I’ve got a good idea. Let’s ban kids from using social networks. Like YouTube in schools. We won’t educate them, we’ll just y’know, stop it.

Oh we already ban YouTube? And we have the parents sign that their kids won’t go near  social sites? Good. Worked for those sexually adventurous teens in the 50′s didn’t it? I mean, we banned sex education and that stopped everything. Well, didn’t it?

From Yahoo!Answers

How do you hack Net Nanny?

I have a friend who has a project due tomorrow for school. His parents are out of town, and his work involves looking at two videos on Youtube. The parental software won’t let him get on the Internet or visit www.youtube.com Does anyone know how to fool these controls?

Best Answer – Chosen by Voters

How to disable Net Nanny:

First things first, there is reportedly an “in-case-Mommy-forgot-the-password” backdoor to the program (some or all versions).
Try ~frontdoor as your password. (and so on and so forth)

Consider the issues here;

• Yahoo!Answers is in deep doodoo? Maybe? Allowing minors to discuss hacks and cracks. (A no-no on my forum rules of engagement,  for obvious reasons)
• Students using the very tool these services are supposed to stop:  to learn how to get to social networks which are banned. Yay for teamwork and crowd sourcing. Boo for obeying the rules.
• Students needing YouTube for homework (yeah right) Just because there are Harvard channels, and Stanford channels, and nobel peace prize winner speeches, let’s ban it anyway. We should ban all libraries because some of them have crappy books too.

Banning vs education: What does failing to properly educate our children on social media look like?

I’m still miffed about the Department of Education stopping the work that Al Upton was doing educating his students.  Got parent approval, tested the students on an ongoing basis about online safety – including having people leave “comments” and then using them as a basis for class discussion on identity and trust and stuff.

If there’s one thing worse than a government that doesn’t get the new digital economy and how important it is to quickly adapt education to it,  it’s a passive voting public that accepts this censorship, “somebody think of the children” rubbish. And don’t tell me you didn’t know that sites like YouTube were  banned at schools and that in order to get their hands on laptops schools made parents sign that their kids won’t go on any social sites.  Cos now you do know. What are you gonna do about it?