Net benefits? Libraries and educators find the Internet opens up classroom opportunities, and some thorny censorship problems too

• Published in: Quill and quire 1995-03, Vol.61 (3), p.20
• Main Author: Aspinall, Jane
• Format: Magazinearticle
• Language: English
• Subjects: Censorship; Educational applications; Internet
• ISSN: 0033-6491

Ann Jones, assistant director of education for the Ottawa Board of Education, agrees that the new medium poses unique dilemmas for schools. "While there is filtering and selection that schools can do-in the same way they've collected print material for libraries-there is inevitably going to be contact with the 'less useful' material." The only solution, she says, is to educate children-"Internet-proof" them-so they are not as interested in the more "nefarious" sections, so that they know a stranger is a stranger even on the Internet, and that all information is suspect unless a trusted authorship can be verified. Outright censorship is something Jones says should be avoided-one practical reason being that "the moment something is forbidden, kids tend to make a beeline for it." A highlight of the symposium was the appearance of Supreme Court Justice John Sopinka, who outlined the Court's rulings that interpret the Charter of Rights and Freedoms on free expression. Though Sopinka is not allowed to comment on issues that may appear before the court, he did suggest that it might be inappropriate for a university-Waterloo was his example-to ban materials it deems offensive. "One must ask if it is not preferable to permit the expression, and allow the criminal or civil law to deal with the individual who publishes obscene, defamatory, or hateful messages, rather than preventing speech before it can be expressed." SPEAKING at a University of Waterloo conference last November (see main story), University of Western Ontario law and librarianship professor Margaret Ann Wilkinson declared that "censorship exists wherever there is pre-selection of information made available to a particular group of potential users," and that therefore it is not "realistic to declare that freedom of expression should override censorship." Wilkinson's analysis of libraries' selection/censoring decisions leads her to believe that libraries usually err on the side of caution when faced with a controversial choice-mostly because of ignorance of the law. She suggested that librarians might benefit by adding a legal dimension to their education.