I Analysis: Analyze the article: “Censorship or Common Sense” using the Critical Questions in Browne and Keeley: Here you must “ask and answer” all the critical questions in your analysis of the arti

Censorship or Common Sense?
By
Roxana Robinson
(1) A 5-year-old is not ready to confront the world. (2) This should be obvious but it doesn t seem that way to many free speech advocates, who are angry that some libraries around the country have installed software on their computers to block out Internet material that s unsuitable for children.
(3) The objections are coming from some usual sources: the American Civil Liberties Union, for example, and web publishers. (4) But even the American Library Association has opposed the use of filtering software. (5) Traditionally, the library has been a safe place for children. (6) And librarians have long been the guardians of public virtue. (7) While they have been firm supporters of the First Amendment, they haven t generally interpreted it to mean that they acquire large holdings of published pornography and make such material available to children.
(8) Librarians have always acquired books according to their own discrimination and their sense of what is appropriate to their neighborhoods. (9) They generally refuse to buy, among other things, pornography. (10)This isn t censorship; it s common sense.
(11) If a library were to have a section of pornographic books, would we want these to be printed in large, colorfully illustrated, lightweight volumes, shelved near the floor where they were easily available to children? (12) Probably not. (13) But we have gone to a great deal of trouble to insure that computers are user friendly, with brightly colored graphics and easily accessible information.
(14) Material on the Internet is not only uncensored but also unedited. (15) Adults can be expected to make their own evaluation of what they find. (16) Children, who lack experience and knowledge cannot.
(17) The debate over the filtering of the Internet is a bit like the debate over grants given out by the National Endowment for the Arts. (18) It s all tangled up in false cries of censorship. (19) Censorship is a legal term; it refers to government action prohibiting material from being circulated. (20) This is very different from a situation in which a museum or an arts panel decides not to use public money to finance an exhibition or an artist.
(21) Commendably, our society defends freedom of speech with great vigor. (22) But there is a difference between allowing everything to be said and allowing everyone to hear it. (23) We should know this by now, having seen the effects that exposure to television and movie violence has on children.
(24) The A.C.L.U. and the American Library Association say that the use of filtering software in computers is censorship because it blocks access to constitutionally protected speech. (25) But these cries are baffling and unfounded. (26) The only control libraries are asserting is over a small portion of the audience, not over the material itself. (27) Moreover, this control has a powerful historical precedent: parental guidance is even older than the Constitution.
(28) The protection of children should be instinctive. (29) A man may have the right to stand on the street and spew obscenities at passers-by, but he would be ordered to leave a kindergarten classroom.
(30) It is absurd to pretend that adults and children are the same audience, and it is shameful to protect the child pornographer instead of the child.