A Matter of (Radical) Trust

By Christopher Harris -- School Library Journal, 11/1/2006

I’m sorry, but I just don’t trust you. What is worse is that my distrust is growing. Before the end of this column, I might do the unthinkable and come out in support of filters. With the recent conclusion of my administrative internship, I cleared the final hurdle toward certification as a school district administrator in New York state. Then it hit me. All that talk in my school law class about our acting in loco parentis was more than talk. In their parents’ stead, we, as educators, are required to protect students from harm. That includes keeping them safe from danger on the Internet, and if I am going to do that, well, I just don’t trust you.

Yet trust is one of the fundamental concepts of Library 2.0, a new concept of library services that encourages a more interactive engagement with patrons via blogs and other Web 2.0 tools. According to Darlene Fichter, a data library coordinator with the University of Saskatchewan, Web-based experiences in public libraries are dependent on what she calls “radical trust.” This is “about trusting the community,” Fichter wrote in an April 2006 post on her blog, Blog on the Side (tinyurl.com/y9vjlf). “We know that abuse can happen, but we trust (radically) that the community and participation will work.” But when you work in a school library, radical trust is just not an option.

When it comes to students on the Web, the administrator in me comes down on behalf of safety, not necessarily filtering, but some measure of control over the chaos that is the Internet. The open and dynamic nature of Web sites is, after all, a serious concern in schools. I try to remain optimistic, but administrators must plan for the worst. Sure, I’d like to create a blog in which anyone can freely post. But what if someone puts up something inappropriate? Still, we can’t be prevented from exploring 2.0 simply because of a potential infraction by a single rogue poster, can we? Yes, we can. We should restrict use because we cannot rely on radical trust. But how do we facilitate online interaction while avoiding the possible dangers of open Web sites? The answer in many districts is that you can’t, and therefore all the cool stuff online gets shut down.

There are ways we can find a compromise, but it will involve the adoption of a new philosoophy. Instead of radical trust, I propose that we try—with the cooperation of administrators—to achieve “moderated trust.” This would require reviewing all content before it is published online (the capacity for which comes built-in with many 2.0 applications). For instance, most blog software facilitates moderated use by allowing site administrators to assign security levels appropriate to specific users. For example, you could stipulate that students can write and save blog posts, but they cannot freely upload them to the site.

Let me be the first to point out that this is far from a perfect solution. Moderated trust and the review of all content takes time—something educators tend to be greatly lacking. Moreover, media specialists and other monitors would have to prioritize timely material, making sure to upload topical blog comments, for example, rather than let them sit and go stale in a moderation queue.

Still, let me state very clearly that radical trust is just not going to work. I know that this goes against many positions I have defended in the past (and quite radically, I might add) on my blog (schoolof.info/infomancy), but this new “moderate” stance is the only chance I see for us to continue to use Web 2.0 tools.