What I Learned While Reporting on School Censorship

Great to read this. Censorship in schools needs more light shining on it. And school censorship happens in higher education too [0]!

Surely universities block less than schools? After all the students are _adults_. No, they block as much if not more, and the effects are devastating because university students are researching adult topics in things like criminology, warfare, medicine, security.

Big part of the problem is outsourced IT. In education we've lost all the smart IT admins, and everything is now done by Google and Microsoft. These "lazy" block lists are just automatically included. We now have serious issues around self-determination and autonomy in education if BigTech is deciding what students may or may not learn.

At one provincial university where I taught cybersecurity, every single necessary resource was blocked by ICT on the keyword "hacking". Meanwhile the published prospectus advertised a course in "Ethical Hacking" with pictures of smiling students gathered around a screen showing software we would not actually have be allowed to use.

[0] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/your-teaching-an...