Exploring child-friendly search engines

From previous experience, the school I last worked at had a tight policy on internet restictions. Access to Google images and you tube was banned by both staff and children. Staff could only use it (for teaching resources etc) if they asked permission for the head to unblock the safety. However, this required extensive cooperation with all other staff as they had to know when it was unblocked incase another class accessed it. It makes me question the reasons that lie behind child safetly and internet restritions ... exactly what are we trying to protect our children from? If we safeguard them from certain things, images or 'chat rooms' for example (which I am not condoning but just using as an example) aren't we making a bigger deal out of things than really are, and so urging them to want to experiment anyway? Is it not better that they do this under the supervision of a professional adult rather than alone under rebellion? Is it not more about saving our skin as the 'responsible adults' due to all the policies and laws etc rather than for the benefit of the children? I'm not sure myself, but just thought I'd air another point of view.

I tried searching on yahooligans.com and ask jeeves for kids for images of animals. Ask jeeves for kids was pretty good and came up with some really useful images of animals. I feel it imortant that children have access to search angines such as these in school. Many, particularly in underprivilleged backgrounds have not experienced wildlife and certain animals in real life. Therefore access to information about them in school is imperative. Unfortunately, yahooligans website did not offer access to the images which was a shame. I think that possibly this website may have also put a restriction on it. To what extent are we cotton-wooling our kids to save our own necks and depriving them from the real world out there, both good and bad? How is this benefitting them as our future generation? More to the point... we need to accept that nothing, internet, toy, whatever, is ever going to be a million percent 'child friendly'... the sooner we realise this and act on it the better!