The One Percent Doctrine

Listen to this post!

Pete Reilly’s excellent post should be required reading for school administrators worried about online safety issues. I’ve blogged about this issue before, notably here and here. As Pete states, the actual intersections of online predators with schoolchildren are exceedingly low.

On a similar note, David Warlick recognizes that middle class parents are afraid to let their children roam their ‘seemingly safe’ neighborhoods.

All of this fear, most of it unfounded (at least statistically), has led many (most?) parents and administrators to operate from what author Ron Suskind calls the ‘One Percent Doctrine.’ Suskind uses this phrase to describe Vice President Dick Cheney’s (and others’) thoughts about the war on terrorism:

If there was even a 1 percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction -- and there has been a small probability of such an occurrence for some time -- the United States must now act as if it were a certainty.

This seems to capture the beliefs of school administrators, school communities, and parents pretty well: if there is even a 1 percent chance of something bad happening online, we need to act as if it were a certainty. Of course the concurrent question that administrators and parents should be asking is What do we lose when we operate using the One Percent Doctrine? I’m afraid that too many schools spend too little time asking themselves this question, but I am encouraged that at least some schools are thinking hard about this issue.

Thanks, Dean Shareski, for linking me to Pete’s post!

Comments

[Floyd Geasland]

1.

I don't think the One Percent chance of weapons and One Percent of my students being molested by a predator are comparable. At my school one percent would equal 6 students during the school year, which is completely unacceptable. If you read in the paper about one school where 6 students were targeted by a predator you would see huge media coverage about what the school was doing wrong and why the school was being targeted.

Administrators need to do what the public tells them is necessary to keeping students safe. If the District Council Committee feels this the district needs the filtering then we do the filtering. What you need is a reliable system by which teachers can have websites they need for class reviewed, then unblocked. Quick turnaround (one or two days) is very necessary for this because teachers don't go looking for sites they'll use in the future that often, they want it now.

Taking the security of students using the Internet does not have to be an all or nothing proposition. If you have a workable reliable way to request specific sites to be unblocked, your teachers truly report objectionable site to the system administrator, and students are taught how to use site properly and what to do if problems occur then the security will act as a blanket not a noose.

[Scott McLeod]

2.

Hi Floyd,

Thanks. I appreciate both your perspective as a current K-12 educator and your willingness to think critically about (and contest) my blather!

I think the point that I'm trying to make in this post and past posts is that when we operate from the One Percent Principle, we often give up more than we gain. We still may decide to do it, but we should at least think critically about it first, weighing the actual (not perceived) risk, our responsibilities to provide appropriate and safe instruction, and our responsibilities to not unnecessarily trammel on students' rights or interests. I think we have a lot of anecdotal and other evidence that these critical conversations are not occurring in many school systems.

I agree with you that filtering systems should have robust, effective, efficient mechanisms for blocking and unblocking. I'm not sure I agree that a 1- or 2-day turnaround satisfies that criteria. I'd rather see teachers with the ability to instantly and selectively block or unblock for short periods of time (e.g., a day or two, or even an hour or two). However, that's just my personal preference and may be unworkable given current filtering systems (I don't know 'cause I'm at a university where we don't filter anything because of deeply-held beliefs about freedom of information).

I don't want my local schools wasting time, energy, or money on low-risk issues when more prevalent, higher-cost issues aren't being addressed adequately. For example, which ultimately is causing more harm to schools/society - the few kids that get contacted by online predators during school time or the massive numbers of high school dropouts that we have? I would argue that we should spend less time, money, and energy on the former and more on the latter (and, incidentally, so would Barry Glassner, author of The Culture of Fear).

[Elona]

3.

I like the idea of being able to immediately unblock site for my students for short periods of time. Alas, it isn't that easy.

[Paula Casallo]

4.

I would just so hate my child to be in that 1%. I hear what you are saying. Sometimes we simply go overboard. However, if you give a child an inch, most times they will try to take a mile. What is the answer? I don't know. However, I do believe that blocks are necessary. To what extent is probaly the better arguement for me. We want them to use technology for learning. They should be able to access sites that enhance learning.

Just FYI - I don't your much of a threat from all that I have read on your site thus far. HAHA!