The Problem With School Internet

Control, power, oppression. These are adjectives that can be used to describe school internet. Blocks can be found on almost any website, whether it be certain ads or videos that are needed to fully understand something. Websites that are blocked are blocked for the purposes of protecting us from seeing content that is, deemed by the school, as inappropriate. What is inappropriate? Learning about chemistry on YouTube? Apparently it is.

At many schools, access to YouTube is blocked, causing people to lose a valuable resource when researching at school. In addition, almost every video on every website is blocked (except for movie trailers on fandango, don’t ask me the logic in that). So, I can watch movie trailers, but I can’t watch educational videos on YouTube or any other media website. Why? Because the school wants to “protect” us, but in reality, they are really hurting us. Yes, YouTube can be distracting and cripple our learning, but it can also add to our knowledge and help with research assignments.

The school thinks they can prevent the students from viewing YouTube, however, the more they try to block it, the more the students try to bypass it. For example, using Mozilla Firefox as an internet browser, one could get onto YouTube, eliminating the block. Also, I remember when I was little and it was all the rage to get onto Youtube by typing in http// in front of the YouTube URL. Everyone would spend class time trying desperately to get around the block, and not doing what was assigned. By taking away YouTube, it has caused people to spend more time trying to get around the block than they are on the actual blocked website. Why do you do this to us?

Now, I’m not asking for all the blocks to be taken away. Some blocks have to be in place, like the block on pornographic and gaming related material. Those blocks are in place for good reasons and do not need to be lifted. The school has to shield the students from obscene material, which is totally fine, because it serves no educational purpose whatsoever. However, it is not necessary to block YouTube, because restrictions could be placed on individual accounts which block material that is reported or rated as inappropriate. If each student was given a school YouTube account, which were given settings to only let students see educational things, and nothing more.

Also, the block on videos could be lifted on educational sites, and then the YouTube block would not need to be lifted, because educational videos could then be viewed and that would solve the problems.

These solutions would stop the onslaught of students not doing their work to try to get on blocked websites. If the block was lifted, the amount of work students do would increase, and the amount of work done trying to bypass a block would decrease, as a direct result. What else do students have to do to tell the school that some blocks are stupid and absolutely ludicrous? Isn't spending time going around blocks raising any red flags to administrators and telling them that their current system is not working.