Filtering Elective

Dianette Coombs

SLM 521

Pro Statements:

1. My role as a teacher is to guide students to seek the information that will support the mastery of the key concepts in a lesson. It is my duty to do “my homework” and narrow the field for the young students I work with.

2. While parents should be the responsible party to guide and instruct their children to distinguish right from wrong, that is not always the way it happens. That is when the teacher must put the student’s interest first and instruct on the proper use of the Internet resources.

3. It is my duty as the teacher to instruct students to do research and alert them that we are surfing into waters where anything can appear unexpectedly. Student need to know how to react when inappropriate sites pop up.

4. While ALA promotes intellectual freedom, I agree that there is a time and place for everything. Students should be shielded from potential sites that are detrimental to their mental health.

5. While we are not the parent in the school setting or library, it is quite right to suggest a positive course of action or research.

Con Statements:

1. Intellectual freedom is the right read what we want. However, schools and public libraries are not the places to seek information that is offensive and obscene.

2. Since filters can’t discriminate what is right or wrong useful information could be blocked. This narrows the field of material that could be useful.

3. Students are coming to school being at times more computer literate than the actual teacher. Some students are quite capable of getting around the filters and avoiding them. Are we putting them to make it more difficult for that to happen?

4. Filters that are set at their highest levels can potentially block explicit material that is not meant to be offensive, but educational.

5. The natural curiosity of students can be slashed by filters that will block information that will satisfy the thirst for information.