Staff Writer
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| Nicholas Chupka attempts to access a blocked site. |
Wake County parent Carolyn Homan is speaking out against WCPSS schools for not having stricter Internet blocks. Homan claims that she was able to access pornography from her child’s computer at Brassfield Elementary School in Raleigh. She demands that the school district either strengthen its monitoring of students while surfing the Internet, or put a block on search engines such as Google and Bing. Homan adds that if a school-wide block on restricted sites cannot be completed, she asks that school district computers be limited to pre-approved sites.
Some students and teachers see benefits to the proposed ban. Sophomore Kyle Still says, “Sites that have games are fine, but when it comes to sites containing graphic or pornographic material, those sites should be blocked.” Elementary school teacher Christine Chupka says, “The ban would limit the amount of explicit material that the children could be exposed to and would allow teachers more control over what the students are viewing.
However, many students and teachers find search engines to be helpful when used under the right circumstances. “It would be a lot harder to find information for projects and schoolwork because that’s what we use for all of our information,” says Apex sophomore Adam Mancini. “It’s our main resource for research and I don’t see how you couldn’t use it and still be successful,” he adds. Chupka explains,” I use the Internet as a resource for lesson plans and reading assignments and I use search engines when we do research projects. [The block] would minimize the amount of material that a teacher could use.”
Elementary school students aren’t the only ones who use the Internet. Students working for a high school newspaper or who are researching for a project need access to websites. Sophomore Dylan Tastet thinks the district-wide Internet limitations are impractical and strongly opposes them, saying that without search engines, students’ access to information would be greatly limited. “[Without a search engine] there’s no way to find any real information except for what the school provides, and what the school provides is what everyone is going to be using. We have thousands of kids here and everyone is going to be using the same exact information.”
Teachers often use YouTube as a tool for education. “My orchestra teacher uses YouTube to demonstrate musical techniques and my U.S. History teacher uses YouTube to show us U.S. history videos,” says sophomore Cole Lamb. “[The district-wide internet block] would make it a lot harder to find information; I’d have to spend my time in the library and I would not have many sources.”
Homan may have the best intentions, but doesn’t understand that her proposal could end up hurting the way that students and teachers utilize technology in the present day classroom.
