Schools Were Just Supposed To Block Porn. Instead They Sabotaged Homework and Censored Suicide Prevention Sites
Schools Were Just Supposed To Block Porn. Instead They Sabotaged Homework and Censored Suicide Prevention Sites – The Markup
Survey data show how these inequities play out. The Center for Democracy and Technology asked teachers last year whether internet filtering and blocking can make it harder for students to complete assignments. Among teachers in schools with high rates of poverty, 62 percent said yes; among teachers in schools with lower rates, 50 percent said the same.
So neither students nor teachesr like it?
Most education boards are about politics,not education
They've been doing this since the 2000s. I remember having to set up a proxy server at home just so I could connect to it and actually browse the Internet at school without every third site being blocked for no reason.
In my school in Germany, all computers were always set up in a way such that the teacher could look at any screen immediately. If a minor accesses a porn site, they’ll tell you by giggling, so what’s the need for filtering, anyway?
The US education system is a complete trainwreck. The teachers are underpaid to the point it should be criminal, and as a consequence many of the teachers are also poorly educated themselves and a lot of them are also technically illiterate as a consequence. IT departments are also underfunded, and what technical training and support they should be providing to teachers often doesn't happen. This isn't universal of course, there are highly educated and technically literature teachers, but they're few and far between.
Even worse the invasion of school boards by both the MAGA cult and Karens has turned schools into political battlegrounds where oftentimes the most successful teachers aren't the ones who are skilled at teaching, but the ones who are best at politicking and sucking up to administration.
Censored education. Nothing bad ever happened because of that...
They also block adblockers (at least in my area). So I'm trying to find a good laptop for my sister to use next year.
In case it helps you, I've found that the uMatrix extension has been a great way to auto-block all Javascripts while still being able to permit just the ones needed to work past a site or network's limitations.
There's a little bit of a learning curve at first, but nothing too bad. Using the extension also feels empowering, because it gives you much more control than just a flat 'block everything' anti-ad approach.
No the thing is, the school district in my area uses Chromebooks and they're locked down to the point you can't download extensions or use another browser.
Same old same old. I remember back when some schools blocked Wikipedia article on Dick Chaney. Why the porn blocker would block any url with dick in it.
This is what happens when the schools are so broke that instead of getting proper IT they have to get the cheapest blocker possible and then just dial up the blocking to 11.
I did IT for a school district and staying on top of proxies was a game of whack a mole. I’d do it because I was asked too, but kids will find a new proxy that works. And the little bastards are more clever than we give them credit for.
My school even blocked archive.org because of this. Good luck checking like ⅛ of Wikipedia references.
You can't watch most porn or YouTube videos on the Wayback Machine anyways...
Yeah you’re asking a handful of people who split their time across multiple duties to play cat and mouse with hundreds of teens who have copious free time they can dedicate to finding new proxies.
Not to mention, all it takes is one advanced student setting up their own proxies on something like a free tier oracle cloud VPS and you’re never going to win.
Me when i figured out I can just run an exe from a zip and casually plays Minecraft. Then sets up a socks 5 proxy using danted on guess what, a free Oracle server.
Was quite tempting to live boot an ubuntu but then I'd have to reset the cmos.
Lol never stand between a teen and their smut. It is a losing battle.