A Guide for Educators
Filtering The Internet
By David Barber

Introduction

The Internet and its vast array of information has triggered debate on the access of the Internet by school age children.  The Internet and all of the discussions about its unrestricted use or banning is a two edge sword that cuts both ways.  The Internet offers access to information that is great for education and yet it also offers access to information that is undesirable for the educational setting.  This raises the question of why we do not ban Internet access from our schools.  This also cuts both ways, the banning of the Internet denies access to all of the information that could be valuable to our students educational growth.  It is obvious that the educational community is clamoring for access to information by the grass roots growth of the Internet.  Yet, we have seen all to well the results of students accessing sites that give them the information to do harmful and illegal things.  So we wonder how do we protect our children from the undesirable information.   Some say ban the Internet, some say keep it completely open and others say censor some of it and others say teach children to be responsible.  These beliefs bring up debates over individual freedom versus censoring the Internet and who needs to be responsible for protecting our children from harmful information. Now with the Internet we wonder how do we protect our school age children and we wonder if is it worth it.  Most educators have concluded that it is worth it to have access to the Internet for students.  Now comes the hard part of determining ways of making it safe to surf the Internet for our students and keep it as open as possible.