Let the Intern be Heard!

Mar 15, 2009 by Elena Korallis

The Internet has such a wealth of information today, that schools believe it is their duty to protect the young, impressionable minds of students through censorship. Programs like X-Stop have made this possible by filtering websites that contain any of the words on a preset list. Breaching our freedom to expand our knowledge is pretty illogical.

Yes, there are the kids who think it’s funny to look up porn at school or spend their whole Spanish class on Facebook, which makes programs like X-Stop seem like a good solution. The Miami-Dade and Broward School Boards might think that they are keeping student website usage under control, but it is really more of a hindrance to our education. Research papers for English classes and position papers for Government tend to address issues like drug use, abortion and other topics that have been declared obscene by X-Stop.

The words that trigger a block don’t always make sense either. A Film Studies class working on a short film assignment had a tremendous amount of trouble getting onto sites that contained the word “film”. However, the word “movie” brought up accessible sites.

X-Stop does not stop me from sending e-mails to colleges while I am in school. So, like Doctor Malcolm pointed out in Jurassic Park, students “will find a way.” Proxies and other bypassing programs are used by students and even teachers who need to get their work done or present something to a class. Whenever one proxy is blocked, a new one is discovered instantaneously.

If the whole school knows how to get onto Google Images through another Web site, does it really make sense to have it blocked in the first place?

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by Elena Korallis