Weekly editorial recap

WEDNESDAY

FILTERING THE 'NET

Trying as a classroom exercise to design a website for a dog adoption agency, high school students at the Southwest Career and Technical Academy found they could not download pictures of puppies because the school's Internet filter blocked access to sites such as Google Images. ...

The Clark County School District spent $104 million to build the Southwest Career and Technical Academy. ... Then, school bureaucrats, aiming to restrict in advance the ability of students to access naughty websites, proceeded to install such heavy duty filters that kids have to go elsewhere to freely use the Internet in their work. ...

Yes, there's a lot of weird, obscene and ... nasty stuff available on the Internet. ... But excessive neutering of the 'Net can also have the unintended consequence of driving away gifted students.

During a recent convention of the Association of Career and Technical Education here in Las Vegas, ... John Lock, chief executive officer of Project Lead the Way, a provider of science and math curricula, offered a disturbing observation: "The dropout problem is not necessarily a dropout problem. They are not dropping out of learning. They are dropping out of school, but they still want to learn. ..." School "feels like a prison because they're locked down."

As young people grow, their own judgment can mature only to the extent they're allowed to exercise it. ...

Southwest Career and Technical Academy Principal Felicia Nemcek believes students still need to be monitored and "know there are consequences," but agrees more Internet access is necessary.

When?