It's A Mitzvah!

In the Jewish faith, it is a mitzvah (both a commandment and a blessing) to teach one's children to swim - the underlying reasoning is that by doing so, one preserves life in a far more certain fashion than simply trying to build higher and stronger fences around the numerous bodies of water those children will come into proximity with. Interestingly, the National Research Council used the metaphor of teaching children to swim in its report entitled Youth, Pornography and the Internet, stating "Swimming pools can be dangerous for children. To protect them, one can install locks, put up fences, and deploy pool alarms. All of these measures are helpful, but by far the most important thing that one can do for one's children is to teach them to swim." (Thornbourgh and Lin, 2002). And it is this quote that, in turn, provides the focal point for Nancy Willard's article Teach Them To Swim, a discussion of how and why school librarians need to push schools to move beyond the reliance on filtering systems and engage in training classroom teachers and students how to safely negotiate the sometimes treacherous waters of the Internet. 

    Among the points Willard raises are the following: filtering leads to a false sense of security, as the perceived wisdom is that blocked sites are always of questionable content, while unblocked sites must be credible; filtering leads to overblocking, keeping teachers from being able to access legitimate sites when filters are set to block any site classed as games, or shopping, for example; filters are ineffective, failing to block all objectionable material, and they are easily bypassed by savvy high school students and many adults; filtering programs lack reasonable procedures for overriding or unblocking sites, causing aggravation for educators; and, perhaps most alarming, filtering companies are not publicly accountable for the material they choose to block - or not block. Willard goes on to discuss various alternatives to reliance on outside filtering companies, among the most interesting of which was the installation of real-time monitoring technologies on all school computers, with public, highly visible notice of the monitoring as a deterrent to misuse. And along with this locally controlled monitoring, Willard emphasizes the need to train students how to prevent and respond to accidental access of objectionable materials - teaching them to swim. Willard closes by making the case for the school librarian as Information Literacy Specialist, one who keeps administration and staff aware of what sources can be considered credible, and one who holds the authority to override filters as appropriate.

References:
Willard, N. (2010). Teach them to swim. Knowledge Quest, 39(1), 54 - 61.

Thornbourgh, D., & Lin, H.S. (Eds.). (2002). Youth, pornography and the internet. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.