Blogs

So I took some time today and wandered around the blogger world. I discovered the button that sends you to the "next blog." I guess this randomly pulls up any ol' bloggers page. First it sent me to some pretentious girl in LA who likes to write a sentence a day and post as many pictures as she can find of a particular celebrity. Yesterday was Rachel Bilson. Today was the elusive, perfect navy dress.
From there, I was sent wizzing through cyberspace only to land on a page the appeared to about a church. I'm not sure if it was a church because the whole blog was in a language of Scandanavian origin.
From there, a photo gallery by someone whose comments were all in Spanish.
From there, an odd site entirely devoted mermaid worship, complete with uncomfortably provocative pictures.
Finally, I decided I had gone too far when I was sent to a dark and disturbing site with indiscernible chicken-scratch fonts.
This journey rose some questions in my mind. Why is all of this freedom necessary? Why can't these people just decorate their apartments with their bizarre interests and leave it alone? Why is it such a wonderful new world that people with outrageous interests have a way to publish them for all to be exposed to? Furthermore, how many issues does this raise that we could potentially be encouraging our students to wander this world?
I'm all for free speech and I firmly believe we have the right to our beliefs. However, I also believe impressionable children have a right to be protected and limited to the beliefs of their families and communities until they are mature enough to make reasonable choices for themselves.