A San Marcos High School student is blasting the Santa Barbara Unified School District for banning YouTube and other educational Google features.
Senior Mateo Gallegos said the ban impacts students, especially those without personal devices, who rely on the platform for help with homework, and studying for exams. The district, he said, so far has only listened to parents—and not students.
“Pretty much all of the voices they have heard until mine were supporting the YouTube ban,” Gallegos said in an interview with the News-Press.
The Santa Barbara Unified School District recently blocked YouTube on district-issued iPads. The district also banned Google Photos, Google Play and Google Translate.
The district’s Balanced Learning and Technology Task Force had surveyed 727 students about technology use in the classroom, of which 62 named YouTube a distraction.
Gallegos three weeks ago presented the board the results of a student survey. He said the district overlooked ways students depend on the platform. About 319 San Marcos students responded to the survey the day after the board implemented the ban.
Gallegos went classroom-to-classroom, asking students to scan a QR code that linked to the survey.
“I primarily use my school iPad outside of school, so I’m worried that without access to Google services I’ll be put at a disadvantage compared to other students when it comes to test prep and taking the SAT,” one student said in the survey.
One foreign exchange student Google translate was essential to their learning English.
“The ban of Google Translate worries me because I can’t imagine not having access to translate when I first arrived,” the student said.
Another student in the survey described the ban as having an inadvertent effect: “I think it punishes the people who use those websites for the correct reasons and the people who don’t use it for the right reasons will find other ways to not do work.”
According to his survey, 78.4% of respondents said they used their school administered iPad for educational use, compared to 21.6% who use a personal device.
About 85.6% of those surveyed use YouTube for help on school-related subjects; 67.7% for studying for school exams; 58.3% for studying for AP, SAT and ACT exams; and 16.9% watch YouTube for non-educational purposes.
“It won’t help if you’re not honest,” Gallegos told students, recognizing some might lie about their YouTube use.
Gallegos doesn’t deny that students use YouTube recreationally.
“The main reason that I’m going in on this issue is not because I want students to be able to access all of YouTube,” Gallegos said. “I think there should be some restrictions on YouTube. I just think that there needs to be alternate resources for students, to provide for the loss of all of the resources we did lose from YouTube.”
Gallegos said one of the ways he uses YouTube was to help him study for exams and that he works best when someone explains information to him. Some YouTube channels he went to for help were Heimler’s History, the Organic Chemistry Tutors and the Amoeba Sisters.
Though these channels were helpful for him, he said YouTube is effective in providing thousands of videos on subjects that students could choose from based on their learning needs.
YouTube will still be available to teachers, but he said it won’t be as effective.
“Teachers just assigning YouTube videos, it’s not going to make up for the lack of literally thousands of perspectives on the Pythagorean Theorem,” Gallegos said. “That really does help students because they find the one for them and then they’re able to really understand different things.”
As the San Marcos representative on the superintendent student advisory council, Gallegos wants to push the district to incorporate diverse perspectives in decision-making, not just those of the most vocal parents.
“Students care about this stuff. They actually do want to have their voices represented, and I feel like the district could be doing a better job at it.”
The survey was just one step.
His purpose in doing a survey was to show the district that students care about this issue, even if they’re not the ones showing up to the board meetings.
“They claim they’re putting students first, but I feel like, are they putting parents first or students first?” Mateo asked.
