Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
History is littered with hundreds of conflicts over the future of a community, group, location or business that were "resolved" when one of the parties stepped ahead and destroyed what was there. With the original point of contention destroyed, the debates would fall to the wayside. Archive Team believes that by duplicated condemned data, the conversation and debate can continue, as well as the richness and insight gained by keeping the materials. Our projects have ranged in size from a single volunteer downloading the data to a small-but-critical site, to over 100 volunteers stepping forward to acquire terabytes of user-created data to save for future generations.
The main site for Archive Team is at archiveteam.org and contains up to the date information on various projects, manifestos, plans and walkthroughs.
This collection contains the output of many Archive Team projects, both ongoing and completed. Thanks to the generous providing of disk space by the Internet Archive, multi-terabyte datasets can be made available, as well as in use by the Wayback Machine, providing a path back to lost websites and work.
Our collection has grown to the point of having sub-collections for the type of data we acquire. If you are seeking to browse the contents of these collections, the Wayback Machine is the best first stop. Otherwise, you are free to dig into the stacks to see what you may find.
The Archive Team Panic Downloads are full pulldowns of currently extant websites, meant to serve as emergency backups for needed sites that are in danger of closing, or which will be missed dearly if suddenly lost due to hard drive crashes or server failures.
ArchiveBot is an IRC bot designed to automate the archival of smaller websites (e.g. up to a few hundred thousand URLs). You give it a URL to start at, and it grabs all content under that URL, records it in a WARC, and then uploads that WARC to ArchiveTeam servers for eventual injection into the Internet Archive (or other archive sites).
To use ArchiveBot, drop by #archivebot on EFNet. To interact with ArchiveBot, you issue commands by typing it into the channel. Note you will need channel operator permissions in order to issue archiving jobs. The dashboard shows the sites being downloaded currently.
Americans are diverse – ethnically, religiously, ideologically – but all must pay for public schools. The intention is good: to bring people together and foster social harmony. But rather than build bridges, public schooling often forces people into wrenching conflict.
This map aggregates a relatively small, but especially painful, subset of such battles: those pitting educational effectiveness, basic rights, moral values, or individual identities against each other. Think creationism versus evolution, or assigned readings containing racial slurs. The conflicts are often intensely personal, and guarantee if one fundamental value wins, another loses.
The goal may be peace, but the outcome is too often the opposite.
Note: We are currently experiencing technical difficulties with the Public Schooling Battle Map and are working to rectify these issues as soon as possible.
Note: In some areas there are many incidents in close proximity, so zooming in is necessary to see them all. In addition, some battles may fall under more than one conflict type – e.g., religious battles may also involve freedom of expression – but are listed under only one heading. The incidents are drawn from media accounts from 2005 to the present. Some list years earlier than 2005 because the year used on the map is the year the conflict began. Because major media reports are the source for its content, the map likely provides a minimal sense of how widespread such battles are.
Incidents are continuously being added to the map. Please send any conflicts you might know about, errors you might find, or questions or concerns you might have to nmccluskey@cato.org. Also, discuss education conflicts on Twitter using #WWFSchool.
To dive deeper into why and how public schools foster social conflict, check out our reading list. If you have suggestions for books to add, let us know by emailing the address above.
Conflicts over what is taught that are not primarily over religion, specific readings, individual identity, or human origins. Sex education conflicts are often under this heading if they contain major elements outside of specific moral or religious concerns, such as age appropriateness. Also includes disputes over political or philosophical course content.
Conflicts over the rights of students, employees, or citizens to speak in or about public schools. Battles often pit freedom of speech against the ability of schools to maintain environments conducive to learning.
Conflicts over treatment of students based on gender. Often disputes over the ability to provide single-sex education, which might produce better learning outcomes for some students, but could lead to unequal treatment by government based on gender.
Battles over evolution and creationism. Because they are so widespread, divisive, and long-standing – harkening back to the 1925 Scopes "Monkey" Trial – these conflicts are given their own category. They involve government declaring what is or is not "science," "fact," or "religion."
Disputes over "right" or "wrong" behaviors not necessarily tied to religious convictions. Battles sometimes include non-religious disputes over whether schools or parents should be making decisions about such things as student access to birth control, or participation in school activities.
Often battles over who decides where children from different racial or ethnic groups attend school, or which group controls school or district decision-making. Also frequent are conflicts over school mascots.
Generally, battles over books assigned or recommended by schools, or present in school libraries, that contain material some parents or citizens find inappropriate. Inherently involves government either censoring or favoring specific speech.
Disputes involving the presence of religion in schools, either through employees, students, or outside groups. Battles typically pit students' and employees' rights to exercise religion free of government interference with the need for public schools to remain conducive to the equal education of all.
Often disputes over whether schools are advocating for, or discriminating against, homosexuals. Anti-bullying policies are frequently involved, with some arguing that to ensure equal protection, anti-bullying statutes must explicitly mention sexual orientation, while others argue that doing so gives gay students special protections.
Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
Curriculum
Freedom of Expression
Gender Equity
Human Origins
Moral Values
Race/Ethnicity
Reading Material
Religion
Sexuality