Education (?) System

[Tomorrow]

Does anyone else have a problem with this?

School blocks NRA, GOP, Christian websites — but not Dem, Islam sites - Washington Times

Education or indoctrination? What in he!! has happened to open, contemplative discourse in this world? When will we start burning books again?

Your thoughts?

 

[rojo]

My first ten thoughts about this all leaned perilously close to political slurs, so I really ought to mind my own business. All I can safely say is that I agree. Aside from blocking porn to make the parents happy, any content that might be relevant to academic research shouldn't be blocked.

Looks like the Board of Ed is going to address the matter, though, according to the last paragraph of the article.

Edit: adk, agreed. Fixed. Not sure I'd really want that comment to follow me around the rest of my life, anyway.

 

[adk highlander]

Let's be careful here. If anyone get's political one way or the other this will be locked. I also agree students should be free to do their research without being blocked or limited in their results.

 

[markw]

Not trying to be political, but withholding any viewpoints that don't echo those held by in charge of teaching them is the perfect way to inculcate another generation of robots who totally lack any critical thinking skills and know only one way to think, if thinking is the correct word here. It's more like teaching them to react to stimuli like lower life forms do to light and heat.

 

[Tomorrow]

Oops, I guess I should have said, "When will we start burning iPads?" What are books?

 

[Adam]

What in he!! has happened to open, contemplative discourse in this world?

It's totally welcome, as long as it doesn't involve politics or religion...

 

[Tomorrow]

It's totally welcome, as long as it doesn't involve politics or religion...

Not, apparently, in Connecticut.

 

[Alex2507]

When will we start burning books again?

We never stopped.

What I don't understand is why that kid spent any time on that computer system after he discovered that they had blocked porn.

 

[MidnightSensi2]

When I was in high school, I worked for the IT department, and I can completely see why a Christian site would be blocked but not a Muslim one.

We had 'block lists' for vendors that were updated to keep the main stuff 'blocked'... but a lot of blocks were requested. For example, teachers were wasting time on stock market websites, so the principals office called us to block those, etc. We were just IT, not 'the keepers for freedom' - plus our accounts were unfiltered lol so we didn't care.

As soon as they realized how fast and easy we could block stuff, it became a regular thing.. and, there were all kinds of situations where we pondered "Why block this, but leave this open?" .. but, in the same way China censors the main internet, but, darknets are left mainly untouched.. people censor what they know exists, and just as powerfully, what is in their interest to block.

Hypothetically, maybe people were wasting lots of time on the Christian site, it raised a red flag, and someone got told to block it. But, people weren't wasting time on the Muslim site (Because, they're not muslim hehe)... so it didn't get blocked. It wasn't visible, it wasn't a perceived problem.

What I don't understand is why that kid spent any time on that computer system after he discovered that they had blocked porn.

Alex,
It comforts me that I wasn't the only one thinking that.

 

[Irvrobinson]

When I was in high school, I worked for the IT department...

When I went to school there wasn't an IT department, a computer filled a room and took punch cards as input, and information was only available in the library. No book or periodical was available unless the school system consciously ordered it. Even if a school blocked a thousand websites, students today have access to millions of times more information than I did in high school. Censorship of any kind is probably of questionable wisdom, but compared to my time in high school these are the good old days.

 

[MidnightSensi2]

Even if a school blocked a thousand websites, students today have access to millions of times more information than I did in high school.

True, and, also lots of work arounds (tethering to a mobile phone, proxies, go home, etc).

Even then, we were blocking way more than thousands of websites since the main lists were aggregate ones from vendors. Most internet filtering systems are still rather baroque though, sometimes they do things manually and sometimes they do it in an automated way, in terms of adding IPs to the list based on domain names.

Censorship of any kind is probably of questionable wisdom, but compared to my time in high school these are the good old days.

There is a misconception about censorship in what drives it: It's mostly individuals acting in their own perceived interest. For example, a school administrator has lots of incentive to block a popular gaming site because its very visible and therefore he/she could get lots of flak for it. However, lesser known stuff, there is very little incentive - so it mostly stays open. What gets censored is generally what the school admins thought was most visible and most likely to cause a problem for them, not, what is most 'dangerous' or 'what is right' or 'what is fair.' A lot of the times the calls to censor stuff was more like "bah, can you block this site? kids are playing on it and if their parents see they saw this in school we'll never hear the end of it"

In this example, the Christian site and NRA were probably on the radar, but, the Muslim one wasn't. Now they'll re-consider their censorship based on current incentives.

 

[Alex2507]

Alex,
It comforts me that I wasn't the only one thinking that.

It concerns me that you're comforted.
It's not too late for you.
Get some help.

 

[Adam]

It's not too late for you.

You clearly don't remember some of his posts from years ago.

 

[Bryceo]

Hmm see in my collage we didn't have blocked internet. But porn was so much better back then too


Sent from my iPhone 5

 

[MidnightSensi2]

You clearly don't remember some of his posts from years ago.

Lol, I sure don't.

 

[MidnightSensi2]

It concerns me that you're comforted.
It's not too late for you.
Get some help.

I tried help, but they just take all my personality traits and add the word 'disorder' to the end of it. Then they give me more drugs. lol. Not helpful.

 

[Chu Gai]

The male students wouldn't go to porn sites if the teachers were putting out.

 

[daveman]

No specific relation to your question, but need to bring attention to a fact:
SC doesn't teach cursive or analog clocks in public school. I moved here and was flabbergasted.
Point of the story: there is no hope for public schools, shell for private edumacation. How do you read/write checks? Or... LOOK AT A CLOCK? Lets worry about the real issues here.

 

[shadyJ]

Not teaching the reading of analog clocks is dumb, but an argument could be made against the teaching of cursive. That whole system takes a lot of time to teach something very few people ever use outside of signatures. When was the last time you had to write in cursive besides your signature? The last time I tried to do that, I realized I had nearly forgotten how and the handwriting was atrocious.

 

[FrancisDaniel]

probably its the schools choice, but the world is so open now. many already have personal mobile fones that can access the internet.