“One of the lessons that Andrew Lampart learned from being on his [Woodbury, CT high] school’s debate team was to gather facts for both sides of an argument,” foxnews.com observes. “So last month when his law class was instructed to prepare for a debate on gun control, Andrew went online using the school’s Internet service . . . When Andrew tried to log onto the National Rifle Association’s website, he realized there was a problem – a big problem. ‘Their website was blocked,’ he told me. Andrew decided to try the Second Amendment Foundation’s website. That too, was blocked. Andrew decided to set aside his debate preparation and started researching other conservative websites. He soon discovered . . .
that he had unfettered access to liberal websites, but conservative websites were blocked.
For example, the Connecticut Republican Party website was blocked. The Connecticut Democratic Party website was not blocked. National Right to Life was blocked, but Planned Parenthood was not blocked. Connecticut Family, a pro-traditional marriage group, was blocked, but LGBT Nation was not blocked.
Andrew found that even Pope Francis was blocked from the school’s web service. But although he could not access the Vatican website, the school allowed him to access an Islamic website.
So Mr. Lambert took it up with the authorities. Who promised the lad to set things right while passing the buck, from superintendent to principal to the school board. Eventually, it went back down Nonnewaug High School Superintendent Jody Goeler. Whose letter on the subject identified the left-leaning search engine censors as Regional School District 14’s Technology Committee.
Strangely, that committee isn’t on the Board of Education’s list of committees. But a quick scan of the District’s website reveals this handy chart of which sites are blocked and which sites aren’t. The list includes “weapons” and “political advocacy groups.” So that’s the NRA and SAF out. Oh wait. “political advocacy groups” are not blocked as well. And it doesn’t explain why some groups are blocked and some aren’t.
Two questions: who exactly messed with the filter and was he or she operating at the District level or the State level? TTAG will chase this story next week – if only to find out if TTAG is blocked. [h/t surlycmd]
Yikes.
It’s all fun and games brainwashing kids until it hits the press, eh?
I just opened both websites and many others pertaining to this issue.
Is someone lying on here? Say it Ain’t So!
I hope that if the school(s) truly did put this kind of censorship in place that someone(s) gets and tar and feathered over it.
did you open them on the school computers where this report originated? is someone as dumb as a stump here? say it aint so
The websites aren’t blocked for us. They are blocked for students in schools.
someone doesn’t understand the interwebs computery stuff
Thomas Booth, you are joking right?
You can’t be that stupid.
It’s all fun & games brainwashing kids until someone gets their brain put out . . . like Mr. Lampart.
Folks, anything that smells of BS this strong IS BS.
Posted yesterday so that the school system hasn’t had time to refute it yet. Were you all born yesterday?
If you read the article and follow the links therein, you will see that the school supt. admitted that it happened. Were you born this morning?
+1
Go-go reading comprehension!
HAHA Liberals will defend any action no matter how stupid they sound. Except I think they truly believe the BS they spout. Of course you can’t be very intelligent to go about life believing in any of the liberal garbage these days. 10 minutes of research debunks almost any one of their issues.
Maybe it was an Islamic school. But Pope Francis is banned? Ha! Is Jesus banned too?
Yes, there were several Christian sites that were banned. Also traditional marriage and pro life sites were banned.
Wendy’s Restaurant Internet blocks gun related content; so I really am not surprised.
Does Wendy’s also ban Chick-fil-A or traditional family sites?
What about pics of the girl from the Wendy’s commercials? That’s noyce!
for sure, always had a thing for nerdy & mousy redheads
My local malls block gun sites too. I found this out while trying to check TTAG. Switched from their free WIFI back to data and surfed away. I was still kind of angry though.
Wendy’s is a private institution not supported by Taxes so they can block what they feel like blocking. A public school on the other hand does not fall into that category.
Over militarized police and feminized schools. If your local school has chicks running the joint the kids are NOT getting the education (quality and contenct) of the past. Dang hard to find a male with a pair in “education” business.
For those of the older fart category of recent history, school management was typically in the hands of the WWII vet. Perhaps the ed business needs a injection of Iraq/Afgan vets. They give the libtard progressive teachers coven the vapors though.
“Perhaps the ed business needs a injection of Iraq/Afgan vets.”
Yeah, because kicking in doors in Fallujah totally makes you qualified for running a school.
Well, we’ve seen how well the other side has done with the job.
“Yeah, because kicking in doors in Fallujah totally makes you qualified for running a school.”
Yeah, because soldiers had no life before or after the military. It’s not like there are any sort of programs or funding available for veterans to get college educations…
…so your point is that lots of vets know about other stuff than kicking down doors. Okay, so do non-vets. I think his point was that being a vet does not make someone qualified at running a school.
Kids would be more likely to mind, or even pay attention if they had some tough, battle scarred vets breathing down their necks everytime they even hinted at looking at their phones, or dozing off etc.
My father had Vietnam vets as teachers, did anyone else have them back then? If so, how did they do?
class of 82, had 3 teachers from the “da nam” , wood shop, drama and math.
Entered 12 grade with a 5th grade math level that teacher [female army nurse] was not taking my grade laying down, lol she said if your smart enough to breath your smart enough to get math, she was relentless. I graduated with a 11th grade math level and went on to be a rough carpenter and journeyman union carpenter, not to mention putting in 21 years army, split my time being an MP and Food Service Specialist.
BTW the Drama teacher was cooler than sh!t he let us “stage hands” smoke in the theaters’ bathroom AND would join us for a smoke between classes BUT we were not allowed to fraternize with his drama girls. dam! And doing all this with a buck 110 knife cased on our belts [we were farm boys after all] and shotguns in the truck windows.
Kids would be more likely to mind if they could be disciplined.
Kids would be more likely to mind, or even pay attention if they had some tough, battle scarred vets breathing down their necks everytime they even hinted at looking at their phones, or dozing off etc.
Kids would be more likely to mind, or even pay attention if they had classes that challenged them too. This Common Core and “No Child Left Behind” nonsense is actually dumbing down our kids. It used to be kids dropped out of school because of family reasons, now it’s because school offers no educational challenges (They just offer zero tolerance gestapo-ism.)
Simple question: How would you handle an active shooter?
Liberal progressive teacher: Shelter in place. Hide under your desks, and listen to the principle or your teacher for further instructions. Maybe throw a stapler or a textbook.
Soldier: Return fire.
I’ll take the soldier.
Stereotype much?
Nope. Facts.
“Yeah, because kicking in doors in Fallujah totally makes you qualified for running a school.”
Well, more qualified than suing the doorknob for protruding.
And being a libtard with censorial tendencies makes you an educator?
Graduated HS in ’01, and some of my favorite HS teachers were grumpy old dudes who didn’t give a crap about the new requirements that were creeping into the districts at an advancing rate at the time.
The best one was the tech teacher, who drank a gallon of coffee per class, and routinely complained about his ex-wife and her latest antics to the basically all-male class… He told us all to never get married before you turn 25, lol. It was a very open & direct class.
Several girls that I grew up with are now elementary teachers, and I wouldn’t trust any of them to figure their way out of a closed cardboard box.
I had a grumpy old professor, combat vet. How grumpy? One morning he storms into the classroom, throws his briefcase down on the desk and announces, “My wife’s on the rag! You know what that means, people. Pop quiz! Everyone take out a sheet of paper, number it one to ten.”
All male class, BTW.
Why is this news? In how many schools in the south would it be the complete opposite, with liberal-minded websites blocked but not Fox News?
Probably not very many, at least not public schools. The public education system in this country seems to have a fairly significant left-leaning bias, even in red states.
Ah, just wondering.
Yeah, education does that to people.
you wish.
That is true if, andonly if, by “education” in public schools you really mean political indoctrination. Otherwise, stow those kinds of comments where the Sun doesn’t shine, ’cause that’s the only place they belong.
OK Reg- how about an example -show us of what you speak..
I didn’t say I had an example, I was wondering. Calm down.
So, none?
@Average American
I believe that’s what my answer conveyed. Nothing to see here: if you’re looking for an argument you’ll have to keep looking.
You libtards area all the same. Get caught pulling one of your illegal commie “progressive” saul Alinski tricks and the only thing you can say is well the constitutionalists would have done it too! What a bunch of morons that will soon be targets in a restoration process.
Wow, you are just a ball of stereotypical rightist propaganda.
I’m actually a Republican, but I’m not so naive that I don’t think it’s possible that both sides can play that game.
Good luck with your issues.
Both sides can, but I’ll eat my hat if you find a public school district anywhere blocking the Dem Party and giving access to the GOP. The location of the El Dorado public school in the rural West Texas, in a heavily Hispanic Catholic area at that, didn’t prevent the school from presenting a play that called the Virgin Mary just another unwed mother. The teachers, administrators, and everyone else running the day-to-day activities of the schools are all coming out of the same university “education” programs, no matter where they wind up working.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say “none”. Find one if you can. BTW, I suppose you’re going to try to tell me that it’s mere coincidence that the same one blocking the NRA site and giving access to MDA’s site are blocking the GOP and giving access to the Dem site. Funny things, these coincidences.
Based upon my experiences in schools in the south, my expectation is that the censorship, if any, would be either more neutral or similar to what was discovered in Connecticut (where I’ve also lived). No doubt there would be exceptions (perhaps even in Connecticut as well), but . . . overall, I would expect more diversity of opinion in the South than in the North (where I also went to school) and Northeast. In the schools I attended (both taxpayer-funded and parochial), I discovered and experienced more overt bigotry in the North (“Midwest”, actually) than in the South.
None, most likely. Unlike you progs, we like the first amendment.
I don’t know about Fox News, but some of the schools that have bans on “weapons” websites also ban sites about atheism, Wicca, Vodoun, or other minority religious viewpoints:
This list is from the Indianapolis public school district:
. The San Antonio school district also had a similar policy.
That same Indianapolis school district’s filter, as you can see from the link, blocked pages as “LGBT” or “Alternative sexuality/lifestyles”.
So clearly it isn’t necessarily such as right/left dichotomy as some seem to think.
Thanks for providing some examples. However, I don’t think Wicca and Satanism rank very high on the scales of “left/right” issues. Have to admit, I’m pretty surprised–make that gob-smacked–that any gov’t institution would block anything favoring LGBT “viewpoints” in the present climate. I can see how blocking “alternative sexual lifestyles” could easily come about as that could include all kinds of stuff that, again, would go beyond (or below) “left/right” issues (think sadism, for example, at least in its heterosexual manifestations–not a big fave of politically-correct lefties nor of traditional moralists)
Being an upcoming teacher, I often wonder whether my de-pussified attitude on curriculum will negatively affect me, and whether I’ll be able to work around many, many people that are out to attack my preffered and constitutionally valid ways of life.
I don’t think it’ll be as bad as I expect in WV, but I’m still holding my breath…
“I don’t think it’ll be as bad as I expect in WV, but I’m still holding my breath…”
I don’t know, if Manchin has his way.
Yes, unfortunately, having a de-pussified attitude will affect you.
WV Cycling, if you have a penis, you’re pretty much screwed. And I don’t mean that in a good way.
What makes you think you’re de-pussified?
He made you ask that question?
Heh!
You’re going to have “active shooter” training for teachers. It’s basically a bunch of “shelter in place” bullshit. I don’t know how I would be able to keep my mouth shut when the plan to stop a shooter with an AR / shotgun / handgun / all of the above is to hide under a desk and be quiet. My wife had a hard time with the “training.”
you probably won’t be promoted to a district-level position, but you probably also won’t ever get fired. so, not really a loss, nor a benefit – though retaining your balls intact is definitely in the benefit category.
if you do get promoted to upper district position, become Ron Swanson.
“He soon discovered that he had unfettered access to liberal websites, but conservative websites were blocked.”
[sarc] Left-leaning indoctrination & bias on public schools? You don’t say! [/sarc]
Here’s my surprised look. 😐
When you see CT as the location it all makes sense.
I am genuinely not sure which is worse, the story about the cop shooting the handcuffed guy or this.
This is wayyyyy worse. It is one thing for a cop to act out of line and it is a different thing for the future generations of America to be brainwashed.
And there’s a good chance that in the heat of the moment, the cop just grabbed the wrong weapon; he may have thought he was tasering the guy.
No way in hell was this an honest mistake (or even a dishonest one). Somebody had to map out a framework and decide which search terms and URLs to block. It was 100% pre-planned, government- sponsored censorship.
You see no need to worry about the federal government overtly censoring the Internet they have government agents (yes every public school teacher in America is legally a government agent) covertly doing it for them. This young man is exactly the type of critical thinker that the public school system is not intended to produce. Having been duly brainwashed the majority of the students have no inclination to look for information on the blocked sites.
That is what we need. More indoctrination, rather than in teaching. Wonder if they also ban how our founder’s knew arms were needed to contend against despotic leadership and governments and foresaw the need in this day, even more than it was when they debated the Second Amendment.
This is just one of the many reasons this counrty is going in the crapper so badly!! You should let people do their own research on anything and let them decide where they stand, but you have to let them see the facts first of both sides! So frustrating it boils my blood!!
Try Washington State. Finding a male teacher is rare here. Finding one that’s halfway masculine that even shaves is more rare. There are a few male teachers near retirement that are good, but any teacher who has been teaching 10 years or less and are male are terribly wussifed. I remember when my son came home from Kindergarten and the teacher had told them sitting down to pee is required of all student. I told my kids to stand and pee till the day they no longer breathe or walk.
It’s not a gender thing. They’re pretty much all leftist, male or female. All you have to do is see the political donation scoreboard which are about 90/10 in favor of Dems.
They’re just following the NEA’s lead.
Hate to break it to you, but the gender imbalance in teaching in nationwide, and we’re reaping the results, especially in terms with the mis-education of boys and lack of positive male role models for kids.
It’s even worst in elementary school… as it stands right now, at the school where I teach, we have 400+ students, 6 grade levels (K-5) and about 3 teachers per a grade level. I’m the only male classroom teacher. The other male teacher, a Navy vet, is the music teacher. We do our best to crack jokes and support each other.
As for the sitting while peeing thing, that’s not gender bias… it’s more to do with cleanliness and the shocking fact that more and more parents are sending KINDERGARTENERS who are not properly potty trained to school! Shocking, but true.
Well hell. The community college I once attended did that years ago. Didn’t think to say anything as I ended up quitting anyway.
I look forward to your follow up post next week.
Now I am going to try to find contact information for the school board members of that district.
Quick, somebody call Eric Holder. He’ll set it right!
In keeping with the NEA plan to destroy what was and teach what never was. FORWARD!
I bet that damn school blocked the p0rn sites too, just to dissuade kids from going to the library.
B@stards!
Another ringing endorsement for home schooling. Or having a smart phone/laptop/I pad. What else is new?
Chart of blocked allowed categories linked to in story shows column for students and one for teachers. Some categories are blocked for both (porn, chat, gambling), some are allowed for both (education, health, news…), but some are blocked for students but not for teachers (sex ed, online banking, political advocacy…). There does seem to be one category allowed for students but not for teachers…Job Search.
The state spent good money to indoctrinate the teachers….. they want to keep them on the plantation.
The Public School System: where the teachers brainwash your kids by day, sponge bathe them by night.
Homeschool, people. If you at all can swing it, homeschool your kids.
Some parents/taxpayers need to sue the school district, and the school board, superintendent, princpipal, and members of this “committee”, all in their individual capacities. Let’s see how the district cuts ’em loose
This is my surprised face.
I’m an IT guy for a small private school. The filter we use has sites pre-categorized by the company we buy it from. If a teacher or student wants access to a blocked site, we generally unblock it.
Maybe it’s a conspiracy, maybe not. I do know there’s too many bazillions websites in the world for me to be able to predict if a site is going to be blocked or allowed. Sites are usually categorized by some kind of web crawler program although people set up the rules.
Sounds like there’s a bias here, though.
Sounds like there’s some bias? The GOP official site is blocked, the Dem party site is not. There might be some wiggle room about some of the other stuff, but out of the two main political parties, one is blocked and one is not. How much more evidence of bias do you need?
This. Not to mention, sometimes the software products sold to school districts really suck sometimes.
Corporate America – selling schools crap, at double the price!
Not trying to be contrarian but I believe you have this exactly backwards. It’s not that corporations set out to sell schools lousy product at inflated prices, its rather that schools, like all bureaucracies, select what to purchase by committee, with money that isn’t actually ‘theirs’ and with no one much interested in ensuring they get a good price or product. The inevitable result is a poor product that is over priced, but it’s not the sellers fault.
My good friends, it looks like 4th of July in now cancelled as there is nothing TRUE to sing:
“Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”
Once these were the bonding intent of a strong nation and the inspiration of free people the world over.
Now, Enslaved by laws, Executive Orders, Controlled Thought and the private desires of the mega rich.
I weep now with heart-felt saddness for the lost freedom of good people.
Freedom wasn’t lost. It was freely given away or sold. It was bartered for government largess. It was bought with our own money. But, fortunately, what was once sold cheaply or given away can be taken back.
Amen, Ralph.
Samuel Beckett described how those troublesome rights were disposed of, and what has resulted.
From the play “Waiting for Godot”:
ESTRAGON:
We’ve lost our rights?
VLADIMIR:
(distinctly). We got rid of them.
Silence. They remain motionless, arms dangling, heads sunk, sagging at the knees.
I couldn’t look up gun stuff on NIPR in Baghdad. I wanted a new holster for my M9 and had to wait until I got back to my room to search for one.
This is why the Second Amendment comes after the First. Those pesky Founders knew that the power to remain free rests on willpower and knowledge. Arms are nothing without the strength and conviction of the mind to use them.
Do you think this just started?
My choice of an essay in my Government class was supposed to expound on the one of the Amendments to the Constitution.
My teacher was a paraplegic. He was excellent in his presentation and no student misbehaved because of respect,
I chose an essay involving the 2ND Amendment.
My surprise was that there were ZERO references save two pages in an encyclopedia in the whole school library.
I was 17 years old. On August 7 of this year, 2014, I will be 60.
This is an OLD fight!
+1
I think perhaps the reason for having only 2 pages of pro gun literature in the school library was due to the fact that up until the last 20 to 30 years it was understood that every law abiding citizen had a right to own and use a firearm and there was little if any need to articulate exactly why that was so. However, because so little was actually in print or being broadcast by the media it allowed the liberal left to begin eroding the second amendment with there anti gun – anti constitution agenda. Much like a small ignored cancer tumor in the human body, that liberal attitude is now running rampant throughout the country.
Btw…..I’m 63 and have only in the last 30 years become interested in guns and gun ownership. I do recall a single political cartoon in a news paper I came across in the elementary school library as a kid. It showed a man putting a license plate on a T model Ford and saying “Mark my words: licensing cars will lead to government confiscation of cars”. That was when I was in grade school. I didn’t understand the significance or the reference at the time but suddenly as a young adult it dawned on me what they were talking about. So yes, while it is an old battle, it hasn’t been at the forefront of issues like it has become as of the last several years now.
When you feel it’s time to bury your guns and ammo that means it’s time to dig them up because you’re going to need them.
Hey RF, re your qestions: what makes you think anyone “messed with” the filters” ? My guess is that they are working exactly as intended by the vendor and the vendee both. Oh, BTW, I understand that the school supt. is going to investigate, and if the bias is “pervasive” enough, may actually think of doing something about it. Maybe.
I am surprised that the kid has not been suspended. Certainly kids have been hosed over far less.
At least liberals are consistent, they hate all the amendments in the Bill of Rights, not just the second.
They especially seem to hate the 1st, 2nd, and 4th amendments.
They hate the 10th amendment unless it serves their assault on the others (particularly the 2nd).
Heard on the radio one day, Montgomery County Maryland high schools broadcast anti gun propaganda over the schools loudspeaker system. Don’t refer to them as public schools anymore either. They are Government Schools. Turning out little drones by the millions. They are not “educated” in any sense at all. The last thing they want are children that can think for themselves. Frankly, I think sending your children to Government schools should be considered a form of child abuse.
I go to a high school where my questions are answered with “thats racist, or could be construde as racist.” Political correctness ruines schools
Your tax dollars at work Amerika!! Gotta love it
Blocked for “their own good”, presumably…wow, even worse than the DPRK…
I fear for my children knowing that they will be subjected to this crap.
I will,however, instill the one virtue the gov HATES…
Question everything.
Texas.
My wife is a preschool teacher who runs a site located at an elementary school in a Washington state K-12 district, which I won’t name. I recently visited her room to help her clean it out for the end of year, and I signed in to the scool’s open wifi, which I used to use to browse gun-related news and forums while I was visiting her classroom.
As of this year, just about all of them are blocked, including TTAG. They’re only blocked by domain, so I could still get to them by using a public DNS server, but still…
Some more obscure gun forums, (e.g. Saiga-12 forum, sksboards) I could still visit, but stiff like ar15.com, TTAG, ENDO, NRA, etc. were blocked. No reason given, just a generic plain HTML “Domain Blocked” web page.
I didn’t think to check around for conservative political sites as well, but I will the next time I’m on the school ground – maybe not till next fall though.
My freshman son wrote a paper on gun control this past semester. He had access to the NRA website (as well as anti websites) from his public school’s internet system. Needless to say, he came to the conclusion that gun control was useless as a means to stop crime and exposed the usual gun control justifications as false. It was a well researched, and he made a good grade. He goes to school in an urban Texas school district.
Not all “government schools” have been turned into re-education camps, and I refuse to abdicate my responsibility to raise him. I’m still in a good position to undo damage caused by “government schools” when it occurs.
make library services responsible for all net access in the district
apply the same approved material openly approved by the school board.
if the librarian tinkers, they are fired immediately , or reassigned to the poly sci dept.
There is so much win with this story and the student’s “outing” them.
Hilarious that the school admins thought this would not be discovered.
Ah, the maggots we have in education. They are to educate and not submit students to their liberal lack of ideals and freedom. These are the very people tha supported Hitler and Mussolini to power. Like locusts they move on the there is not change with liberals only new generations.
Unfortunately, this story didn’t really hit the local press in CT except for I think the CBS affiliate website. There is a blog post at ctpost.com & nothing on Courant.com that turned up in a search.
Five years ago when I was in boarding school I had to do a project on the French revolution but couldn’t get the information I needed because any search regarding the guillotine was blocked as “weapon”. Thankfully I had my jailbroken iphone that I used to order ammo online, browse the gun boards, etc.
LOL, I remember the days when schools didn’t filter ANY results. Many years ago in High School, I wanted to go to the White House website, but I mistakenly put in .com, not .gov. Well obviously that didn’t take me to the official government site…
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