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If you have ever used a computer from any Pueblo City school to access the Internet, chances are good that you are acquainted with Bess. Chances are even better that Bess has hindered your research process. Because of the overabundance of school appropriate web content filtered out, Bess should take a backseat to a better monitoring system.
Bess, a brand of censorware made by Secure Computing Corporation, is used throughout the District. Its main purpose is to filter the Internet, blocking web content that is deemed inappropriate by the Bess manufacturers or local administration. In many respects, the use of this specific filtering software is justified, since much of the Internet is a wasteland of tasteless and rather lurid content that should be policed. However, there are numerous websites that have school-appropriate subject matter and are blocked. Because of such strict filtering, students cannot find the necessary information that they need for their assignment. My fellow classmates and I have wasted entire class periods staring into a Bess-restricted page instead of gathering the information that we really needed.
Among the forty-five different categories Bess filters out, the only ones that really need to be policed are: Adults Only, Alcohol, Tobacco, Drugs, Illegal, and any pornographic, tasteless, and profane material. As a result of filtering there are only a select few sites that educators and students are allowed to view: Education, For Kids, History, Medical, and Moderated, which is not a wide spectrum of web content. Ironically, Bess filters out material such as news, stocks, current events, commerce and even some educational material which would allow students to access information that they need to complete an assignment. A majority of students do not have internet access at home, so less strict filtering at school would benefit their academic pursuits.
I have personally had a great deal of trouble with this nuisance. Up until recently an extremely helpful resource, Wikipedia, was restricted due to “Advertising and Webpage Hosting.” I was searching for information on Google, one of the top search engines on the Internet. When I clicked on the link to Wikipedia, my search was interrupted by a splash screen explaining that the site I requested was blocked and gave the category(ies) that it fell under. I was very upset and rather frustrated that an online encyclopedia was blocked. I wasted the whole class period searching for material related to my project, but because of these filters, I found nothing useful and had to retreat to a workstation I have at home.
Mine is not just an isolated incident. One of the security guard here at central is an umpire for a baseball team and needed to print out his baseball schedule so he would know what was up and coming for the game and team. Once again due to these filters, he could not access what he needed when he needed it. This kind of experience happens daily to a wide variety of students and faculty.
Bess by itself is a terrible solution to this overwhelming problem. The Internet does need to be policed, and very well should be inside the walls of a school, but only to a certain extent. To help combat and maybe eradicate such a strict filtering policy, I propose some simple solutions: School staff should be allowed to bypass the filter for sites that complement the lesson plan, giving the student greater freedom to complete the given assignment. Students, on the other hand, all have a unique student identification card that also indicates what grade level they are presently in. Content for each age group should be filtered accordingly, so freshmen could not access more mature content that a senior would be able to obtain. A solution of this magnitude might not be perfect, but if someone can offer a more productive approach, I would love to be a part of that solution |