en-us Copyright 2008 - All Rights Reserved. Fri, 24 May 2013 10:20:14 GMT 15 By Evan Swanson
I’ve been blocked. Every student here has experienced the same frustration of diligently researching the Internet, or maybe simply attempting to goof around, when a link leads to a quaint message: this website has been blocked. After being cut off from my research several times in the last two weeks, I began to think What did the students here do to deserve such mistrust? I suppose we’ve earned it. I would venture to say there is hardly a person in this school who hasn’t attempted to play a game online or check his or her e-mail instead of doing schoolwork. Yet, I still want to ask myself why this is such a problem? I finally decided that I agree with the school’s decision to monitor the content we can access on the Internet. It makes perfect sense for the school to want to keep students from accessing violent or inappropriate material, or anything that would greatly hinder the environment in which the students learn. It is a school after all. Then I began thinking about it. If students aren’t doing their work, what difference should it make? This is a high school. When are they going to stop babying us? Shouldn’t we be able to handle the Internet, especially when a filter set too high often blocks useful sites as well as bad sites? There will always be a few immature students, but they’re only cheating themselves. If a teacher gives time for students to work over the Internet and a student decides they’re an exception, isn’t the assignment still going to be due the same day? They’re the only ones denying themselves the opportunity to work. If a student doesn’t use the time given to them to work, it only means that they’ll have more work to do outside of school. It’s simply a matter of how students want to organize their time. If they’re not getting their homework done, chances are they wouldn’t do the assignment if they had class time anyway. There is a time and a place when students need to stop being treated like children. What will happen to the students who go on to college and find themselves unprepared to handle reality? Who will tell them to study, to act civilized, to go to class, or to use their time efficiently? I won’t. The teachers won’t. Their parents will, but chances are the ones that can’t handle classroom time on the Internet now, probably don’t listen to their parents and won’t in college either. The Internet should be filtered in the high school to keep it a decent learning environment, but when I keep clicking blocked links I wonder to myself if we’ll ever grow up and if anyone will let us. ]]> Mon, 02 Oct 2006 14:28:00 GMT