You are encouraged to read the previous entry--Disobey by Example--if you have not done so already.

Friends, please be aware that TechLearning.com/blog, as well as other sites, are blocked in some Texas districts. This web site, like others, has been...censored for relevance. Note that RSS feeds with the word MySpace are blocked at the firewall. Please understand that it is not the blocking of the uniform resource locator (URL) that is objectionable, but that the word itself has been censored, and pages containing that word are banned (right click on the picture below and View Image to see it larger to see what banning looks like in one of the districts).

I encourage you to ask EVERY one you know to put the word "MySpace.com" on EVERY web site of importance, from educational sites to mapping sites to critical resources teachers and administrators use. I hope that by doing so, the outcry against banning words--not just URLs--will be so great as to cause education leaders to reconsider their decision to censor words, not URLs. It is important that you take up the call and spread it as widely as possible. I am asking for your help. With this post, my blog will be banned from some Texas school districts. When I'm done editing my own web pages, none of the resources I have spent years collecting will be available to the thousands of educators who have used them in the past.

I urge you to advocate this in every blog posting and web page you create. Add the word "MySpace" and/or "MySpace.com" to it. Get yourselves "censored" for it is better to be censored than to support authoritarian approaches to education in schools today.

You are powerful beyond measure. Subversion is no longer sufficient, if it ever was...we must tell the truth. We are Americans, and we must stand up against this, not angrily but in such a way that those who seek to censor come to understand the error of their ways.

Some guidelines to follow:

1. A civil resister will harbour no anger.
2. He will suffer the anger of the opponent.
3. In so doing he will put up with assaults from the opponent, never retaliate; but he will not submit, out of fear of punishment or the like, to any order given in anger.
4. When any person in authority seeks to censor a civil resister, he will voluntarily submit, and he will not resist the banning/blocking of his own web site, if any, when it is sought to be blocked by authorities.
5. If a civil resister has a blog, he will refuse to surrender it, even though in defending it he might lose his livelihood, job, position. He will, however, never retaliate.
6. Retaliation includes ranting in email, blogs and podcasts.
7. A civil resister will never insult his opponent.
8. In the course of the struggle if anyone insults an official or commits an assault upon him, a civil resister will protect such official or officials from the insult or attack.

Modified from the original source here and here.

Will you take up the call? Will you join me in sounding the alarm?

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Categories: MGuhlin.net, Transformation