[OS:N:] School filtering

["Ken Willett" <kwillett ignisys com>]

I work with a grade school and a high school, and they have different views
on filtering. At the high school, there is no filtering, and students are
expected to sign and abide by an acceptable use policy which prohibits
pornography, hate sites, etc. I'm sure the rules aren't always followed, but
there doesn't seem to be a big issue there.

At the grade school, there is a parental expectation that filtering will be
provided. Parents who are not very Internet-savvy, but have heard horror
stories, demand it, and arguments about the evils of censorship are unlikely
to carry the day (after all, movies are rated, aren't they?)

In practice, there are lots of objectionable sites which aren't blocked;
there are just too many and are put up too fast. And sometimes perfectly
innocouous sites are blocked; www.americangirl.com, which is a site related
to a magazine for young girls, was on our blocked list. In some cases an
entire site, like www.yahoo.com, is on the blocked list because it indexes
objectionable material.

We use SquidGuard, which is a plug-in for the open source Squid proxy
server. It probably doesn't have the most up-to-date blacklists, but it is
free, and I can go in to the lists and remove or add sites easily. But
there's no substitute for having adults walking around and looking at what
the kids are doing.