[Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content

[Andrew Garrett]

On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 10:07 AM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> So... are we now going to start writting "USfamilyfriendlypedia(tm)" ?
>> There is plenty of stuff to be delete then... not only penis and
>> vagina pictures... For example delete all biographies of porn-stars,
>> articles about addictive violent computer games, and there is tons of
>> things to be deleted in order to make our projects more "family friendy".
>
> Has it occurred to you that we could simply _age-rate_ articles, rather
> than delete them? An article on a pornographic novel could be 18-rated,
> just like the novel itself. Same with porn star bios, which aren't likely
> to be of interest to 9-year-olds.

I object to the assertion that images and discussion of reproductive
organs is "unsuitable" for children under a certain age. This is
primarily a Western Anglophone cultural assumption – and it doesn't
hold true in all such parts of the world either. There's certainly no
medical or psychological research which suggests that exposure to
educational content about reproduction has a negative impact on child
development.

I grew up in Suburban Sydney. When I was barely five years old my
parents gave me, as part of a "How My Body Works" series, a book about
human reproduction, including detailed diagrams and illustrations.

It is *NOT* *OUR* *ROLE* to decide what is and is not "appropriate"
for children to view on our website. That role is to be discharged
solely by parents and supervisors of those children.

The *ONLY* rating and classification system that I can support is a
descriptive one. That is, it describes the nature of the content, and
allows humans or computers to filter it accordingly. The
infrastructure would be technically simple.

-- 
Andrew Garrett
http://werdn.us/