Internet filtering in schools has been required since the passage of CIPA in December of the year 2000 in order for schools to receive federal funding. The stipulations of CIPA require schools to block anything that contains obscenity, pornographic materials containing minors, and anything possibly harmful to minors (H.R. 4577, 106th Cong., Dept. of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (2000) (enacted). Print.). School boards have used this law often to lazily block whole websites with legitimate educational material on them due to a few keywords found on the website. Such careless blocking practices often keep children who may not have internet at home from doing proper research for their school work, therefore instituting an imbalance between the average and the less fortunate children. Picture for an instant, a child named Johnnie Doe.
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Web filtering is necessary in order to keep students on track and safe while browsing the internet in school, but it is quite necessary that it only blocks things which are absolutely detrimental to the education of students. Other people could argue that web filtering is simply too complicated to efficiently block every possibly profane website. The simple solution to this issue is to have students be monitored more attentively while they are on the computers at school. One of the goals of using filters however, is to reduce the need for direct supervision, while it may seem contradicting to the previous statement, supervision should always be required in some way in a school setting. Supervision is already commonplace in computer labs, as to prevent property damage, and hence the browsing session can be observed in conjunction with the watch for property
Web filtering is necessary in order to keep students on track and safe while browsing the internet in school, but it is quite necessary that it only blocks things which are absolutely detrimental to the education of students. Other people could argue that web filtering is simply too complicated to efficiently block every possibly profane website. The simple solution to this issue is to have students be monitored more attentively while they are on the computers at school. One of the goals of using filters however, is to reduce the need for direct supervision, while it may seem contradicting to the previous statement, supervision should always be required in some way in a school setting. Supervision is already commonplace in computer labs, as to prevent property damage, and hence the browsing session can be observed in conjunction with the watch for property