Oh dear me. I’m sorry class. I know I told you all we were going to do an internet research project on domestic current events but it turns out the internet is blocked. Looks like we’ll just share the one copy the school has of the New York Times that I stole from the main office during my precious prep-period. I’m sure we can do it if we all work together. Just make copies of the articles. I’ll stand guard by the copy room entrance and keep an ear out for the high-heeled clacking of administrative oppression.
In my previous blog, I attacked the subject of antisemitism caused by a lack of government intervention and censorship…as well as some intriguing rants about human ignorance and how it fuels the religious-hate inferno. In this literary piece of I shall confront the ever irritating issues of unnecessary website restriction within the public high school system. Although some of the former problems have been fixed, there are still various others that remain.
As we all know, Myspace and Facebook have been an ongoing menace in the eyes of the average public school. The two are most likely inaccessible without considerably trying efforts to find loophole in the system. This is an honorable effort in keeping student use of computers a solely educational experience. There was a time when they took things too far. Every single website with the words “Myspace” or “Facebook” in it was blocked. That means if someone used Google.com to search for something and those words came up in the results at all, the page would be blocked. I know my fellow bloggers, how could this ever happen? The New York Times, BBC News, and CNN websites were stripped away from the access of even the most prestigious of school staff. The heinous crime went on for months! Lesson plans were rewritten, in-class projects were abandoned, and the ever frustrated population of staff and students could do nothing more than shrug their shoulders and pray to the great server pixies downtown for a miracle. Then, only moments before the first PC was to be sacrificed as a sign of frantic repentance, someone whispered into the executioner’s ear that he was out of a job. After months of waiting, someone decided to be a rebel and let the websites go free again and reach our gleeful eyes. (I apologize for the long dramatic description but it‘s not far from the truth.)
Frankly, things like this shouldn’t happen. It effects everyone inside the school. Not just students. I guess trying to solve technical problems with a hammer isn’t exactly effective. If the problem is too complicated to fix, call in outside help. Don’t wait a few months and not tell anyone if there’s been any progress. They should be a bit more courteous at the least. Period.
Okay…that’s the end of this blog. Not the best of all time, but it does attack some irritating issues.
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how school funding first covers things like sports and new classrooms....and then there are no desks for the little athletes to sit in nor any books for them in those classrooms.
~Violinstef