An adjoining county to mine has issued iBooks to all high school students this year. You probably read about it on the news. It was a big thing at the time.
So, now there’s this news story that – gasp – kids are downloading pornography onto them. Well, DUH. It took them 4 months to figure this out? It’s not rocket science. The news article says that the school board was ‘well aware’ of the problem before it happened and already has a plan to deal with it.
Why, I ask, wasn’t this plan implemented from the beginning? I’m sure a lot of parents want to know why, too. “We can monitor individual connections and downloaded files” – so do it. Jeez. Don’t gripe about it if you have the ability to stop it from happening.
Discussions are also in the works to limit all downloading of JPG, GIF, MPG, etc formats, as well as outside software installation. Of course, none of this is going to work at all, but the principle sucks. The kids get to keep the laptops as their own property when they leave school.
May I submit that the parents, rather than the school, should be the ones doing the monitoring? That type of monitoring would probably be massivley expensive. The schools have obviously already spent a bundle on the iBooks themselves.
I vaguely recall reading about a similar program in a poor district that showed some measure of success at improving low-income kids’ writing skills.
The parents didn’t ask for the responsibility of monitoring the kids. The school provides the means of access, they need to be the ones to limit and monitor it.
Hell, if it were up to me, there’d be no monitoring. But that’s just me.
Uh, they asked for the responsibility when they had kids. If they horribly object to their child using iBooks, they can refuse to let their child use them, that’s all. I’m sure they all had to sign disclosure documents to limit the liability of the school (that’s why they exist, after all).
But the school shouldn’t cut off access to information (Especially all image files, for flying shit’s sake!) just to Do Something. The parents have to monitor children, not the school.
Take, for example, a parent purchasing a home computer for the family. Easy to monitor, limit access, etc. This is a parent asking for the responsibility.
Then take a county issuing laptops to students to use at school. Sure, parents can have their child not issued a laptop, but you know what? That screws the kid over. The laptops are integral parts of the curriculum now, almost all classroom content involves the use of the school issued laptops. Internet access is available in school and the news report indicates that that’s where most of this pornography is downloaded. It’s difficult for parents to monitor activity in the classroom.
My gripe is that the school system says they knew about this possibility long ago, but only now is taking action against it.
If it’s being downloaded primarily from school, then I can see your point.
If it’s from the home, though, then the onus is on the parents to monitor the behavior of the children. I mean, God forbid they’d take an active role in their child’s education or something.
If it’s teenagers, though, there’s nothing anybody can do to stop them.
CivilDefense:
I can see your point. I agree with you, actually. I just wonder when in the schoolday the students find time to find feelthy peekchures, as they’re known in my head.
I guess some things you make time for …
My point is, the better solution is for the school to improve curriculum enough to keep the students interested and challenged.
And while I’m wishing, peace in Israel would be nice.
One such tactic I’ve been privvy to, from friends in the county, is that a group of them will search for such “diversions” while one friend takes the notes/does the required work.
