Aaron Dykes / Jones Report | November 8, 2006The fifth grade student who was recently disciplined for accessing 9/11 websites at school, such as Infowars.com, may now be forced to undergo psychiatric evaluation.
10 year-old Mark was not punished, the
discipline report shows, for breaking school rules or being "off task," but rather because his principal says the webpages in his cache were "inappropriate."
Sites listed in the report include '9/11 Cover-Up', 'Alex Jones' Martial Law' and 'NY 9/11 Truth', among others.
According to the
Steiner Ranch Elementary Student & Parent Handbook, students are restricted from accessing websites considered to be 'abusive, obscene, sexually oriented, threatening, harassing, damaging to another's reputation, or illegal'-- thus Infowars.com and other websites were not against school rules.
Instead, punishing "inappropriate" behavior is a subjective assault on the free speech of students like Mark. True free speech and any expression of alternate viewpoints is-- unofficially-- a threat to what schools have become.
According to Mark's father, he is being made "an example for not going along with the program."
While on Alex Jones' nationally-syndicated radio program today, Mark's father said the school approached him about a complete assessment of his son's psychological make-up.
After seeing some of the questions on the test, however, his father refused. "I'm not going to subject my son to this," he told Jones. "They are criminalizing normal behavior."
Mark's father says he was put on drugs when he was younger and it made him "a zombie." His mother realized the effects it was causing and took him off the medication-- for which Mark's father is grateful.
He admits that his son is not perfect, but thinks his son's punishment was out of line.
"He is curious; he's not a follower," said Mark's father. But he was "shocked" that Infowars.com was considered to be an 'inappropriate' website. "It's outrageous," he added.
Schools already set-up student computers with strict filters that block objectionable content. Why, then, was Assistant Principal Amy Moore shocked that a legitimate website like Infowars was not blocked by such filters?
Perhaps students are meant to be fearful that any website they visit could be randomly deemed 'inappropriate', regardless of its content.
Students are already enticed by the taboo concept of blocked content on the Internet-- and schools invite trouble by setting up open time for surfing the web, despite the protection offered by content filters.
Schools should be ready, then, to be flexible with what students might see in that setting.
Instead, they seem quite willing to build up an 'ad hoc' list of miscellaneous misdeeds students will not even recognize as 'misbehavior'. How, then, will such a student recognize the justification for his punishment?
Steiner Ranch Elementary student Mark was assigned to 'detention' during recess as punishment, after being sent to the principal's office and made to sit in the hall, all for looking up information on a '9/11 cover up.'
This is just an apt example in a nation-wide pattern wherein the Thought Police suppress student's thoughts, statements and politically incorrect views and demand simple obedience.
