Memo #2

          When I started looking through the library databases for research I realized that many of the sources that deal with censorship focus on books.  There were even some titles that I thought sounded great, but upon reading and reviewing them I realized that again the focus was on censoring books rather than student writing.  This is just a small set back, however, because I have been able to find a few sources on censorship in the classroom as well as censorship of student work.

          One of the first articles that I read brought up censorship of student blogs used for classroom purposes.  Of course we have blogs in this class (and I have had blogs in many classes throughout my college experience) but I never thought about that in relationship to my project.  Blogs are certainly student writing, and we still need to think about whether or not students should be limited, but it opens another can of worms.  This brings up the topic of digital citizenship and that students need to take responsibility for their words online.  While this is relevant to in class writing, I wonder if there is a place for it in my paper.  

          Another great resource that I found is from a college student's point of view.  Through the Ohio State University student blog/website one student shares his experience of censorship gone wrong.  A classmate looked at his blog and decided that his writing was "dangerous" and the student had to go to court to defend his blog.  He explains the challenges with the legalities of censorship, and explains that it is easy to accuse someone of needing to be censored.  He argues that people who inaccurately accuse should be punished more than the person accused.  This article offers one student's encounters with censorship.

          I also found an article where an Art teacher explains her relationship with censorship in the classroom.  While this isn't directly related to writing, this article offered a lot of information from a teacher's point of view.  I was able to find a great quote from the article about topic choices, "There needs to be an understanding that if students are confronting these issues outside our classrooms, we need to be able to support them in the classroom rather than avoiding confrontation with contemporary social issues" (Stanhope, 395)  This article also questions, How much autonomy should the student have? and "Are we as educators also there are censors?". 

         Overall, the articles that I have read so far have given me a lot to think about regarding the legalities of speech.  I really want to find sources (maybe this will be my primary research) from teachers who have dealt with a challenge about student writing, know someone who has dealt with it, or who have policies in their classroom to avoid censorship challenges in the classroom.