When 18-year-old high school student Andrew Lampart went to research conservative views on his school computer for a class debate, he was surprised – and disturbed – to discover that they were blocked.
The blocked sites at Nonnewaug High School in Woodbury, Connecticut, included the websites of the Vatican, the Republic Party, the National Right to Life advocacy group, and the National Rifle Association.
Meanwhile, Lampart had no problem going on to the Democrat Party, Planned Parenthood and LGBT nation websites.
"I knew it was important to get facts for both sides of the case," he told Fox News.
The situation could have been straight out of the recent Christian movie, God is Not Dead, in which an atheist lecturer threatens to fail his Christian student unless he can win a debate – decided by his classmates – about whether God exists or not.
"This is really border line indoctrination," continued Lampart.
"Schools are supposed to be fair and balanced towards all ways of thinking. It's supposed to encourage students to formulate their own opinions. Students aren't able to do that here at the school because they are only being fed one side of the issue."
He complained to his principal and then the superintendent Jody Goeler, who has since said in a statement that the cause was the computer filtering system and that it's being looked into.
"The district is trying to determine the reason for the inconsistency and if the bias is pervasive enough to justify switching to another content filtering provider," said Goeler.
In other words, action may or may not be taken to rectify the imbalance.
Writing in Town Hall , martial artist and actor Norris said the debacle should come as no surprise to anyone.
He suggests the one-sided block is knowingly in place and part of a deliberate attempt to influence the viewpoints of students.
"The problem is not the software but those programming it," he writes.
"As long as you have liberal-minded architects across the spectrum who only want to steer kids in their own particular secular and progressive direction, changing Internet filters all day long isn't going to change the educational outcome; students will be prohibited from conservative education.
"Website accessibility is no different from choosing textbooks or instructors in classes; if liberals are in control, liberalism is the education."
Further down, he writes that an open education should seek as much as possible to present "every side of the coin", regardless of what anyone thinks about the other perspective.
It's for that reason he believes intelligent design and religion should be an "integral part" of every school curriculum.
But Norris doesn't seem to be too optimistic that American education is going to get any more open.
In fact, quite the reverse.
"A high school's prohibiting conservative views isn't shocking to any of us who for decades have watched the dilapidating state of public education," he says pessimistically.
"It's just one more sign that public schools are little more than secular progressive indoctrination camps."
