Fullerton Parents and Teachers Confirm Laptop Porn is Widespread
Back in September we published a mothers’ letter accusing the Fullerton School District of ignoring the pornography problem on school-issued laptops. At the time, the school district responded to the an OC Register reporter by claiming that this was the “first reported case of a student using the laptops to log on to pornographic sites”.
Today we know that statement is a flat-out lie.
I have been contacted by numerous parents and several FSD teachers who were each directly involved with cases where school children used their laptops to view pornography or chat with strangers online. Some had grade-school children who became addicted to pornography, while others were teachers who dealt with these issues on a regular basis in the classroom.
Witness one post by and FSD teacher to our blog following the OC Register story:
I am a Fullerton Elementary school teacher and a parent of elementary school children who have been a part of the laptop program. First, I am aware of numerous children who have accessed inappropriate sites and viewed illicit images while using their school issued laptops. Furthermore, we discovered inappropriate material on our son’s laptop. For those of you who would blame this on “bad parenting” get your heads out of you a#%! These are curious adolescents, who if given the opportunity, will venture into areas they shouldn’t go. In giving these laptops to children to take home and expecting them to refrain from inappropriate sites is equivalent to putting dirty magazines in a young boys closet but telling him to not look at them. When not monitored (and what parent can do this 24/7 ?) they will act on their curiosity. Unfortunately, this can lead to emotional, psychological and even physical harm through sexual predators who are just looking for an opportunity to catch a young child who has wandered into the dangerous world of the internet.
To the mother of the daughter who was caught up in this unfortunate situation please be encouraged. What others may mean for harm God can use for our good and His glory (Rom. 8:28). May you and your daughter experience His all-sufficient grace! (2 Cor. 12:8)
It is clear that many parents are not monitoring their childrens’ use of the laptops, finding it impossible to watch them twenty four hours a day. For those super parents who disagree, please think about all of those open wireless networks across the street of your school or on your child’s way home. In this day of dual-income and single-parent families, how many children are left alone on the Internet under the guise of doing their homework? Are most parents technically adept enough to even recognize a problem when it occurs?
The prevalence of pornography on school laptops is a direct result of the district downplaying and misrepresenting the laptop safety issue to parents. Unfortunately, many children are being permanently harmed by the district’s failure to address the problem.
If the district is covering up a problem than the evidence would be in the logs from all of those computers. If I read the story right, each computers’ browsing history is uploaded to a central server at the district. Public records request?
First, God has nothing to do w/this situation..
And, rather than going round and round w/accusations, why doesn’t FSD do a “best practices” local, state, nationwide survey???
Once FSD has this information in hand, they/parents can make the appropriate decisions to continue, continue w/changes or discontinue.. Unbiased research related to other school districts challenges IS THE ONLY way to resolve this situation.
Arf. FSD doesn’t know how to analyze or manage much of anything. I”m just a dead dog and even I can that!
Those trustees have latched onto this mess and will never admit it is a mess. Hovey blames the parents and then goes to pick up his local hero award! Grrrrr.
Any rant that includes both profanity and bible verses is a good one. Thanks for exposing the truth, Mr. Teacher!
When I was an elementary and high school student, I NEVER had any sort of problem associated with NOT ENOUGH reference material or school textbook pages, etc. to read and learn. Of course it was quite the opposite, there were tons of pages and books and assignments – one could never finish it all.
So, what did the Internet connected laptop computer program deliver to the students of this day, which actually improved the student’s access to study materials?
There was never any valid purpose for the laptop program in terms of providing our children with an excellent-superb education.
The downsides of this laptop program are many; this pornography-criminal element is one of the most obvious.
Plagerism, sloppy “research” habits, naive reliance on “anonymous” “sources” for supposed factual matter, etc. are all huge additional problems.
Our public institutions should not make the job of parenting MORE difficult. Such ill thought out government school programs are an attack on children and families, and a tax on our nation’s future and survival.
A good non-union member School Board could cancel the laptop program and fire the superintendent and all those who designed or managed the program.
Think about that option when we are removing EVERY SINGLE incumbent elected official at the next general election.
Laptop Programs typically use the computer during at least half the school day, doing Internet research, preparing Keynote presentations, creating iMovies using digital and still footage, using web-based resources such as My Access! or Gizmos, doing science experiments, using Web 2.0 tools like podcasting, and completing assignments using NoteTaker or Pages.
What is “Internet research” (or ANY “research” in grade school)? Is that like typing “George Washington” into Google and printing out the first entry, for a “Keynote presentation”?
I did not study movie making in grade school or high school, neither (I’ll bet) did Alfred Hitchcock or Cecil B. DeMillle.
“Doing science experiments” at a keyboard and a computer screen. We used to call that having a substitute teacher run a movie (i.e. rather than actually execute a lesson plan) when the actual science teacher was out sick.
Years ago, it took about two minutes to “learn” how to run an “eight track tape player” and it took about two minutes to learn how to use a cell phone. I’m sure that “Web 2.0 tools like podcasting” are similarly mind expanding (or just other two-minute gizmos).
These phony “lessons” and “studies” and “experiments” have produced illogical, undisciplined, short attention span – UNEDUCATED – dolts, who elect Communists to destroy the single large scale free market for health care/medical innovation existing on earth; which market is THE engine for ALL medical-sceintific innovation in the world, where ANY INNOVATOR can recover compensation for the newest, the best of medical treatments-cures-techniques (produced by long hard years of work).
But you probably think that getting a “Red Star HERO of the Soviet Union” patch sewn onto your shirt produced all of the medical innovations which somehow arrived in America (exclusively) during the last fifty years.
Why don’t you use your “web-based” resources to identify ALL (any?) of the medical innovations and cures which came out of Socialist USSR during its 80 year existence (other than how to extract a thought-crime “confession” from a newspaper writer, that is)?
No, Mr. FSD Website, the laptop program is/was a diversion of resources and a waster of precious time for children who should be learning, self control, self-dscipline, basic language and arithmetic skills, all crafted around true history of the wonderful free nation which their ancestors won for them.
At home students demonstrated 21st century skills by using the laptop to complete homework, listen to music, and surf the Internet. Students used the laptops for Internet searching, making presentations, and using district-supported software such as Comic Life (an educational application that allows students to make their own comic strips).
I’m with you Rain. These educrats have conjured up a massive recipe for electoral failure.
Fullerton School District Program Evaluation
Laptops for Learning Year Two: 2005-2006
Dr. Loretta Donovan
California State University, Fullerton
Parents who in many cases are cautious of the laptops themselves have received little advice on how to manage laptop use at home. Specifically, these trainings could discuss unsupervised student use of laptops (several students in grades as low as third had Internet access in the bedroom and were allowed unsupervised on the Internet at any time), and strategies for discussing safe computer use (Internet safety and time restrictions). An undertone of despair was felt in parent comments about students using the laptops for MySpace and playing on the Internet instead of doing homework.
Thank you. I put an inquiry in to the author of that report. It appears that the district has known about this problem since 2006.
Sounds like the Fullerton SD needs to contact Bishop Brown!
He and his staff did a stellar job in erasing/covering up Fr. Cesars filth. So much so that Tony D. looked the other way.
is the DA waiting? What happened to the cops?
Ummm I have an idea that could stop ALL this…
http://www.pcpandora.com
And actually, it IS bad parenting, because the parents weren’t doing their 21st century job of monitorig internet activity. Kids ARE curious, that’s why you have to KNOW what they are doing with such an incredibly powerful tool like the internet… If you don’t want them looking at porn, then you may want to keep an eye on their internet activity (yes, you can do it 24/7 with monitoring software).
On the flipside, the school should have done a better job of advising parents on how to manage home use of the laptop, yes. Absolutely.
Such a tough situation with such a simple answer…
Your plan fails because it assumes that every parent knows how to install software on a computer, is allowed by the district to install software, understands how to configure the filtering, and knows how to read the logs every day to understand if their child is looking at something inappropriate.
Some of these parents don’t speak English and have never used a computer in their entire lives. If the district sells them a laptop, what do you think they’re going to do?
If the parents are THAT computer illiterate, then maybe they shouldn’t let their kids have such open access to one.
Maybe the schools should require parents to take a short class on how to use the computers that are being given to the kids. That would help too.
FYI: our software comes en Espanol too!
There are a lot of small companies out there, like us, that would work with the schools to make sure every parent has access to the protection and tools they need to have in place before just letting their kids roam free on the Internet.
The bottom line is here is it doesn’t matter how it is acquired, if there is internet access in your house, as a parent in the 21st century, you need to be monitoring it. No if’s and’s or but’s.
You can’t dispute that.
The school district requires the child to use the laptop at home as part of the curriculum, so the parents have no choice in the matter. That’s the whole point here.
I don’t see anybody here contending that children should be able to use laptops unnattended. Quite the opposite.
Kens the schools tell parents that laptops are already equipped with such software. Before you start making general accusations about parents who you do not even know, you might want to get all the facts in order. The schools also tell parents that the district gets alerted asap when a kid looks at porn….obviously this is a lie as well.
All of my questions remain unaddressed.
The laptop program for elementary (especially) and high school students delivered nothing but more of the same, shoddy “teaching” of plagerism “skills,” and cut and paste “reports” and facilitated “group projects” (which defines the absolute theft of an education from the less advanced student, by merely allowing him or her to just ride in the boat while the others, or perhaps only one child actually does the assignment and learns the lesson).
ALL of this is government school, Teachers Union, theft from our society, turning schools into Leftist propaganda mills, where students do not learn to think, but rather learn to vote for Communists, so that they too can become vastly overcompensated utterly unqualified unskilled government “workers” (until the crash).
“awesome”….uh….this guy had the courage to stand up for what he believes. I didn’t read any ‘profanity’….even people who quote the bible get frustrated and $#@! from time to time. All you were able to take from his story is that? Try to leave your religious disdain and judgmental baggage offline next time, so that way maybe you can get the ‘truth’.