Even the Children s Express website was blocked at first, because it used the word sex too many times. But a pupil at the same school accessed a hardcore porn site while searching for educational materials on slavery, and an English teacher looking for A Midsummer Night s Dream found links to a dating agency, a porn site and a satanist page. Many teachers aren t keeping up. One morning we had double English, and I finished working after about 20 minutes and spent the rest of the lesson checking my e-mail and surfing the web. My teacher walked past me about four times and didn t even notice that I was on the Internet.
Schools generally seem unsure about some of the risks involved.
Leaving aside the fact that having a school e-mail address is a bit like going to a party in your school uniform, such a policy flies in the face of Internet safety advice. Kierra s e-mail address would tell thousands of complete strangers roughly how old she is, and exactly where to find her on a week day. They could talk to us, their children, for a start. When children have got into trouble on the Net, their relationship with their parents has been crucial. If our parents want to have a role in our use of the Net, they need to make time to learn about it, let us teach them, and then establish some agreed rules of conduct.