[Lalaith]

Thanks again everyone for your opinions, and particularly Sophia for answering my questions. I respect your point of view and it's commendable that you don't have any resentments about your schooldays.
I think people's comments have shown that there does seem to be a big gulf between US and European schools. In the UK, for example, there are plenty of schools which place restrictions on students' appearance - strict rules about uniform, socks, make up and so on - but it is very rare to find intellectual/academic restrictions. For example, there was one school in the UK that taught Creationism rather than the theory of evolution - this was considered such a scandal that it was reported in all the newspapers. From what I gather, many US schools can teach/impose whatever world view they like on their students.
I think censorship is a worrying thing. And I do really wonder about this fear of fantasy and imagination, which is presumably what Tolkien is being banned for.
What, exactly, is morally or religiously wrong with fantasy? Is it that imagining things that aren't real is bad? This seems to contradict the anti-Harry Potter viewpoint, those who burn Rowling's books do so presumably because they think that magic *does* exist and that it is bad and dangerous. The banning of unicorn T shirts...do they think that unicorns exist too?

[ May 04, 2003: Message edited by: Lalaith ]