School Blocks

 School Blocks

     Okay so here's the topic for today: The Neosho R-V school districts blocking system. 

      So how it works is it has a few pre-set words that the system goes through and blocks any website and YouTube video that contains these words. 

     The only problem is that this system only blocks popular sites and videos. Say you want to listen to your favorite song, but oh no, it's blocked. One way to get around this block is to simply continue to scroll down the YouTube list until you find one that's unblocked.

     So basically unless there's one of those blocked words in the title you can still find and listen to your song fairly easy. It's time-consuming but easy. Now there are other ways to get around the school blocking system to watch videos that are blocked, but I'm not getting into that. 

     Now, onto the next part. Just exactly what are some of these blocked words? Well, some are understandable. Various cuss words, and many other touchy things. But what else is blocked you may ask. Absolutely ridiculous things such as: fist, bloody, naughty, snatch, (okay I know that can mean something bad but in the context of the song it meant 'to grab') and various other things. 

     On one hand, I get that they are 'violent words' but on the other, come on! We are in high school. Also naughty? Naughty, seriously. 

     If this isn't ridiculous enough just to hear, let me appeal to your logistic side. I can give example after example on how this heeds my learning. 

     My freshman year. I'm in debate, which covers many controversial subjects. I'm trying to write a speech on gun control but I can't. Why? Every website I clicked on was blocked for talking about guns. Well, no shit Sherlock. What was my speech about again? Oh yeah, that's right, guns. So explain to me how I write a speech on guns when I cannot research information about them. Well here's your answer: not very well. 

     Now part 3. The part that annoys me the most. Earlier I gave an exact list of a few words that are blocked. I bet you're wondering how I knew those words, right? 

     Well here's your answer. The Chromebooks tell you. When you go to a blocked video in big text blocking out the video it reads something along the lines of "This video is blocked for containing the key blacklisted word 'fist'" (or whatever the word the video may contain is.) 

     So you're telling me I can't listen to this song, this song I listen to every day, because it says fist or suicide or whatever, but I can read this word on my screen, which will then cause me to look at my screen in disbelief, and disrupt the class to show everyone. That makes great sense. 

The actual song Bohemian Rhapsody doesn't even say suicide in the song?? 

*Slow clap for the school* 

     Don't get me wrong, I do get their reasoning behind it. At least here's what I think. It's to show us why. It's their way of saying "Hey we're not being jerks but we can't let you listen to this song and here's some proof." I get that. That's why I've always assumed they've done it, and I do appreciate it, but I still think it's somewhat ridiculous.

     (Seriously though, fist is a ridiculous word to block. If anything, that's a body part?) 

EDIT: 

Also this...

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