Opinion List: Why Salisbury Shouldn’t Have Blocked Twitter

Note: I am not affiliated with the Salisbury Township School District in any current way. My sources are just well placed. If my spacing is off, I apologize in advance. I mean no hard feelings by making this column. This is not an attack towards the Salisbury Township School District, this is constructive criticism; and I hope that the administrators do not take it the wrong way.

This opinion column is a first for me. It is the first time I have ever had a problem with the district in any sustainable way. For the most part, Salisbury has been good to its students. Their techniques of promoting individuality over collectivism have done much to helping students achieve. However, Salisbury has overexerted itself by making Twitter a blocked website. I know that they  This is a numbered list explaining the downfalls to blocking Twitter.

#1: Twitter is educational. Blocking Twitter puts a strain on teachers. - In this type of essay, it may be hard for me to make that assumption. However, some teachers use Twitter to promote social media skills, or to provide a real world example to a lesson. When a website like Twitter is blocked, teachers that do use it are forced to go to another option. Consequently, the students in the class lose out on the original educational opportunity. 

#2: Skype would’ve been a better option to block. - While Skype is used for educators, the general student body has no educational use for Skype. My sources have told me that many parents consider Skype to be hard to use, and even harder to monitor their child’s use of the application. It would be much better for the school to be blocking things like Skype that are just distractors, rather than websites like Twitter which can be used in many ways.

#3: The school was very open to Twitter up until recently. - Even in 2011, the district had Twitter unblocked with no restrictions. I find it very hard to believe that Salisbury’s trust in its students would have been reduced that much. Many of the students who were in the Middle School in 2011 are in the High School. If you can trust the student body in 2011, you can trust them now.

#4: Only the students that were directly involved in bullying on Twitter needed to be blocked. - It is not that hard to figure out the people involved. You just need information provided by the people that were bullied. The imperative that Salisbury should have is to block the troublemakers, not the entire district. If this type of massive enforcement was a common thing, Facebook would’ve been blocked totally years ago. 

#5 - Parents were not given a chance to decide on a school wide block. - In the end, this should have been a decision for parents. The school should’ve sent an e-mail that would’ve opted the majority of students out of a ban with their parent’s consent, perhaps through a reply or an e-signature among other options. Since this was not given scrutiny by parents, what the school did doesn’t have much legitimacy.

My suggestion is that the parents contact the “Technology Specialist” (who’s name and district e-mail I’m not publishing, but can easily be located on the “District Administration” page on the school website), as he may be able to give you a time that the website will be unblocked, as well as ways parents can have the block removed on their child’s computer. I will forward e-mails to him and other appropriate administrators if I’m sent them. In the case that you want me to forward it, please tell me how you want to be credited. My e-mail is stsdpersonnelpatch@gmail.com.