Students find ways to feed their curiosity

A classic case of he said she said. The mother of an 11-year-old 6th grader at Golden Hill Elementary is pointing her finger at Fullerton School District for not having tighter security on the laptops taken home from school. 

The sixth grader had been accessing Web sites by using the neighbors' unlocked Internet access and then proceeding to view porn sites from her laptop. The child's viewing of the Web sites went unnoticed until her mother happened to run across some odd e-mail being sent to her daughter from a man by the name of Matt. She took the laptop to the police to have this matter further investigated in fear that it was a pedophile. 

The investigation was dropped due to no crime being present but the police found that there had been multiple visits to porn sites. The Fullerton School District was brought into this soon after the discovery was made. 

The mother of the 6th grader blamed the district for not having tighter regulations on the laptops and for not checking the Web sites that we being viewed. The parents were told that there would be firewalls and regular check up put on the computers to prevent inappropriate behavior from occurring. 

The laptops were issued to the students for in class assignments and then to take home to finish them. The laptops are not funded by the school but by the parents for this program. If a family did not have the money to pay up front the laptops can be loaned or issued a monthly payment. 

What is now left up to question is who's fault is it really, the school or the parents? Both parties are at fault. The parents of the children should keep a close eye on their children no matter what they are doing. 

Unfortunately children are now being brought up in a technology-based world; they are also being exposed to sex at a younger age. 

The problem lays in the fact that parents are not up-to-date with technology and are unaware of what all the dangers that are out there. 

Parents should monitor computer time and only allow it to be used if they are around in order to prevent accidents like this one. 

The same goes for schools, there should be tighter security measures on internet viewings, if a school wants to provide programs that have the use of laptops then they must check frequently what sites are being viewed.