No 
Schools have a curricula so that students can meet the basic level of skills.  However, most schools also have something about life-long learning in their mission statements.  To me, life-long learning means that students are taking on the iniatitive to learn above and beyond the minimum curriculum on their own.   For example, a student might research a topic that was interesting to them and produce a web page.  However, the critics point out that this has nothing to do with the curriculum and is out of context, therefore the schools should not allow this. 

I think that the purpose/context doesn't matter as long as the content is not illegal.  Schools seem to want students to be critical thinkers and problem solvers, but for some reason they aren't allowed to do this on the web server. In order to measure if students are taking the iniative to become a life long learner, then we must be willing to let students to go above and beyond the specified curriculum. 
 

What implications does this present for allowing students to publish web pages? 

This area holds major implications for schools.  If the ultimate goal is for students to iniate their own learning, then it is imperative that we allow students to work beyond a specified curriculum.  
 

Additional Resources 

Information = Freedom = Choice , Gary Wium 
Discusses how information, freedom, and choice are all related.  Censorship of Internet will results in less information which gives people less freedom to make the choices that they need to make. 

SHE SAYS:

Yes 
The Internet should only be used for classroom projects that are specifically related to the curriculum and are directly supervised by the teacher.  Most parents don't allow their children to run free on the Internet at home, so they wouldn't expect us to let them run free on the Internet at school either.  

Educators need to have the control over student content.  They need to make sure that students are learning and should be able to stop acts that interfer with the mission of the school. 

A school's job is to teach kids and to teach them to behave politely.  Just as a student who is disruptive in the classroom and that impacts the opportunities for others can be disciplined, the same should be true for the Internet.  If the context of a students webpage is in any way disruptive, educators should have the right to control the matter. 
 

What implications does this present for allowing students to publish web pages? 

Students should only produce web pages in the context of a classroom assignment that his specifically related to the curriculum.  With these rules, student's speech outside this context can and should be censored. 
 

Additional Resources 

Government as K-12 Educator 
Discusses why K-12 educators have the legal right to control student speech whether is on-line or not. 
 

A Legal and Educational Analysis of K-12 Internet Acceptable Use Policies 
Willard, Nancy 
The section entitled "Limited Educational Purpose" covers various considerations for school districts to protect abuse of the Internet.