One of the identifying characteristics of today's generation of young people, often referred to as Generation Y, comes from their use of technology, for want of a better term (since technology simply refers to "the study of technique"), Digital Media. Generation Y trusts information received from the internet; subscriptions to email newsletters and newsgroups, RSS feeds, downloadable recorded broadcasts of other media such as international public radio and television in English and other languages, and from Blogs, the most important, timely, literate, ubiquitous, and creative source of information found online.
Indeed, this glut of digital information, especially Blogs, represent the highest level of Bloom's Taxonomy, where people use their creativity to evaluate, synthesize, and creatively communicate new ways to make sense of our complex world.
Without free access to literate ideas, students cannot learn the skills necessary for reasonable discourse with their fellow citizens, which is the bedrock of Democracy. Without free access, they cannot find information, evaluate it, download it, nor practice methods to reformat it and use that information creatively to express their own insights and point of view.
Without the resources in their own homes, students will graduate as sycophants who let others control them, accustomed to information given on a "Need to Know" basis.
In other words, they graduate ripe for military service, or other organizations with militaristic hierarchies and chains of command, with inaccessible upper management. Indeed, from my informal survey, it seems the majority of students from low socio-economic areas with military bases want to go into "criminal justice" and obtain secure employment in organizations like the Military, the Border Patrol and Immigration, the police force, State Sheriff, and Prison systems, etc.
As too many people from lower socio-economic areas, they become pawns of the elite classes, who do not send their children into military service nor these occupations (except as upper level bureaucrats). Not one of our American democracy's elected representatives sent their young people.
Students of High Schools, especially the class of Seniors who will graduate with the legal right to vote when they turn eighteen, will not benefit from an educational environment open to information when the school filters out BLOGS. Very few, possibly none, will graduate as a truly literate member of society, with useful experience navigating the labyrinth of today's "Marketplace of Ideas."