Chat Room: Who's Blocking Whom?

School officials should be determining which Web sites are blocked by filtering software, says Willard. But they aren't. Instead, school administrators have transferred their decision-making authority, she says, "to private companies, [where] there is no public disclosure and no public accountability for how these decisions are being made. [These] decisions are not being made by educators and librarians. All information about the criteria, keywords, decision-making processes, and the list of blocked sites is kept confidential. There is no public knowledge of relationships with investors or other customers that could be influencing the decision making."

Willard points to the findings of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation's study "See No Evil: How Filters Affect the Search for Online Health Information" (www.kff.org/content/2002/20021210a) as evidence that filtering software censors important information that teens need to know. The 2002 study discovered that setting Internet filters to levels that block 91 percent of pornographic Web sites also block 24 percent of the sites that provide helpful health information (see News, January 2003, p. 18). The most restrictive filtering-software settings screened out everything from jokes to information on tobacco. In addition, the stronger the level of filtering protection, the more biased the software appeared to be against topics such as gay rights, safe sex, and even jock itch. Interestingly enough, when the same filters were set on their least restrictive settings, they blocked 87 percent of the pornographic sites and only 1.4 percent of the health sites.

Many educators appear to have accepted the presence of filtering software in their schools, and most have also acquiesced to their district's restrictive Web policies—and the filtering software companies' autonomous decisions. When I travel around the country talking to groups of librarians, I often ask how many of them have the authority to unblock a Web site on the fly if it's useful for a "teachable moment." A small minority of them tell me they can override the filters without seeking permission. But in most public libraries, and especially in most schools, unblocking a Web site requires a formal request to an administrator or technology director—a process that can take a week or more.

"What is happening in many districts is that it takes so long to override the filter that nobody even asks for such [an] override," says Willard. "So the technology folks and administrators think there are no problems."

Willard proposes that "all district librarians, computer lab monitors, and every teacher who makes significant use of the Internet in their classroom, should have override privileges." She also says that educators should be protected against recriminations or disciplinary action if they unwittingly unblock an inappropriate Web site. The educators who actually teach kids should be determining which Web sites are best for their students, she says—not the anonymous software-company employees who have never met the classes and have no idea what sites best serve their learning needs. If a school district's filters are only set to block sexually explicit, adults-only Web sites—sites that are obviously inappropriate for minors—then the need for such overriding will be minimal, Willard contends.

"I have been fighting the false promise that filters are the answer since [1995]," she says. "I am just now seeing signs of some level of emerging public awareness that filters are merely a technological quick fix and that it is most important to focus on empowering young people with the values, knowledge, and skills to independently make safe and responsible choices when they use the Internet. But it does not appear that this awareness has penetrated into the offices of many school administrators."