Susan Nash Travetto

Legal Elective – Filtering

April 11, 2006

Internet Filtering

Pros

Filters can be set to limit student access to sites that provide meaningful and relevant information and content to enable them to succeed in a standards-based education system. This information directly supports the curriculum.

Filters enable schools to be ethically responsible for keeping students from accidentally accessing inappropriate or even dangerous websites.

When chosen, configured, and monitored carefully, filters become a selection, rather than censorship tool.

Filters enable school systems to respond to the majority of Americans who believe schools should use software filters to block pornography and hate speech. It makes good political sense for schools systems to respond to their communities.

Filters can effectively block pornography without significantly impeding access to online health information--but only if they aren't set at their most restrictive levels.

Cons

The “black-list filter” has its drawbacks in that there are so many new sites being put up daily, it is impossible to catch and screen out every offensive site.

The “white-list filter” is limited in scope and may not support a specific aspect of the curriculum.

The best way to protect a child or student is to actively supervise them when they are online. No system, strategy, or program can be completely "kid-proofed". Inventive and determined children with the necessary resources, time, knowledge and maturity, can bypass virtually any safeguards.

A “school of thought” believes that while preventing access to pornographic or unsafe materials is the reason given by those who advocate restricted access to the Internet in schools, the real motivation is political. The political agenda is censorship aimed at keeping impressionable minds away from particular points of view.

Parents and schools are asked to trust some software company’s definitions of obscenity and hate speech. Instead, local government agencies need to act individually in the interests of their communities.

The teacher must be as intentional about teaching and modeling online safety as he/she is about

everyday safety.