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Username: WorldThoughts
Date/Time: Tue, October 24, 2000 at 8:06 PM GMT
Browser: AOL Browser V5.0 using Windows 98
Score: 5
Subject: A bit much.

Message:
 

 
<<< The Internet is for everyone, not just lazy and irresponsible parents who blame others for their personal failure to raise children with appropriate values.  Don't want to take responsibilty for your children? Screw your children then.  >>>>
     

Sir, I find your statement a bit on the extreme and insipid side.

Firstly, in the subject header you say that the Internet is not a child's reading room.

I beg to differ. It is indeed a child's reading room and 20 million other things. As such, it deserves attention. And not PRECISELY because it is, as you put it, a reading room. But because children do operate on the Internet for a variety of things.

Secondly, you make the assertion that parents who allow their children to go on the Internet are lazy and irresponsible. That is preposterous, just as the statement, "parents who let their children read encyclopedias are lazy," just as the statement, "parents who let their children play on the swings are lazy." The Internet is a real medium. It is a tool, is employed in education, in recreation, in exploration, communication and outreach. And yes, it is a reading room as well.

Indeed, you call parents "irresponsible" for looking to the controllers of the Internet to put into place a system that will assist in the funneling of appropriate information to home computers used by children. I think you have this bass-ackwards. Their interest in such matters makes them RESPONSIBLE child-rearers. Irresponsible parents don't give a damn one way or the other. I could have my child on my lap, and I could be monitoring things perfectly. And then BOOM. Up on the screen comes this graphic I might have wanted my child to wait a few years to see.

Because all this happens in real time. There is NO pre-screening. Not in any practical sense.

Now, am I for oppression of thought, speech and expression. Hell no. But I am for a system that will enable me to control what comes MY way, and my CHILD's way.

And your final sentence above illustrates how crude and clueless you are.


     

 


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