1st I’ll touch on the Pro’s. Filtering does allow students not to go on unwanted websites such as pornography and gaming. Everyone knows that at high school level all the students wants to do in the computer lab is jag off and just go on websites that are totally unrelated to what the student is suppose to be doing. Although now there are filters that can get around pretty much everything that a school tries to block. It also is good to block students from going on websites that teachers think are not very useful, such as Wikipedia, which is actually a very good source but is not exactly credible. Blocking these websites allows students not to go on it and use information that could be false. Implying a filter can also benefit the school by getting Federal Funding for technology purposes. It also decreases the chance of having a student go onto a website and downloading a virus that could infect the whole school and possibly put the computers down.
Cons. Most Filters are very tight and if you type something “inappropriate” into google or any search engine and it deems it inappropriate and doesn’t allow the student to access the website. This doesn’t allow students to get onto websites that have vital information for a paper or project and requires them to go into a different maybe less useful site. It also decreases the kids chances of growing up and making their own decisions in life. Not only is it decision making it sort of crosses the line of freedom of speech in the constitution where the student should be able to go on whatever he wants if it is related to the project or paper. For example a student may type in the word breast and it would block it and if the student was trying to get info on breast cancer he would have no way to get on a website.
In my opinion I don’t think filters should be in schools. Just for the fact that its pretty much against the constitution to block a student from trying to read and type a paper freely. It also kind of sucks...