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.
this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2024
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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.
I just used sketchy Chinese websites designed for bypassing the Chinese firewall
Seems safe
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.
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.
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.
I remember when I was in high school many many moons ago, my buddy set up a proxy through his own server. (This dude was a genius for a high schooler, he was MSCE+Security certified before graduating).
We thought we were hot shit. We used it for a few weeks. Then one day we got called into a meeting with the district’s IT department. Turns out they knew we were using it all along, but didn’t care because we were mostly using it to browse gaming sites. But then this dipshit kid saw us using it, copied the URL without our knowledge, and used it to browse porn. So they had to shut us down and punished us. No network access for a month. (That kid lost computer access for the rest of the semester and failed a computer class he was taking. Serves him right.)
Lol never stand between a teen and their smut. It is a losing battle.
My school even blocked archive.org because of this. Good luck checking like ⅛ of Wikipedia references.
Some kids will find proxies. Definitely not enough that need things like the suicide prevention sites.
It should not be on the kids to do it in the first place.
We handed out proxy addresses like candy to whoever needed it. We also handed out literal CDs with compressed game installations so we would have more noobs to stomp when we were done with our work.
Censored education. Nothing bad ever happened because of that...
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?
They're actually doing more than that in U.S. schools. My daughter typed something on her school notebook in elementary school and it alerted the administration due to a keyword. I'm actually glad it did in that case because it led to some necessary follow-ups by us (no, she was not going to shoot up the school), but it still disturbed me that they were able to do that at all.
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
Missouri wanted those sites blocked, and the kids who are now vulnerable to suicide are the kind those people don’t want living anyway.
Fuck MISERY!
Not diminishing how shitty this is
But where does it say NASA is blocked?
...why is "education" a category for blocks? We were afraid you might use the computers at school to learn something?
I work in K12 IT, and the reason is that all manner of categories are defined for both blacklisting and whitelisting when creating content filter rules. So while “education” would not be used for blocking, it would be useful for rules to apply to specific defined groups or devices which can only access specific categories (such as education). Just FYI.
You're not supposed to be educating yourself, you're supposed to stick to the curriculum. You might learn the wrong things!
We had to take my daughter out of public school and put her in online school due to severe bullying and now I act as a "learning coach," which means I basically sit with her and make sure she stays on track. But it also gives me examples to do things to tell her when the school is lying to her. Overall it's pretty decent (social studies is remarkably even-handed for an American social studies class), but her health class is abysmal. Yesterday, they were talking about the benefits of AA and I had to explain to her that, while AA helps some people, it is not backed by science, was founded from a prayer group, and the founder thought that the actual way to stop drinking was to do AA and take LSD, so it's not even doing what "Bill W." wanted.
It also said nothing about courts mandating AA, which is interesting, since it made it very clear that you can only quit an addiction if you want to.
That's far from the only time I've had to tell her that what her health class is telling her is bullshit. Even the quitting smoking section had some nonsense and didn't even mention smoking cessation medication (I have no idea why).
All sites are categorized. Which categories are blocked is up to the administrator.
Sure. The question was more "why would education be a category chosen for blocking by a school administrator?"
Categories such as “education” are useful for limiting access for specific groups of devices. For example, if one class has a particularly mischievous group who keep going off task from their devices, rules can be created to whitelist certain categories, and only pass traffic that are in these more straightforward categories. Just FYI.