Filtering too much

School filters overdo it, was the basic take-away from a study of US high-school English students' research. The study, conducted by Lynn Sutton, library director at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, found that "Internet filters are apt to block legitimate educational content," eSchool News reports. "Tech-savvy students … argue that administrators should have more faith in their judgment and ability to deal with inappropriate content, and they blame the school - not their teachers - for prohibiting them from conducting sound, unbiased research," according to eSchool News. The students, in both advanced rhetoric and basic composition classes, experienced both overblocking (of sites needed for their research) and underblocking (inappropriate content got through) in their Internet work. Sutton, whose study was part of a PhD dissertation, concluded that schools should "carefully consider" if filtering is necessary, at least at all grade levels. [See this item for the latest from Consumer Reports on filters.]