material; representation of all viewpoints means equal numbers; and denial of reconsideration requests indicates librarians don't take challenges seriously.…

Argues that inquiring must be the dominant feature of education. Notes that traditional education has treated children's thinking and inquiring as of little pedagogical worth; yet education that prepares for the exercise of judgment rests upon teaching students to cultivate the thinking process. Argues that schools must accept responsibility for…

Discusses a 2000 federal trial court decision upholding a Kentucky district's termination of a tenured teacher who presented a curricular segment on industrial hemp as part of a "save-the-trees" unit. The decision underscores teachers' severely limited constitutional rights in the curricular context. (MLH)

Examines message T-Shirts as a medium for student expression and the ability of public schools to regulate those messages. Predicts that as violence and insolence increase in schools, courts will probably continue to defer to school authorities and let them handle their own problems. (77 footnotes). (MLF)

Presents a lesson where secondary students learn about First Amendment rights. Expounds that the students conduct and analyze a survey on First Amendment rights and then compare their results with those from the national survey conducted by the Freedom Forum. Includes a student handout on conducting a survey and also the survey itself. (CMK)

Discusses results of a survey of youth experts who work with or for teens in libraries, schools, and other areas to determine the most important issues affecting youth. Highlights include intellectual freedom; information access; reading; literacy; social issues, including youth violence; teen culture, including Internet chat; education issues;…

Reflects on Nigel Grant's contribution to the development of comparative education as a scholarly field, as a researcher, writer, and teacher of countless students. Discusses the history of university scholarship and the teacher-student relationship since the first European universities, contemporary debates about the purpose of education, and the…

Lays out the basic requirements of a sound antigang symbol policy. Discusses ways in which a school board can develop a sound policy that prohibits the wearing or display of gang-related symbols without overstepping constitutional boundaries. (LMI)

Interprets the persistent difficulties in revitalizing U.S. public education and in implementing "world standards" in the context of deep-seated conflicts in U.S. political culture. Argues that the conflict between individual liberty and equality is behind the polarization of imperatives such as "choice" and…

Examines the difficulties of teaching intellectual freedom topics to students in ALA (American Library Association)-accredited programs of library and information science, particularly the influences of sexual and racial harassment policies adopted by the universities. Weaknesses are revealed that indicate a lack of protection for teachers of…

Discusses ethical issues concerning public Internet access in academic libraries. Highlights include intellectual freedom, censorship, technical aspects of limiting or restricting use, legal liability for public use of computers for illegal purposes such as child pornography, and the importance of priority use of terminals by the primary academic…

In "Hazelwood" the U.S. Supreme Court said public school officials can censor school-sponsored expression for legitimate educational purposes. A content-analysis case study of student-written newspaper editorials found that more than three times as many editorials of criticism were published prior to the Court's decision. Argues that…

Provides an overview of information policy, including its importance, its key instruments, and its complexity. Information policy issues that may create new roles for libraries include the ramifications of the public's right to information, the organization and retrieval of electronically networked information, information literacy training,…