The Danger of WWW Research.

How often do teachers or parents tell their students to get on the Internet (the World-Wide Web) and research a topic such as a famous person, place, event, invention, etc? It happens all the time as the www has virtually replaced the use of available texts and library resources for so many of us doing research today. But do we warn and teach our students or children how to be skeptical users of the www just as we were taught to identify the author's point-of-view and question the value of the material we culled from research books? If we don't, then we had better start...or else we'll have no one to blame but ourselves when a student unwittingly brings us some "research" on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.--for example--from a web-site such as the one found at http://www.martinlutherking.org/.

This .org URL and the web-site itself makes it look like a historical treatise of the life and times of MLK, Jr., and claims that it is "A true historical examination." There is a quiz under the banner "Attention Students: Try Our MLK Pop Quiz," and the site offers sections titled Historical Writings, Truth About King, Death of the Dream, The King Holiday, Civil Rights Library, Jews & Civil Rights, and Suggested Books.

A quote from Newsweek magazine dated 19 Jan 1998 is displayed prominently on the home page and states: "That night King retired to his room in the Williard Hotel. There FBI bugs reportedly picked up 14 hours of party chatter, the clinking of glasses and the sounds of illicit sex--"

Further down the page is a link in its center inviting students to:

"Bring the Dream to life in your town! Download flyers to pass out at your school!"

Opening the link will show a page that states:

"Bring the dream to your school! This is the time of year many students are asked to write reports about Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. Print out these flyers and pass them around your school. There are four flyers per sheet and include our website information."

And what do the flyers say?

One is in a business card format with Dr. King's picture and a message that states, "I have a dream..." Quoted nesxt to Dr. King's portrait is George Orwell: "In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." And at the bottom is a claim for "A Historical Examination..." and the address for the MLK web-site.

Another has the title of "The Beast as Saint: The Truth About Martin Luther King," and yet another is titled "Which holiday honors a liar, cheater, and traitor?" Can you imagine the outcry that would occur if a student--especially a younger student--downloaded one of these flyers and brought it to school to use as a source reference for a report on MLK, Jr.?

If all this seems as odd to you as it did to me, then you must scroll down to the very bottom of the web-site's page to find the following link in small print: Sponsored by Stormfront. And what is Stormfront, a student might wonder, as they clicked on the link. Imagine what they might think or be even more curious to explore when they find themsleves linked to Stormfront.org, a racist forum for what they claim is the "white nationalist community." Whoa!

The news is frequently filled with warnings of the dangers of the www--the chat rooms; blogs and vlogs; on-line gambling; and ready access to drugs, pornography, and predators. But the www also teems with ill-intentioned sites such as this one, and their easy accessability, professional appearance, and purposefully obfuscatory language make them especially confusing and--when combined with their undeveloped reasoning abilities--dangerous to the understanding of the average primary and secondary school student. As an educator, being aware of such dangers--and informing and monitoring our students as they explore the www--is yet another important task to be added to our already extensive lists of such tasks.