I can address the school web blocking issue from a very different viewpoint from most of those who have posted. I am on the school board for the Millcreek Township School District in Erie PA. Our township borders the city of Erie PA on the south and the west. We have approximately 1,500 laptop and desktop computers to serve 7,500 students in 2 high schools, 3 middle schools and 7 elementary schools. I also chair the Operations Committee which oversees the installation of technology. So although I am not an IT expert, I do know a little bit about the problem.
There are 2 main reasons for schools to block so many sites. First and foremost, installing web filtering software was mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Some of you may have heard of that. No choice, we had to do it. Many schools took the easy way out and blocked large categories of websites (Someone help me out here. Is their not some type of HTML tag which can help identify site content and rating?) such as sports, games, entertainment, and the all encompassing unidentified and unrated categories.
The second and perhaps more important reason is the issue of bandwidth and it's cost. Students were consuming such large amounts of bandwidth viewing and downloading videos, playing and downloading music and playing online video games that it had a huge impact on legitimate student and administrative usage. We were forced to adopt the category blocking I mentioned to bring the situation under control. We also updated our policies regarding computer usage and put some teeth into them. Here is a broad overview of our policies:
http://www.mtsd.org/district/technology/policy.asp Sadly a former robotics team member got caught and was suspended from school. And no I did not turn him in!
So there are some very legitimate reasons for school web blocking. But we also have a process and procedure to have sites unblocked. I would bet you all have a process by which you can get sites unblocked too. Just calmly document your reasons to get a site unblocked without going on a rant about how unfair blocking is. You will get a lot further that way.