To censor something is to remove and hide material, be it in a book, newspaper, magazine, etc., in judgement that it is too sensitive to be revealed.

Analyzing this on a much higher level, governments are bound to censor information from its society; there are probably incidents that are kept a secret, for reasons beyond the general public’s understanding. In fact, I believe government censorship of other sources online is extremely important, as well. There’s no telling – or controlling for that matter – as to what people can do or say these days, so the government is right for at least monitoring what people do and say online. In regards to issues like profanity, suspicious activity, and cyber-bullying, the government has a right to ensure that the people and networks in their nation are not soiling the world around them.

What’s surprising, however, is that people are against the government’s intervention. People think that they should be able to say whatever they want online and get away with it – how ridiculous is that?! Think of a) the controversies that would be created as a result and b) how corrupted society would become! Issues like cyber-bullying are big problems today, so if people had the option of saying what they wanted, these problems would just get worse. And it’s not just about what people say, but what they have access to, as well. Many complain that certain sites online are banned or restricted, but they never think about the fact that they are illegal. The internet has given the world so much freedom, maybe a little too much. Obviously we don’t know how to handle it, so we need someone to monitor what we do.

But in regards to school censorship, this is where my views become contradicting. It is understandable that schools want to ensure the best learning environment for their students, but reasonably speaking, there has to be a limit on things. These days, administrators are placing restrictions for the smallest of ‘issues’ and I can’t help but feel like it is keeping students in a shell. We are more than capable, and mature enough to handle whatever is being hidden. In addition, the censored material isn’t banned on a sensible basis, e.g. social media networks. Schools ban social media networks because they claim that the information is irrelevant and distracting – in college, we won’t be babied like that.  I’m not saying that I support access to sites like Facebook because I want to be able to use it during school. I’m saying that if a student wishes to use this site during class, they should be able to. Whether or not they prevent themselves from learning as a result is no one’s problem but theirs! It is honestly a student’s job to ensure their academic responsibility. I mean, the overall objective behind a student’s high school experience is to ultimately be prepared for college, so it is important that we are treated as such in all aspects; in college, no one is going to go out of their way to create a perfect learning environment for you. Many of things that are censored are concepts we will find ourselves coming across later in life, making it all the more important for us to learn how to handle the same situation now.

Ultimately, I understood while writing this article that censorship is an extremely sensitive topic – there are many areas that are debatable for many reasons.