Are you in favor of filtering certain websites on public school networks? If not, what about filtering search results? At what point should the line be drawn between keeping teenagers safe and granting them their freedoms?

room topic changed to Web Filtering in Public Schools: A room for an interview on the subject of web filtering. (no tags)

A common justification for web filtering is compliance with federal regulation like CIPA and COPPA. However, many sites, like Stack Exchange, are blocked despite being in compliance with these laws. What criteria, if any, do you think should be used to justify blocking certain sites?

What do you think are some alternatives to overbearing web filtering and stringent blocking systems that may serve the purpose of protecting students better than the current methods?

Should any sites that are blocked for students not be blocked for teachers? Why? Should teachers have any web restrictions at all?

FYI: This is in the context of the US K-12 public school system.

I think this discussion could apply to ANY enterprise web filtering.

@Mooseman It could, except for the last part, but this is mostly for students in the K-12 system because they're minors.

@AstroCB In relation to filtering on grounds COPPA, the user should be aware themselves to not give their information in bad scenarios. CIPA is extremely vague, however. The "safety policy" requires the following:

> Measures restricting minors' access to materials harmful to them.

"Harmful" is rather subjective for most content.

One could claim any site with user generated content has the potential to be harmful.

@Mooseman That's an interesting point; so you think that school systems are not responsible for enforcing these federal regulations? The students and companies should be aware of them and comply with them without the need for administrative oversight?

@AstroCB Teachers should be forced to work within similar restrictions students have. If they want access to a certain site for work-related purposes, great. There are ways to review that and handle it (or there should be). My reasoning: Web filtering seems to be majorly focused on keeping students on task. Teachers should also be kept on task, even more so than students - I'm paying the teacher's salary through taxes, I'd like them to not be using Reddit or whatever else.

Additionally, this will force the restrictions placed on students to be sane. If it's painful for a teacher, for a work-related purpose, it'll probably make life painful for a student.

@Undo What about sites like YouTube, which many argue to be useful to teachers, but that present obvious risks to students?

@AstroCB COPPA is not a law for network operators, but rather the services. I won't say one shouldn't comply with CIPA, but I do think many go overboard on what is blocked. That said, an employer has a legal right to block services such as Youtube, Reddit, etc. in their own interests.

@AstroCB Obviously, one should block adult content to the best of one's ability. Beyond that point, however... If a student is wasting time watching something on YouTube, then it'll show up in their grade. At that point, it's the parent's responsibility to teach their child how to not waste time on the Internet.

@Undo +1

As a K-12'er myself, I can tell you that if you block a certain thing on your network, and I want to get to it, I will get to it. Yes, I have some fancy tools that most kids don't have, but a determined student is something to be reckoned with.

You really need to either go with a "block everything possibly bad" or a "block only things we know to a 99% confidence will be bad" approach - I've seen very few good implementations in the middle-ground.

...then there's the whitelist approach

Which is really a block-everything-possibly-bad approach, if you think about it

@Undo There are many tools; that does beg the question, then: if those of us who know how to access and use those tools have access to more resources than those who don't, does that somehow violate the latter's freedoms? In my school system, at least, they take the whitelist approach to blocking, which has decidedly mixed results.

You will never have a complete whitelist, and you will never have a complete black list.

@AstroCB Are you asking if me using a VPN violates their freedoms, or if the school system using aggressive filtering violates their freedoms?

Speaking of tools, say you walk into a home improvement store. If an employee walked around and said "you can't buy that" for a random selection of items, wouldn't you go to another store?

@Undo Using a VPN gives some students access to a wider variety of resources – are the rights of other students who don't know what a VPN is or refuse to use one violated?

… this looks like a bunch of kids in a one-sided discussion

@bjb568 Please do give us a more mature outlook, sensei.

Don't filter, it doesn't work, it doesn't do good, it's annoying.

Also... does an employer have the right to disallow VPN connections. Granted, they are needed in many scenarios...

@bjb568 Kinda sounds like what we've all said xD

@AstroCB As a student (assuming age < 18 here), you... don't really have rights. However, as a student I do expect to have access to the resources I need to master a subject, and if I were in a position where my school refused me access to those resources I would file a complaint and bring it up at whatever meeting I can.

I should note some of the pro-filtering arguments I've found, though (most pro-filterers are those who either work at companies that provide those services or used to): the main argument is protecting the students and keeping them on-task, while there is also a side to the discussion that focuses on the limited bandwidth of schools and how allowing students to stream music and video detracts greatly from the experience of other students on the network.

> you... don't really have rights - Undo, Apr 20 2015

I'll be telling my grandchildren that at story time, after the children's rights reform happens.

@Mooseman Also keep in mind that in some cases, students can acquire teacher credentials to access restricted sites, and sometimes, these are given freely to allow students to access otherwise blocked websites.

Let's get one thing straight first: WE ALL HAVE HUMAN RIGHTS

@AstroCB I and my parents are paying large amounts of tax money to public schooling. They should be able to have a connection that won't die under a few dozen streams - and this is the same issue as earlier, if the student is doing well on their work, why not let them listen to music and such?

@Mooseman Yes. Their network, their rules.

If they aren't, it's the parent's job to fix. Not mine.

There are also cellular data connections to think about – what difference does it make to a student who can use the Internet without the consent of the school?

Also, heck, put a 1GB/student/month cap on it. There are ways to enforce that, and kids these days know what a gigabyte is.

That's probably outside of the scope of this discussion, though.

@AstroCB You can't filter a cellular connection, and if you try it's an invasion of my privacy. A student's cellular plan is strictly between them, their parents, and their cell company.

@Undo And with that alternative solution, we've just about covered everything. Thanks, [plural gender neutral pronoun]!

So to sum up my feelings: I, as a taxpayer, don't really want adult content going across the infrastructure I paid to build and pay to keep up. I also don't want teachers, who I am paying, pulling the "but I'm a teacher" card to be able to slack off on the job. Beyond that, leave kids alone. If they're doing well, great. Don't touch them. If they're doing poorly, tell their parents (who should care enough to figure it out).

> who should care enough to figure it out

As the husband of a teacher...they don't

Yeah, I know :(

I've held my tongue at many school board meetings where parents come and bitch about teachers saying their little snowflake is failing because of <X, Y, Z>. Usually their complaints boil down to "bad teaching".

If you really want to, make school WiFi access a privilege. But... really, are you going to follow them around to keep them from getting into drugs at home, too? There's only so much an institution can do, parents are really in a position to provide granular help tailored for a student.

Anyway, I'm done :)

Yet, when you hear it from the teacher's side, you hear that the kid can read 20 words a minute and the parents first question during teacher conferences isn't "How is the child doing" it's "Do they have friends?"

You hear that parents don't do ANYTHING with them at home. Especially when the school has already provided extra resources via individual learning plans or reading interventions, the parents just shrug and complain that snowflake won't be moved to the next grade with their friends

Instead, they plop them in front of the TV and are happy that snowflake isn't crying

I don't get why people can stand TVs… let alone run them 24/7.

This is why I'm a large proponent of homeschooling, IMO parents should be providing education for their children. Not government. But that realistically isn't going to happen in the near future, so I'll be content with public schools doing their best to educate without becoming parents.

So, instead of holding the child back a year (especially in earlier grades), to help build fundamentals, they are moved to the next grade. Well, they were struggling to keep up in grade X. How are they going to do better in X+1?

(now I'm really done)

@Andy X + 1 is then set equal to X, and X decrements forever

Ok. That's my input, even though it had nothing to do with the original question

@Andy many parents are stressed out b.c they have a shitty boss at a shitty job that takes up too much of their time, so they need to relax when at home